31st sentence of the 31st book

The 31st book on my Kerouac bookshelf is Jack Kerouac's Book of Dreams (City Lights, 1981), and the 31st sentence (in honor of today being the 31st day of the month) is:

I run-- (p. 10)

Not much of a sentence, but it has a subject and a predicate. It's also arguably the 31st sentence. Once again I ran into making difficult judgment calls about when an em dash acted like a period, when a proper noun constituted a sentence beginning, and so on. A lotta ins, lotta outs, lotta what-have-you's. And a lotta strands to keep in my head. Lotta strands in old Rick's head.*

I'll leave it to you to read Book of Dreams in order to get context for today's sentence. Fair warning: tomorrow is the penultimate post of the project since we started it on March 2 and once we do an entry for the first of the month tomorrow, it's all over but the final collation of all 31 sentences in one post (that should happen Tuesday).


* Name the movie reference and you win Beat brownie points for the day.

 

The Dharma Bums out of the blue!

Unexpectedly out of the blue a copy of The Dharma Bums arrived in today's post. No note accompanied the book, but the package had a return address revealing that it was sent by my Kerouacian friend in North Carolina, John Dorfner.

Thanks, John! How did you know I don't have a version of my favorite Kerouac book with this particular cover?

I'm remembering now that John asked me for my snail mail address a few weeks ago and mentioned that he sometimes runs across something he thinks I'll dig. He was right on with this one.

This copy appears to be a Signet first printing from 1959. Original price = 50 cents!

So there's the back story of my latest acquisition for the Kerouac bookshelf.

Oh, by the way, if you haven't done so already you should get yourself copies of John's two Kerouac books, Kerouac: Visions of Rocky Mount and Kerouac: Visions of Lowell. He can be reached at johnjdorfner@gmail.com.

The Daily Beat cited in a book!

In researching for my previous post I came across the above, a Google Books search result showing that my blog, The Daily Beat, was referenced in a book, The Spiritual Imagination of the Beats by David Stephen Calonne. In particular, Calonne cited my 2009 interview with Helen Weaver (click here).

Now, I think that is pretty cool. I don't know David and I haven't read the book (but I'd like to if someone -- hint, hint -- would send me a review copy), but it appears to be pretty legit (e.g., it was published by Cambridge University Press). And David is a legit author (Google him is you don't believe me), having written books about Charles Bukowski, Diane di Prima, William Saroyan (mentioned here recently), and Henry Miller.

It's nice to know my blog is being used at all, but especially in a scholarly way. That makes the retired college professor in me break into a smile.

Click here to buy David's book.

30th sentence of the 30th book

The 30th book on my Kerouac bookshelf is another copy of Jack Kerouac's Visions of Gerard (Penguin Books, 1991), and the 30th sentence (in honor of today being the 30th day of the month) is:

I'm on the porch muffled in bundlings watching the little Christly drama-- (p. 5)

Kerouac was a religious writer. I've said that -- or words to that effect -- previously here on The Daily Beat, so it should come as no surprise to find a Christ reference in Jack's works. In particular, Visions of Gerard is full of religious references, mainly Christian but some Buddhist as well.

I love the book's conclusion:

T H E    E N D 

Sometime in the same
night that's everywhere
the same right now
and forevermore
      amen

"The same night's that's everywhere" is a title-worthy phrase for your own poem or a book. Get on that right away.

29th sentence of the 29th book

The 29th book on my Kerouac bookshelf is Jack Kerouac's Visions of Gerard (McGraw-Hill, 1976), and the 29th sentence (in honor of today being the 29th day of the month) is:

Without Gerard what would have happened to Ti Jean? (p. 13)

This is one of Jack's most poignant works, but his sentence structure is such that I doubt you could find 10 people to agree that this is the 28th sentence. Nevertheless, it's close enough for government work plus it's full of meaning. Indeed, without Gerard, would we have the same Kerouac oeuvre? Most assuredly not. Jack's older brother's death at the young age of 9 -- I note that Kerouac doesn't use a pseudonym for his brother's first name in this book -- had a profound influence on him, not the least evidence of which is today's book; however, the theme of death Kerouac frequently embraced in his writing and also his deep religiosity both point to this seminal event from his early life. Hence, today's sentence says a lot.

28th sentence of the 28th book

Roy Eldridge

The 28th book on my Kerouac bookshelf is Jack Kerouac's The Sea is My Brother (Penguin Classics, 2011), and the 28th sentence (in honor of today being the 28th day of the month) is:

One of the sailors, a husky dark-haired pharmacist's mate, talked all the time about Roy Eldridge's trumpet and why he was ten years ahead of any other jazz musician except perhaps two others who jammed Mondays at Minton's in Harlem, Lester somebody [Young] and Ben Webster; and how Roy Eldridge was really a phenomenal thinker with infinite musical ideas. (p. 19)

I curated this book here. Beyond that, nothing comes to mind to say here except that it's important to know that in the term, BASE jumping, BASE is an acronym for building, antenna, span, earth (the fixed structures a parachutist or wingsuiter jumps off). What does that have to do with Kerouac? Nothing, but it was on my mind and now it's on yours. How's that for yielding power?

27th sentence of the 27th book

The 27th book on my Kerouac bookshelf is Jack Kerouac's Wake Up: A Life of the Buddha (Penguin Books, 2009), and the 27th sentence (in honor of today being the 27th day of the month) is:

They made many winsome moves, dropped casual shoulder silks, snaked their arms, arched their eyes, danced suggestively, caressed his wrists, some even pretended to be blushingly confused and removed roses from their bosoms crying "Oh is this yours or mine, youthful prince?" but in  his mindfulness of woe the Prince was unmoved.

I'll let you read the book for context. As to the above cartoon, Peanuts is currently about Snoopy reading War and Peace at the rate of one word a day. It kind of reminds me of the silly little project (soon to be over) that we have embarked upon: sort of Kerouac in a sentence a day.

Good luck, Snoopy.

26th sentence of the 26th book

The 26th book* on my Kerouac bookshelf is Jack Kerouac's The Scripture of the Golden Eternity (City Lights, 1994), and the 26th sentence (in honor of today being the 26th day of the month) is:

Thus I made that sky, I am the golden eternity.

There's a lot of wisdom packed into The Scripture of the Golden Eternity. I saw the following on Google when I searched "golden eternity." It's close to a longer quote in Kerouac's book, but it comes from a letter he wrote to Edie Parker on January 28, 1957**:

...listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world and you will remember the lesson you forgot.

In Scripture, the passage is:

...listen to the inside silence in the womb of the world, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, re-recognize the bliss you forgot, the emptiness and essence and ecstasy of ever having been and ever to be the golden eternity. This is the lesson you forgot.

Jack was a recycler of words, as we have pointed out before. Nevertheless, both passages are bomber examples of his command of Buddhist truths.



*The next book on my shelf was actually Kerouac's Some of the Dharma, but it does not lend itself to counting sentences. Similarly, I decided to skip extra copies of On The Road and The Dharma Bums (been there done that), a copy of Pomes All Sizes (poetry doesn't lend itself to sentence counting), and a copy of Robert Lowry's The Big Cage (scarcely Kerouacian) -- all of which were lying sideways on in front of the books on the first shelf; thus, they didn't lend themselves to being counted as "next" on the shelf. I could say that about yesterday's entry, Genesis Angels, as well, as it was lying sideways atop the first row of books. To explain, I would remind you that this is a random and weird undertaking and, besides, I had my reasons for including it, not the least of which is that I had not curated this particular book in my recent project. If you are still awake after reading this paragraph, go see a doctor right away.

**This Brainpickings article claims the source letter is in The Portable Jack Kerouac, but I didn't find it in my copy. I did find it in Ann Charter's Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters 1957-1969.

25th sentence of the 25th book

The 25th book* on my Kerouac bookshelf is Aram Saroyan's Genesis Angels: The Saga of Lew Welch and the Beat Generation (William Morrow, 1979), and the 25th sentence (in honor of today being the 25th day of the month) is:

Well, wonderful.

If you're a fan of Kerouac or the Beat Generation, this book is a worthwhile addition to your reading list. Indeed, I liked it a lot for both its content and style.

As far as Kerouac connections go, Aram -- a noted author and poet in his own right -- is the son of the late writer William Saroyan, a literary influence on Jack (e.g., Saroyan is mentioned by name in On The Road). Aram was part of a now-famous interview of Kerouac for The Paris Review (Issue 43 Summer 1968). You can read that interview in Paul Maher Jr.'s Empty Phantoms.


*I didn't curate this book during our recent curation project because I acquired it after that project began. I wrote about that here.

Happy 100th Birthday to Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Today is Lawrence Ferlinghetti's 100th birthday. A noted author and co-founder of City Lights in San Francisco, Ferlinghetti was -- and is -- a critically important figure in the Beat Generation story.

Click here for a recent article about Ferlinghetti written by Beat scholar Barry Miles.

Miles concludes, "At the centenary of his birth, there’s no question that Ferlinghetti discovered America and that his work, as a publisher and a poet, has been an indelible wonder."

In honor of Ferlinghetti's 100th birthday, read something by him today. Click here for "Dog," a poem Miles mentions.

24th sentence of the 24th book

The 24th book* on my Kerouac bookshelf is Jack Kerouac's The Town and the City (Harvest/Harcourt, 1983), and the 24th sentence (in honor of today being the 24th day of the month) is:

See these men standing at windows, on which their names are written in gold letters, nodding down at the street when other townsmen walk by. (p. 4)

Not his most famous book, and written in a very traditional style, Kerouac's The Town and the City is a good read. I highly recommend it.


*The next book on the shelf was actually Kerouac's Dr. Sax and the Great World Snake, but, if you know anything about this play, you know that it is written in such a way as to stymie efforts to count sentences.

23rd sentence of the 23rd book

The 23rd book on my Kerouac bookshelf is Jack Kerouac's Beat Generation (Thunder's Mouth Press, 2005), and the 23rd sentence (in honor of today being the 23rd day of the month) is:

Ah just what I like to see in the morning, boys and girls.

Keep in mind the mystical qualities of the number 23 (as outlined in my post from December 18, 2008 which you can read here). Mystically speaking, what is it that you like to see in the morning? Answer that and the rest of your day will be the color of golden honey.

22nd sentence of the 22nd book

Aiken Street Bridge in Lowell by Vassilios Giavis

The 22nd book* on my Kerouac bookshelf is Jack Kerouac's Dr. Sax (Grove Weidenfeld, 1987), and the 22nd sentence (in honor of today being the 22nd day of the month) is:

I could hear it rise from the rocks in a groaning wush ululating with the water, sprawlsh, oom, oom, zoooo, all night long the river says zooo, zooo, the stars are fixed in rooftops like ink. (p. 8)

Do you know what river Jack is talking about here? If you answer, spell it like he does in the subsequent sentence.

21st sentence of the 21st book

Esperanza Villanueva Tercerero (Tristessa)

The 21st book* on my Kerouac bookshelf is Jack Kerouac's Tristessa (Penguin Books, 1992), and the 21st sentence (in honor of today being the 21st day of the month) is:

"Eets you l a w v."

Man, it is hard to count sentences in Kerouac's work. If there is a capitalized word after an em dash -- which he uses frequently -- I tend to count the em dash as the end of a sentence. But what if that capitalized word is "I"? Then it's anybody's guess. So I've made quite a few guesses.

In case you are guessing at today's sentence, that is Jack's way of capturing Tristessa's accent and inflection when she says, "It's your love."


*The next book on the shelf was actually Kerouac's Heaven & Other Poems, and you know from following along that poetry doesn't lend itself to our current project.

20th sentence of the 20th book

The 20th book on my Kerouac bookshelf is Jack Kerouac's Orpheus Emerged (iBooks, 2003), and the 20th sentence (in honor of today being the 20th day of the month) is:

He could always manage to conceal his feelings. (p. 19)

I don't know where this project is going, but at its conclusion -- when I pull all 31 sentences together in one place -- we'll find out. So far I have only missed one day in March -- the 1st -- so if I can keep up the daily streak we will finish on April 1. What better day to finish a silly numerology project than on April Fools' Day?

19th sentence of the 19th book

The 19th book on my Kerouac bookshelf is another copy of Jack Kerouac's Vanity of Duluoz (Penguin Books, 1994), and the 19th sentence (in honor of today being the 19th day of the month) is:

But in my first sandlot game in 1935, about October, no such crowd: it was early Saturday morning, my gang had challenged the so-and-so team from Rosemont, yes, in fact it was the Dracut Tigers (us) versus the Rosemont Tigers, Tigers everywhere, we'd challenged them in the Lowell Sun newspaper in a little article written in by our team captain, Scotcho Boldieu and edited by myself: 'Dracut Tigers, age 13 to 15, challenge any football team age 13 to 15, to a game in Dracut Tigers field or any field Saturday Morning.' (p. 11)

 By the way, it's pronounced DUE-loo-ahz and it's one of my favorite Kerouac books.

18th sentence of the 18th book

Neal Cassady (Cody Pomeray in Visions of Cody) (L) and Jack Kerouac (R)

The 18th book on my Kerouac bookshelf is another copy of Jack Kerouac's Visions of Cody (Penguin Books, 1993), and the 18th sentence (in honor of today being the 18th day of the month) is:

IN THE AUTUMN OF 1951 I began thinking of Cody Pomeray, thinking of Cody Pomeray. (p. 5)

Brownie points to anyone who can identify the Kerouac book that concludes with a very similar sentence.

Another Kerouac experience on the road

This is an old picture so don't sick the MSP on me for driving with an expired registration

Not long ago I posted about an experience while driving regarding my Kerouac-themed license plate (above). Click here to read that post.

Today, as we were leaving Auburn, Maine -- on Russell Street -- we were at a stop light and I looked in my rearview mirror to see the driver of the car behind me, a young woman, pointing at my license plate and laughing. She proceeded to pull out her cell phone and took a picture of my plate. I gave her the thumbs-up in my mirror and she returned the gesture.

I can only imagine that she is a diehard Kerouac fan, the thought of which makes my heart happy. We are not alone.

By the way, she passed me at the next light and I noted her license plate: PHREE. If you know who she is, have her get in touch with us at thebeathandbook@gmail.com. There's a free book awaiting her.

17th sentence of the 17th book

The 17th book* on my Kerouac bookshelf is Jack Kerouac's Pic (McGraw-Hill, 1974), and the 17th sentence (in honor of today being the 17th day of the month) is:

This is the bottom of the world, where little raggedy Codys dream, as rich men plan gleaming plastic auditoriums and soaring glass fronts on Park Avenue and the rich districts of Denver and the world. (p. 5)

Or, one might say, as rich men plan illegal ways to buy their dullard children into the best schools.


*Actually, the next book on the shelf was Kerouac's Book of Blues, but as we saw with Scattered Poems and San Francisco Blues, poetry doesn't lend itself to sentence counting -- so, I skipped it for purposes of this project.

16th sentence of the 16th book

The 16th book* on my Kerouac bookshelf is Jack Kerouac's Pic (Grove Press, 1971), and the 16th sentence (in honor of today being the 16th day of the month) is:

So I knew they was a North Carolina, and they was a toad, and I dreamed of it 'at night. (p. 3)

Don't fret -- it's hard to understand this sentence with context. Pic often gets a bad rap for Kerouac's stereotypical attempt at Southern black dialect; however, it's not a bad story and it's must reading for Kerouac fans.


*Actually, the next book on the shelf was Kerouac's Scattered Poems, but as we saw with San Francisco Blues, it doesn't lend itself to sentence counting so I skipped it for purposes of this project.

15th sentence of the 15th book

The 15th book on my Kerouac bookshelf is Jack Kerouac's Book of Sketches (Penguin Books, 2006), and the 15th sentence (in honor of today being the 15th day of the month) is:

One intervening sad English                                                                                                  cone haystack--  (p. 4)

I'll give you a little context today. This is one of the things Carolyn -- Jack's sister -- sees out her "little kitchen cupboard window" in Rocky Mount, North Carolina as she prepares supper.

14th sentence of the 14th book

The 14th book* on my Kerouac bookshelf is Jack Kerouac's Desolation Angels (Riverhead Books, 1995), and the 14th sentence** (in honor of today being the 14th day of the month) is:

Aurora Borealis                                                                                                                            over Hozomeen--                                                                                                               The void is stiller

If  you've never read Desolation Angels, start right away and you will learn the meaning of "Hozomeen."



*The next book was actually Kerouac's San Francisco Blues, but it doesn't lend itself to counting sentences so I skipped it for purposes of this project.

**After careful consideration, I have determined that trying to decide what constitutes a sentence in Kerouac's work is an exercise in futility. (The beginning of that last sentence is a movie reference. Can you name it?)

13th sentence of the 13th book

"Mardou Fox" (real-life Alene Lee)

The 13th book on my Kerouac bookshelf is Jack Kerouac's The Subterraneans (Grove Press, 1958), and the 13th sentence (in honor of today being the 13th day of the month) is:

"And what for you want all those people?"

Admittedly, I followed a strict sentence-counting practice to arrive at the above as the 13th sentence. That is, I counted a phrase as a sentence if it ended with either an em dash or a period/question mark and the next word was capitalized. I counted "'Mardou?'" as a sentence for that reason, and perhaps shouldn't have, but applying precise rules to the mystics of numerology makes a certain weird sense to me. I suspect if I run all 31 sentences together at the end it will read eerily coherent. And as I stated at the outset, 23/23/23 should be especially meaningful.

Once again, today's sentence makes little sense without context, which should be an impetus for you to re-read (or heaven forbid, read) The Subterraneans.

Happy Birthday to Jack Kerouac (and a free book giveaway) UPDATED

In honor of Jack Kerouac's birthday today, March 12, we are featuring another free book giveaway. Be the first person to send an e-mail to thebeathandbook@gmail.com with the subject line FREE BOOK and your snail mail address in the body of the e-mail and . . . you win a free signed copy of my book, The Beat Handbook: 100 Days of Kerouactions. I will not be considering comments to this post as entries in the free giveway -- only e-mails to the above e-mail address will be in the running. Let's see who's paying attention.

*******NOTE: As of 10:40 AM on 3-12-19, we have a winner. Fastest in history.*******

Jack would have been 97 years old today. I wish someone with the skill and the software would take a youthful picture like the above and age it so we could see what Jack may have looked like as an older man. Maybe not 97 -- I'd take 65 as an interesting age.

Anyway, Happy Birthday to Jack Kerouac, my literary hero and writing muse.

12th sentence of the 12th book

The 12th book on my Kerouac bookshelf is another copy of Jack Kerouac's Maggie Cassidy (Panther, 1960), and the 12th sentence (in honor of today being the 12th day of the month) is:

They were walking under immense beautiful dark-limbed trees of black winter, dark arms twisted and sinuous from sidewalk up; they overtopped the road, Riverside Street, in a solid roof for several blocks past phantasmal old homes with huge porches and Christmas lights buried deep in; real estate relics of when to be on the river meant and called for expensive building. (p. 6)

What a sentence! Can't you just picture that street?



Tomorrow = a favorite Kerouac book of Richard's.

  

11th sentence of the 11th book

The 11th book on my Kerouac bookshelf is Jack Kerouac's Maggie Cassidy (Avon Book Division, 1959), and the 11th sentence (in honor of today being the 11th day of the month) is:

They hung on him for dear life, twitching to see each new joke he might choose next in his role as King's Comedian. (p. 8)

As with all sentences in this project, you need context to understand it. That context can be established by getting a copy of the book and reading. Tempting you to do that (i.e., read Kerouac) is, of course, a subversive and implicit goal of this exercise.

Happy reading . . . .

10th sentence of the 10th book

The 10th book on my Kerouac bookshelf is Jack Kerouac's Lonesome Traveler (Grove Weidenfeld, 1989), and the 10th sentence (in honor of today being the 10th day of the month) is:

More reasons than one for the meeting in Pedro--he'd sent a gun ahead inside of a book which he'd carefully cut and hollowed out and made into a tight neat package covered with brown paper and tied with string, addressed to a girl in Hollywood, Helen something, with address which he gave me, "Now Kerouac when you get to Hollywood you go immediately to Helen's and ask her for that package I sent her, then you carefully open it in your hotel room and there's the gun and it's loaded so be careful dont [sic] shoot your finger off, then you put it in your pocket, do you hear me Kerouac, has it gotten into your heskefuffle frantic imagination--but now you've got a little errand to do for me, for your boy Denny Blue, remember we went to school together, we thought up ways to survive together to scrounge for pennies we were even cops together we even married the same woman," (cough) "I mean,--we both wanted the same woman, Kerouac, it's up to you now to help defend me against the evil of Matthew Peters, you bring that gun with you" poking me and emphatically pronouncing each word "and bring it on you and dont [sic] get caught and dont [sic] miss the boat whatever you do." (p. 4)

That's not the longest sentence Jack ever wrote, but like the song says, it sure is long.

9th sentence of the 9th book

Big Sur

The 9th book on my Kerouac bookshelf is Jack Kerouac's Big Sur (Penguin Books, 1981), and the 9th sentence* (in honor of today being the 9th day of the month) is:

Drunken visitors puking in my study, stealing books and even pencils.

Oh, the price of celebrity.


* Given Jack eschewing the use of periods in Chapter 1, I chose to use em dashes as end-of-sentence punctuation for the purpose of counting sentences.

925,000 pageviews!

I know it's a drop in the bucket compared to other blogs, but The Daily Beat just topped 925,000 all-time pageviews (since we began tracking them in May 2010).

Other stats of note:

Pageviews today = 301
Pageviews yesterday = 842
Pageviews last month = 10,609


At that rate we could be looking at topping a million pageviews sometime in the fall, at which time we will at the very least be giving away a free book.

Speaking of which, stay tuned for our post on Jack's birthday next week. There could be a free book in the offing . . . .

8th sentence of the 8th book

The 8th book on my Kerouac bookshelf is yet another copy of Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums (Signet, 1959), and the 8th sentence (in honor of today being the 8th day of the month) is:

"Will you watch my pack while I run over there and get a bottle of wine?" (p. 6)

This is reflective of #15 of the Hobo Ethical Code of 1889, which I've written about here.

7th sentence of the 7th book

Friedrich Nietzsche

The 7th book on my Kerouac bookshelf is yet another copy of Jack Kerouac's On The Road (Penguin Books, 1999), and the 7th sentence (in honor of today being the 7th day of the month) is:

I was tremendously interested in the letters because they so naïvely and sweetly asked Chad to teach him about Nietzsche and all the wonderful intellectual things that Chad knew. (p. 1)

Chad influenced Dean who influenced Sal (i.e., in real life, Hal Chase influenced Neal Cassady who influenced Jack Kerouac).

Can you name your influencers' influencers?

6th sentence of the 6th book

The 6th book on my Kerouac bookshelf is Jack Kerouac's best book, The Dharma Bums (Penguin Books, 1976), and the 6th sentence (in honor of today being the 6th day of the month) is:

Both the little bum and I, after unsuccessful attempts to huddle on the cold steel in wraparounds, got up and paced back and forth and jumped and flapped arms at each our end of the gon. (p. 4)

FYI, "gon" is short for gondola, the type of train car they were riding. I have always puzzled over the phrase "at each our end of the gon." That seems awkwardly constructed to me, even allowing for Jack's unconventional prose.

5th sentence of the 5th book

The 5th book on my Kerouac bookshelf is Jack Kerouac On The Road: Text and Criticism edited by Scott Donaldson (Penguin Books Ltd, 1979), and the 5th sentence (in honor of today being the 5th day of the month) is:

Dean is the perfect guy for the road because he actually was born on the road, when his parents were passing through Salt Lake City in 1926, in a jalopy, on their way to Los Angeles. (p. 3)

4th sentence of the 4th book

The 4th book on my Kerouac bookshelf is On The Road by Jack Kerouac (Signet Books, 1957), and the 4th sentence (in honor of today being the 4th day of the month) is:

Before that I'd often dreamed of going West to see the country, always vaguely planning and never taking off. (p. 5)

If you're paying attention, you should be thinking that this sentence looks much like yesterday's sentence. And you'd be right. In counting sentences yesterday, I made a judgement that a 3-period ellipsis did not constitute a sentence end. Where that ellipsis stood in the original scroll edition was replaced by a period in the classic edition, making yesterday's 3rd sentence today's 4th sentence. This provides an interesting comparison between sentences, as yesterday's was:

Prior to that I'd always dreamed of going west, seeing the country, always vaguely planning and never specifically taking off and so on. (On The Road: The Original Scroll, Penguin Books, 2007, p. 109)

Obviously, editing happened.

3rd sentence of the 3rd book

The 3rd book on my Kerouac bookshelf is On The Road: The Original Scroll by Jack Kerouac (Penguin Books, 2007), and the 3rd sentence (in honor of today being the 3rd day of the month) is:

Prior to that I'd always dreamed of going west, seeing the country, always vaguely planning and never specifically taking off and so on. (p. 109)

Two points. First, I am treating the two phrases around the 3-period ellipsis at the beginning of the first paragraph as one sentence, since proper grammar would indicate that if one wanted a full stop between two sentences there would be 4 periods. Kerouac's use of punctuation will continue to stymie us throughout this project, I fear. Second, this is not the 3rd sentence in the entire book -- as I said at the outset of this project (yesterday) I am not counting prefatory material and will focus on the authorial content (in this case, Kerouac's scroll edition of On The Road).

Today we begin anew: 2nd sentence of the 2nd book

Happy March, everyone.

In order to have something to write about here on The Daily Beat, given that we've posted something related to Jack Kerouac over 1,660 times since 2008, I look for "projects." To me a project is something that has a beginning, an ending, and some coherent structure in between. So far in the recent past we have undertaken several projects. One was to curate all the items on my Kerouac bookshelf. Another was to summarize The Dharma Bums one chapter at a time in one sentence. There were others. I'll leave it to you to visit the blog archives and figure out what I am talking about.

My latest project idea is related to the day of the month. I intend to find the book on my Kerouac bookshelf that correlates with the date, find the correlative sentence in that book, and then post it. To wit, today I am posting the 2nd sentence from the second book on my shelf. Tomorrow -- if I post -- I will post the 3rd sentence from the 3rd book on my bookshelf. Given that I may take days off, I will come back around to any dates I miss so that by the end of the project we will have 31 entries -- the number of days in March, the month in which I began. To be clear, I will be posting the relevant sentence from the book's actual authorial content, not prefatory matter like introductions of novels, etc. If it's a poem, I will have to make an editorial decision about what constitutes the relevant sentence (maybe the relevant line, or relevant stanza).

This won't take much brain power, but I will have to be able to count to 31 eventually, and at my advanced age that is an accomplishment. I don't intend to comment on excerpts, but may on occasion add my two cents.

Why, you ask, am I focusing on the date so? Because it is a number, and numbers mean things. I can't wait to get to the 23rd sentence of the 23rd book. That will be mystical!

Without further ado, since it is March 2nd (I'll have to catch March 1st later), below is the 2nd sentence from the 2nd book on my Kerouac bookshelf. The book is Atop an Underwood: Early Stories and Other Writings by Jack Kerouac (Penguin Books, 1999).

Shortly before my birth my father had begun a small theatrical publication known as the "Spotlight Print," a unique weekly filled with news, comments, anecdotes, editorials, and advertisements dealing with the theatre [sic] and cinema of the time around Lowell and Boston. (p. 3)