Monday, November 19, 2018

Snowy morning musings: Jack Kerouac, Jiddu Krishnamurti, and . . . John F. Kennedy



I've posted about this before here, but to summarize -- I was intrigued that two major influences on me had the same initials: JK. The influences are Jack Kerouac, of course, and also Jiddu Krishnamurti. Faithful readers already know I have a large collection of Kerouac or Kerouac-related books (160+), but I have about 25 books by or about Krishnamurti.

I have blogged about the Kerouac-Krishnamurti connection here.

It strikes me that another figure of epic stature that often weighs on my mind is John F. Kennedy, who -- if you remove his middle initial -- has the initials JK.

I will assume that you have read plenty of Kerouac by now. If you are not familiar with Krishnamurti, here is a good place to start. At that site there is text and video and audio and it is all searchable. As far as books go, you might want to start with Think On These Things.



Where Kennedy is concerned, I will assume that you have read a lot about him already. I have to admit that I have yet to read Profiles In Courage, but it is on my bucket list. Of course there are any number of books about Kennedy, many of which focus on his assassination in 1963.

Now I am off to search for other JKs of note. And wouldn't you know that the Internet made this easy: click here. John Krakauer? Yup - influence on me (great writer). Jared Kushner? Major asshole. Jack Kornfield? Buddhist connection there. Jack Kemp? Republican before they became Trumpists. John Keats? Poetry connection there. Jerry Kramer? Green Bay Packer who wrote a great book, Instant Replay. Johnny Knoxville? At least he gets it re: the R-word. Jan Kerouac? How could we leave her out?

And that's just what stuck out to me from the first half of the list. I guess I need to see who I share initials with next. But can you think of any famous JKs I missed?




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