Reading Jack Kerouac

My current reading strategy is to always have a Jack Kerouac book going even if I'm diligently reading something else. For example, over the last couple of months, I read Mexico City Blues cover-to-cover. I read at least two poems each day (or night - mostly it was a pre-sleep endeavor). At the same time, I was diligently reading other books. I finished A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin and am a couple of hundred pages into A Storm of Swords. I also read Beat Atlas, The Long Slow Death of Jack Kerouac, and Kerouac in Florida: Where The Road Ends while reading Mexico City Blues.

Now I have started Book of Sketches. Next? Who knows. I still have quite a pile of Kerouac or beat generation books to read for the first time. Perhaps Go by John Clellon Holmes.

March 5: On Reading Out Loud

Today's Kerouaction
Readers of The Beat Handbook* know its premise was that to answer the question "What would Kerouac do?" (which I dubbed a "Kerouaction"), one only needs to look to the actions of the characters in his autobiographical novels. However, The Beat Handbook focused on only The Dharma Bums and On The Road. There are many more Kerouactions looming in his other novels.

For example, I'm reading The Subterraneans. I thought I'd open to a random page and see what Kerouaction I'd find. I found this:

The time we read Faulkner together, I read her Spotted Horses, out loud....

In honor of Jack Kerouac month, read something out loud today, preferably some William Faulkner, preferably from Spotted Horses (which I have not read, although I was a huge Faulkner fan in high school and still remember the short story "Barn Burning" - good luck finding it online - thanks to my excellent English teacher, Brian Stahler), and preferably to your sweetheart.

Reading out loud is a beat thing to do!


*What? You don't own it yet? What's the hold-up?

Report from Lowell Celebrates Kerouac!: Marathon reading of The Dharma Bums

At the Cafe Paradiso on Sunday, starting at 10 AM, Kerouac lovers participated in an oral reading of The Dharma Bums, start to finish. We were there early for breakfast, given that our hotel, The Doubletree, had no electricity and showering was too dangerous in the dark bathroom, not to mention that my car battery was dead when we went out to load up - a result of leaving the interior lights on all night and resulting in a call to AAA and me running back from the Cafe to meet the guy for a jump start. No harm done as I was there for the beginning reader, Ray (from Maine!).


I read Chapter 2.


Crystal read Chapter 3.

I can't remember the name of the young man who read Chapter 4, nor do I have a picture.


Dennis read Chapter 5 (my favorite - about yabyum).


And Jim read Chapter 6 (a lonnnggggg chapter).











At that point we sadly headed back to Maine, to responsibilities and such.