Curation #54 from my Kerouac bookshelf: The Sea is My Brother by Jack Kerouac

Item #54 in my Kerouac bookshelf curation project is this Penguin Classics 2011 first printing of Jack Kerouac's The Sea is My Brother: The Lost Novel. This copy's provenance is that it was a 2011 Christmas gift (can't remember who from), and it's in very good condition. 423 pages, it measures approximately 6" x 9-1/4".

The Sea is My Brother is considered the first major work by Jack Kerouac. Jack wrote it in the spring of 1943 shortly after his first tour as a Merchant Marine, but it remained unpublished in its entirety until 2011. The novel itself runs a scant 128 pages. In this edition there is a lot of additional matter (editorial comment, early Kerouac writings, illustrations and pictures, and a section titled, "The Young Prometheans," featuring writings by and letters back-and-forth between Jack Kerouac and his friend, Sebastian Sampas (also some correspondence with Stella Sampas). Because of the latter content, I would get this edition if you are going to acquire the novel.

TSIMB is essential Kerouac because it provides a glimpse of his raw and as yet undeveloped talent. The novel met with mixed reviews, the NY Times saying, "Kerouac scholars will be fascinated by this early work, but it struggles to stand on its own." The Washington Times said, "Some 'lost novels' should stay lost, but not this one." The reviewer for Chicago Reader loved it (click here).

I enjoyed The Sea is My Brother on its own merits, but it's not a favorite of  mine compared to other Kerouac novels. Nevertheless, it holds an important spot in the canon as "early Kerouac" and thus deserves a spot on any Kerouac bookshelf worth its salt. 





Below is a picture of Shelf #2 of my Kerouac bookshelf showing the placement of this book (4th item from the left) on the day I started curating my collection. Next up: Visions of Gerard by Jack Kerouac.

Shelf #2 of my Kerouac bookshelf

Curation #53 from my Kerouac bookshelf: Wake Up: A Life of the Buddha by Jack Kerouac

Item #53 in my Kerouac bookshelf curation project is this Penguin Books 2009 3rd printing of Jack Kerouac's Wake Up: A Life of the Buddha. It's a small book: 185 pages and 4-5/8" x 6". The provenance of this copy is uncertain, and it's in good condition.

I've already opined about this book on my blog here, so further elucidation is unnecessary. I will say that I think I was too negative about it in that post, but it was 6 years ago and my knowledge and tastes have changed. Consequently, I need to re-read this book and give it another chance.

This makes 4 Buddhist-related Kerouac books in a row in my curation project:

1. The Dharma Bums
2. Some of the Dharma
3. The Scripture of the Golden Eternity
4. Wake Up: A Life of the Buddha

Did you know that Jack wrote so many Buddhist-inspired books? And that is only his books and doesn't include all the references in his journals and heaven only knows what unpublished manuscripts lurk in the Kerouac archive maintained by whoever succeeded John Sampas as literary executor (I assume Jim Sampas).

It may look as if my Kerouac collection is in some kind of logical order, but take heart because that is only partially true: randomness ensues henceforth.

P.S. I kept my word yesterday and re-read TSOTGE. Good stuff....






Below is a picture of Shelf #2 of my Kerouac bookshelf showing the placement of this book (3rd item from the left) on the day I started curating my collection. Next up: The Sea is My Brother by Jack Kerouac.

Shelf #2 of my Kerouac bookshelf

Curation #52 from my Kerouac bookshelf: The Scripture of the Golden Eternity by Jack Kerouac

Item #52 in my Kerouac bookshelf curation project is this 1994 2nd printing by City Lights of Jack Kerouac's Scripture of the Golden Eternity. It's just over 60 pages and approximately 4-3/4" x 6-1/4". This copy is in very good condition and the provenance is uncertain (although I likely bought it from Amazon). TSOTGE was written in 1956 and first published in 1960 by Corinth Books (first printing available from ebay.com for just over $100). It was republished in 1970 with an introduction by Eric Mottram and in 1994 with an introduction by Ann Waldman. This edition includes both introductions.

Kerouac's actual text (66 numbered "scriptures") runs from p. 23 to p. 61. As Mottram describes it, TSOTGE is

Kerouac's statement of confidence in his oneness with the universe of energy and form, a confidence to which his whole being swelled. (p. 8)

Waldman said TSOTGE is

fueled by Kerouac's discerning meditation on the nature of impermanence and consciousness, subtle like the dharma it invokes. (p. 6)

The story goes, according to Waldman, that Gary Snyder was the catalyst for this book, telling Jack in 1956, "'All right, Kerouac, it's about time for you to write sutra'" (p. 1).

Given its size, TSOTGE presents as a quick read, but there is a lot to mediate on here and one could revisit it endlessly, especially as a meditative or reflective spiritual tool. However, it is only a tool.

According to Gerald Nicosia in Memory Babe: A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac, after he wrote TSOTGE, Jack showed it to Locke McCorkle (bonus points if you know what his pseudonym was in The Dharma Bums) and said, "'While I was writing this, I thought I knew what it meant, but now I don't know anymore'" (p. 517).

As Jack says in Scripture #45:

When you've understood this scripture, throw it away. If you cant [sic] understand this scripture, throw it away. I insist on your freedom.

It's okay to have doubts, as Jack did, but it's a holy thing to put your beliefs in writing. And as any good Buddhist teacher would tell you, words are just the finger pointing at the moon.

Pardon me now while I go re-read The Scripture of the Golden Eternity.







Below is a picture of Shelf #2 of my Kerouac bookshelf showing the placement of this book (2nd item from the left) on the day I started curating my collection. Next up: Wake Up: A Life of the Buddha by Jack Kerouac.

Shelf #2 of my Kerouac bookshelf

Curation #51 from my Kerouac bookshelf: Some of the Dharma by Jack Kerouac

Item #51 in my Kerouac bookshelf curation project is this Penguin Books softcover edition of Some of the Dharma by Jack Kerouac. This copy shows it's a first printing of a 1999 edition, but I sort of doubt that. It's in good condition, and the provenance is that I bought it used from Amazon in January 2012 (click here for evidence and a suggestion by Kerouacian John Dorfner). This is a virtual tome, 420 pages and over 8" x 10".

I lovingly refer to this book as a Buddhism coffee table book. It's not a straight-through read (I guess it could be for certain readers), but rather the kind of book that you pick up and start reading anywhere and go until your brain is ready to explode from the input. Jack started writing this book in December 1953 during a concentrated study of Buddhism and finished it in 1956. He sometimes referred to it as Book of Dharmas.

Some of the Dharma was in the Kerouac archive until 1991 when estate executor John Sampas sent it to Viking Penguin via Sterling Lord. It was a meticulously typed manuscript with a few handwritten annotations (you can see them in this book). Viking Penguin published it in 1997.

Some of the Dharma is divided into 10 "books." To me, it reads like Kerouac's attempt at putting everything he knew about Buddhism in one place, and it varies from literal Buddhist doctrine to Jack's interpretations of same to relevant quotations (sometimes attributed, sometimes not) to resources (p. 8 has a Buddhist bibliography) to Bible passages to mentions of Jack's other works (Doctor Sax, p. 253) to poems to journal-like entries to practical advice to . . . well, you get the idea. It's a spiritual cornucopia.

In Some of the Dharma you'll find doctrinal passages such as the Four Noble Truths:

FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS 

1. All Life is Sorrowful
2. The Cause of Suffering is Ignorant Craving
3. The Suppression of Suffering can be Achieved
4. The Way is the Noble Eightfold Path

You'll find reflective gems like this:

I don't want to be a drunken hero of the generation suffering everywhere
     with everyone --
I want to be a quiet saint living in a shack in solitary meditation
     of universal mind--- (p. 63)

You'll find quotes from Neal Cassady.

WHY THE RAILROAD'S HARD

     "Well, boy, let's get 2 behind 3 off 1, then double to 4 to set out the east cars, spot the express reefer, pull 5 and kick 7 down the lead, then it'll be a trey, deuce, four, another deuce, five aces, and a trey, hang the head car and come to 15 to shove that rail, then get the cummy off the limey and we'll cross over to tie up 8." (p 139)

You'll find random aphorisms.

--UNFOCUS EYES ALL TIME, like bemused reader over a page--- (p. 313)

I could go on and on with examples. There are a few more in my post from December 2016 (click here).

Suffice to say it's brilliant stuff delivered Kerouac-style, and whether or not you are into Buddhism, it deserves a place on your coffee table.






Below is a picture of Shelf #2 of my Kerouac bookshelf showing the placement of this book (1st on the left) on the day I started curating my collection. Next up: The Scripture of the Golden Eternity by Jack Kerouac.

Shelf #2 of my Kerouac bookshelf

Curation #50 from my Kerouac bookshelf: The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac

Item #50 in my Kerouac bookshelf curation project is the last item on Shelf #1. It is a copy of The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac, a 35th printing of a 1976 Penguin Books edition. It's in the same condition as yesterday's copy of On The Road (very rough) and the provenance is uncertain.

I've opined previously in this curation project about The Dharma Bums here and here. What's left to say regards this particular copy, and to understand its meaning to me one need only visit yesterday's blog post about On The Road here. Like that copy, this one is well-used. It has sentimental value as one of the first three Kerouac novels I read -- the actual copy -- and I used it to teach my Kerouac course at University of Maine at Farmington. Also, it was the copy I used when writing my book, The Beat Handbook: 100 Days of Kerouactions.

In short, this a prized possession right up there with my "working" copy of On The Road, and, to top it off, The Dharma Bums is my favorite Kerouac novel (evidence being my license plate, DHRMABM). I know real critics will disagree that it is even one of his best, but that's okay. Opinions are like, well, you know . . . and everybody has one.



Below is a picture of Shelf #1 of my Kerouac bookshelf showing the placement of this book (on its side in front of the upright books) on the day I started curating my collection. Next up: We start on Shelf #2 with Some of the Dharma by Jack Kerouac.

Shelf #1 of my Kerouac bookshelf

Curation #49 from my Kerouac bookshelf: On The Road by Jack Kerouac

Item #49 in my Kerouac bookshelf curation project is this ragged copy of On The Road by Jack Kerouac. It's by Penguin Books, appearing to be an 18th printing of a 1976 edition. It's 310 pages, 5" x 7-5/8", and it's in rough, rough shape: cover creases, dog-ears, annotations (see below picture), taped-in references (see below picture), underlining, Post-Its, packing taped holding it together, etc. The provenance is unknown, but I must have bought it in 2002 or 2003 at the urging of my Neal Cassady-esque friend, Keith. It was either the first or second Kerouac book I read, and, yes, it was that late in my life (late 40s). I may have read The Dharma Bums first. I tried to ascertain this from my Amazon orders history to no avail. And my failing memory is no help at all. I may have to resort to looking through my journals from the time. (P.S. I looked back through my journals and it appears I read The Dharma Bums and Big Sur and On The Road around the end of 2004, so I was wrong with the date above. Order? TDB before BS, but unsure of OTR's place.)

I've opined about On The Road in general in a previous curation (or two), so let me say some things about this particular copy. It's a prized possession because of its history. I read it during my mid-life crisis bachelor days while teaching at Mansfield University in Pennsylvania, most likely while sitting on the couch in the window at the Night & Day Coffee Cafe in Mansfield. It certainly put me on the Kerouacian path. I've read it many times, in part because I used it as one of the texts when I taught a Kerouac first year seminar at the University of Maine at Farmington in the spring of 2013-2017 (5 times). Hence all the annotating and Post-It notes. Also of note, this is the copy I used when writing The Beat Handbook: 100 Days of Kerouactions, so it has all 100 Kerouactions lined in pen and numbered (see below picture).

My attempt to keep the real-life characters straight on a blank end page

My taped-in reference from John Leland's Why Kerouac Matters on the title page

An example of the way all 100 Kerouactions appear

We've been through a lot, this book and me. Two jobs, retirement, several relationships, 4 houses, 3 moves, living in 2 states, 2 big birthdays . . . a lot. And this copy shows it. So I love it dearly. It's worth exactly nothing to anyone else, but to me it is, well, priceless.

Yair!


Below is a picture of Shelf #1 of my Kerouac bookshelf showing the placement of this book (on its side in front of the upright books) on the day I started curating my collection. Next up: The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac.

Shelf #1 of my Kerouac bookshelf

4 chapbooks by Analog Submission Press

In our book swap, which I got the better deal of, Marc Brüseke sent me the book I previously reviewed and the above 4 poetry chapbooks published by Analog Submission Press.

I really enjoyed Sticks of Tea, which comprises 3-line word play inspired by haiku. I have been experimenting with this form myself in my journal. A Face Now Rendered Indescribable and Cumulative Impact Zone are both thoughtful free verse in the Beat vein. All three of the latter are by Marc. Fat Pink Demons is by Gregarious Beach, and it's hard to describe. It takes a poetic form, consisting of short word phrases that trigger a lot of connections in the reader.

If you are looking for some off-the-beaten-track (no pun intended) poetry, check these or any of the other chapbooks available at http://www.analogsubmission.com/.

Support small presses and local poets!

Get It Back To Give It Away by Marc Brüseke

I just finished Get It Back To Give It Away by Marc Brüseke. It's a quick read -- 130 pages. As the back cover says, it's the "story of Richard Marx as he travels through Hungary and Croatia jotting down notes and poems in his pocketbook while meditating on the transient nature of travel."

I met Marc via this blog (he currently resides in Europe) and we traded books via the mail. As he described his book in his note to me when the book arrived, it is a "fusion of prose & what I've been calling 'photo-sketch' poetry (inspired by Kerouac's sketch method & Roland Barthes' photographic analysis) --> I basically look at photos I've taken and then though the use of memory & personal reflection & visual cues I write them up as poems." The book is about 1/3 such poems and 2/3 prose that is Kerouacian in style.

The prose sections are journal-like, written in first-person and describing the narrator's experiences traveling. As you can imagine, there's a lot of sight-seeing, drinking, eating, people-watching, smoking, talking, walking, and navigating public transportation. There's a love story of sorts, too, but I don't want to give too much away.

I enjoyed Marc's book. It's reflective, descriptive, authentic, and engaging. I wanted the journey to continue at the end. Perhaps he'll do a sequel.

Get It Back To Give It Away is available on Amazon here or at Marc's website: http://www.analogsubmission.com/.

Curation #48 from my Kerouac bookshelf: The Town and the City by Jack Kerouac

Item #48 in my Kerouac bookshelf curation project is this copy of Jack Kerouac's The Town and the City. It's A Harvest Book by Harcourt, Inc., copyrighted originally by Harvest in 1970 and this edition looks to be 1983 with no printing number discernible. The provenance is unknown but I likely bought it used from Amazon. This copy is in okay shape, 499 pages, 5-1/4 x 7-7/8".

The Town and the City is Jack Kerouac's first published novel (Harcourt Brace). It hit the shelves in 1950 but brought him little in the way of the critical acclaim or broader recognition that On The Road did 7 years later (read the 1950 NY Times review here). It's a Wolfean story of the Martin family from Galloway (Lowell, Massachusetts, the "town"), "whose five sons and three daughters are each endowed with an energy and vision of life that drives the narrative from the early part of the century to the years following World War II" (from the back cover).

Jack draws on his own family and friends for characters using pseudonyms as usual, but his writing style is much more traditional in this novel. His powers of description are evident, and there are hints at his spontaneous style to come as well as the Beat Generation values which bear fruit in his later writing. New York City settings play a prominent role in the story (the "city"), as do familiar beat characters like Ginsberg, Burroughs, Carr, etc. (via pseudonym).

This is an important book in that it establishes Jack's early skills as a novelist and provides an insightful contrast to his later-developed style. If you're a Kerouac fan it's essential reading, but I suspect you'll like it if you're a fan of a good novel.





Below is a picture of Shelf #1 of my Kerouac bookshelf showing the placement of this book (29th item from the left) on the day I started curating my collection. Next up: On The Road by Jack Kerouac.

Shelf #1 of my Kerouac bookshelf

Curation #47 from my Kerouac bookshelf: Dr. Sax and the Great World Snake by Jack Kerouac

Item #47 in my Kerouac bookshelf curation project is this copy of Dr. Sax and the Great World Snake by Jack Kerouac. As the cover shows, it's a combo of 2 audio CDs and an unabridged illustrated screenplay. This copy appears to be a 2003 Gallery Six first edition and first printing. The provenance, I believe, is that it was a gift from a colleague when I left my professorship at Mansfield University in Pennsylvania in 2006. It's in good shape.

Dr. Sax and the Great World Snake is a screenplay that Kerouac wrote based on his novel, Dr. Sax, which we discussed a couple of blog posts ago. Sadly, I have yet to sit and listen to the CDs while following along with the written screenplay. It should be good and it's on my bucket list. Robert Creeley narrates and Lawrence Ferlinghetti plays the part of the Wizard. Even producer/director Jim Sampas plays a part. Music is provided by Blue Note recording artist John Medeski.

What did you think of Dr. Sax and the Great World Snake?






Below is a picture of Shelf #1 of my Kerouac bookshelf showing the placement of this book (28th item from the left) on the day I started curating my collection. Next up: The Town and the City by Jack Kerouac.

Shelf #1 of my Kerouac bookshelf

Who Walk in Darkness by Chandler Brossard: A review of sorts

I borrowed this book from my great friend, Richard Marsh, who was turned on to it by UK Kerouac scholar Dave Moore (keeper of the wonderful Character Key to Kerouac's Duluoz Legend). I read it in about three sittings across two days. While it covers some of the same ground as Kerouac (young adults living a bohemian lifestyle in downtown NYC circa 1948), Chandler Brossard's terse style is quite different from Jack's spontaneous and rambling prose. The main characters drink a lot and smoke "tea" (marijuana) and have uncommitted sex with each other and discuss literary subjects.

According to Wikipedia (always suspect), Brossard was not happy that reviewers characterized the book as a beat novel, thinking that French critics knew better, perceiving it as the first "new wave" novel by presenting a nightmare as flat documentary. Others have called it an attempt at being an American existential novel a la Hemingway (click here for a review of the book). As with Kerouac, primary characters represent real-life people (for example, writers Anatole Broyard and William Gaddis).

I was engaged enough by the book, although I didn't really dig Brossard's writing style. The Greenwich Village descriptions put the reader right there, but the dialogue is a bit unrealistic (to me). Most importantly, I didn't really care about any of the characters, but I suspect that was Brossard's intention, paralleling the characters' attempts at being too cool for traditional love relationships.

Would I recommend it? Yes. It's a fun read, especially if you dig the Greenwich Village scene in the later 40s. I'm not running out and finding more Brossard to read, but I'm glad I read Who Walk in Darkness.

Curation #46 from my Kerouac bookshelf: Beat Generation by Jack Kerouac

Item #46 in my Kerouac bookshelf curation project is this copy of Jack Kerouac's Beat Generation. Published by Thunder's Mouth Press in 2005, this appears to be a first printing (paperback). It's in very good condition and the provenance is uncertain (although I seem to remember it being a gift from Crystal).

Kerouac wrote this 3-act play in 1957 but never got it produced in full during his lifetime. The third act was the basis for the 1959 film, Pull My Daisy, which you can watch here. The full manuscript sat in storage until it was "re-discovered" in 2005 in a New Jersey warehouse. The world premiere of Beat Generation as a play was performed by the Merrimack Repertory Theater during the 2012 Jack Kerouac Literary Festival/Lowell Celebrates Kerouac Festival in Lowell, Massachusetts. I attended, and it was well done. Joey Collins, the actor who played Milo (Neal Cassady), was phenomenal -- the best I've seen (with apologies to Garrett Hedlund). You can read my review here.

This is an important addition to the Kerouac oeuvre, and deserves a spot on your own Kerouac bookshelf.





Below is a picture of Shelf #1 of my Kerouac bookshelf showing the placement of this book (27th item from the left) on the day I started curating my collection. Next up: Dr. Sax and the Great World Snake by Jack Kerouac.

Shelf #1 of my Kerouac bookshelf

Curation #45 from my Kerouac bookshelf: Dr. Sax by Jack Kerouac

Item #45 in my Kerouac bookshelf curation project is this Grove Weidenfeld (a division of Grove Press, Inc.) copy of Dr. Sax by Jack Kerouac (published in 1959, written in 1952 about 1930-36 Lowell, Massachusetts). It's a 1987 edition, 5th printing, and is in okay shape. I don't remember the provenance. The title page shows a subtitle: Faust Part Three.

Among Kerouacophiles I've met, Dr. Sax ranks right up there as one of Jack's best novels. It's both a memoir of his youth in Lowell, MA, and a fantasy novel. The back cover sums up the novel nicely:

In this haunting novel of intensely felt adolescence, Jack Kerouac tells the story of Jack Duluoz, a French-Canadian boy growing up, as Kerouac himself did, in the dingy factory town of Lowell, Massachusetts. Dr. Sax, with his flowing cape, slouch hat, and insinuating leer, is chief among the many ghosts and demons that populate Jack's fantasy world. Deftly mingling memory and dream, Kerouac captures the accents and texture of his boyhood in Lowell as he relates Jack's adventures with this cryptic, apocalyptic hipster phantom.

I love the opening lines:

THE OTHER NIGHT I had a dream that I was sitting on the sidewalk on Moody Street, Pawtucketville, Lowell, Mass., with a pencil and paper in my hand saying to myself "Describe the wrinkly tar of this sidewalk, also the iron pickets of Textile Institute. or the doorway where Lousy and you and G.J.'s always sitting and dont [sic] stop to think of words when you do stop, just stop to think of the picture better--and let your mind off yourself in this work." (p. 3)

Can't you just picture that "wrinkly tar" sidewalk? Jack is describing his writing technique right from the outset (e.g., "Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind" from Belief & Technique for Modern Prose; see also Essentials of Spontaneous Prose). As with all of Jack's novels, the prose is beautiful and at times playfully cryptic ("it's Sanurnday Sun Night"; "Frezels! Grawms! Wake to the test in your frails...."), and in this novel it's especially challenging (for me, at least) because of the fantasy elements.

Dr. Sax is the source of the famous story from Jack's youth about walking across the Moody Street Bridge with his mother one night and seeing a man carrying a watermelon drop dead (Book Four in Dr. Sax is titled, "The Night the Man with the Watermelon Died"; see p. 127).

There's a lot to say about Dr. Sax, but it's pretty much been said before so I'll leave that to the true Kerouac scholars. Suffice to say that Dr. Sax is Jack Kerouac at the height of his writing powers despite what the NY Times said about it. And that ain't no Harvard lie.







Below is a picture of Shelf #1 of my Kerouac bookshelf showing the placement of this book (26th item from the left) on the day I started curating my collection. Next up: Beat Generation: An Original Play by Jack Kerouac.

Shelf #1 of my Kerouac bookshelf

Curation #44 from my Kerouac bookshelf: Tristessa by Jack Kerouac

Item #44 in my Kerouac bookshelf creation project is this Penguin Books copy of Jack Kerouac's Tristessa. It's in very good condition, provenance unknown (probably an Amazon purchase), with a publishing date of 1992 and showing a 14th printing. This edition is 96 pages long and measures 5" x 7-11/16".

Tristessa was originally published in 1960, covering time in 1955-56 that Jack spent in Mexico city and focusing on his relationship with a prostitute named Esperanza (renamed as the title character as Jack was wont to do). If you're reading this blog post, it is unlikely that you need instruction on where Tristessa fits in the Kerouac canon, but we can at least report what Allen Ginsberg said about it in 1991 (from the back cover):

This entire short novel Tristessa's a narrative meditation studying a hen, a rooster, a dove, a cat, a chihuahua dog, family meat, and a ravishing, ravished junky lady, first in their crowded bedroom, then out to drunken streets, taco stands, & pads at dawn in Mexico city slums.

There's some beautiful descriptive prose here, juxtaposed with some dreary slice-of-life conditions. If you haven't yet read Tristessa, please do. I'm heading out today to spend some time with my Kerouacian brother, Richard, and perhaps we'll take turns reading Tristessa aloud.





Below is a picture of Shelf #1 of my Kerouac bookshelf showing the placement of this book (25th item from the left) on the day I started curating my collection. Next up: Dr. Sax by Jack Kerouac.

Shelf #1 of my Kerouac bookshelf

Curation #43 from my Kerouac bookshelf: Heaven & Other Poems by Jack Kerouac

Item #43 in my Kerouac bookshelf curation project is this copy of Jack Kerouac's Heaven & Other Poems. The latest copyright of this Grey Fox Press publication is shown on the copyright page as 1977. This page also indicates "Fifth printing, 1990." This copy is in good condition. It's a little book, 5" x 7-5/8", and is about 60 pages in length. The provenance is unknown.

Heaven & Other Poems is a poetry book edited by Don Allen. It consists of the 8-page poem, "Heaven," and a number of other poems. Allen, in his editor's note, says "This book belatedly collects the poems Jack sent me and his letters and statements regarding his verse." Interestingly, the frontispiece is a comic strip titled "Doctor Sax and the Sea Shroud" that Jack drew for the Cassady children. The book concludes with letters and statement that Jack sent to Allen between 1957 and 1962.

Some of these poems were published elsewhere (e.g., two choruses from "San Francisco Blues"). Others only appear, to my knowledge, in this publication. The letters and statements from Jack to Don Allen at the end are Kerouac gold, giving important insights into Jack's mindset in that particular time period. As we've said before on The Daily Beat, Jack was an accomplished poet as well as a prose writer; Heaven & Other Poems provides strong evidence of that.






Below is a picture of Shelf #1 of my Kerouac bookshelf showing the placement of this book (24th item from the left) on the day I started curating my collection. Next up: Tristessa by Jack Kerouac.

Shelf #1 of my Kerouac bookshelf

Curation #42 from my Kerouac bookshelf: Orpheus Emerged by Jack Kerouac

Item #42 in my Kerouac bookshelf curation project is this copy of Orpheus Emerged by Jack Kerouac. It's an ibooks publication copyrighted in 2000 and showing that it's a first printing. It's in very good shape and is more of a novella than a novel, comprising 136 pages in a 6" x 7-3/4" book. Its provenance is that I bought it new from The Bookery in Ithaca, NY, on February 5, 2005. I know this because the receipt was tucked away in its pages and I sort of remember doing so.

Obviously, this was published posthumously by Kerouac's Estate. I panned it after my first read, but I am embarrassed to read that blog post given how much more I know about Kerouac now than I did in 2011 when I finally got around to reading it. Here's the link if you're interested in what a dumbass I was and am: http://thedailybeatblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/orpheus-emerged.html.

This edition has an introduction by the legendary Robert Creeley and concludes with several informative short sections (excerpts from Jack's journals, a piece on the Beat movement, a short biography of Kerouac, and so on). As was his practice, this is a roman à clef novel and tells the story of Kerouac's early encounters with the original and seminal Beat characters like Burroughs, Ginsberg, and Carr (an underrated influence on the Beat movement) in the early forties at Columbia University.

I need to re-read this book and give an updated take on it. My bucket list is getting full of such tasks....






Below is a picture of Shelf #1 of my Kerouac bookshelf showing the placement of this book (23rd item from the left) on the day I started curating my collection. Next up: Heaven & Other Poems by Jack Kerouac.

Shelf #1 of my Kerouac bookshelf

Curation #41 from my Kerouac bookshelf: Vanity of Duluoz by Jack Kerouac

Item #41 from my Kerouac bookshelf curation project is this copy of Jack Kerouac's Vanity of Duluoz. This is a Penguin Books publication, copyrighted 1994, 5th printing. It's 5' x 7-5/8", 268 pages, and in okay condition. The provenance is likely that I bought it used from Amazon (which you can do via the link below).

Before we proceed, a brief primer on the name "Duluoz" is in order. Duluoz is one of Jack's pseudonyms for Kerouac in his novels, but it is an especially important one as we mentioned in our post about the preface in Big Sur where he envisions all of his novels comprising one vast legend a la Proust ("The Legend of Duluoz"). By the way, it is pronounced DOO-loo-awes.

Jack wrote VOD in 1967, late in his life (he died in 1969), and it is a reminiscence of his early years, covering high school (and of course football), Columbia University, naval service, and nascent Beat Generation days in NYC. It was originally subtitled, An Adventurous Education, 1935-1946. The book is dedicated to his wife, Stella (Stavroula) and Ellis Amburn but is written to his wife. It starts

All right, wifey, maybe I'm a big pain in the you-know-what but after I've given you a recitation of the troubles I had to go through to make good in America between 1935 and more less now, 1967, and although I also know that everybody in the world's had his own troubles, you'll understand that my particular form of anguish came from being too sensitive to all the lunkheads I had to deal with just so I could get to be a high school football star, a college student pouring coffee and washing dishes and scrimmaging till dark and reading Homer's Iliad in three days all at the same time, and God help me, a WRITER whose very 'success,' far from being a happy triumph as of old, was the sign of doom Himself. (Insofar as nobody loves my dashes anyway, I'll use regular punctuation for the new illiterate generation.)

I've only read this book straight-through once, but I remember liking it -- a lot. Kerouac's prose is still rollicking, but he is more mature in style and perspective. There's plenty of death here (not unusual for Kerouac) and it can be cynical at times. I believe it's the last of his books published in Kerouac's lifetime. Check it out if you haven't already done so -- it's essential Kerouac.





Below is a picture of Shelf #1 of my Kerouac bookshelf showing the placement of this book (22nd item from the left) on the day I started curating my collection. Next up: Orpheus Emerged by Jack Kerouac.

Shelf #1 of my Kerouac bookshelf