A blog mystery (Caution: Nothing about Kerouac in this post)

Every so often I drill down into my blog statistics just to see if anything jumps out at me. Today I noticed that this post from 2010, "And when I die," is leading pageviews for the day (n=62), week (n=234), and month (n=234). I don't know how many it has received for all time (I don't think Blogger provides that info), but it hasn't cracked the top ten for all time (#10 is at 2,197 pageviews).

I am wondering why all of a sudden a fairly innocuous 2010 post is getting traffic. I have no way to tell - Blogger doesn't show sources by post, only for one's overall blog -- but if I had to guess I would say that some piece of content in that blog is causing it to pop up in Internet searches, and/or someone has linked to that post on social media or a website or blog.

Below are the only things I am guessing might have been the aforementioned content:

Blood, Sweat, & Tears
Laura Nyro
Kate McGarrigle
Bushmills

On-line there are recent newsy items about all four topics, but none that seem significant enough to have spurred searches that landed folks on my post. So, it will remain a mystery unless a bunch of folks who visited that post comment and tell us why. Or, if someone fesses up to linking to that post for some reason.

Mysteries abound, and all we can do is abide them . . . .

Happy Thanksgiving!

Jack Kerouac would be especially happy with the middle pie in this picture (apple). Pies are ready, potatoes are peeled, turkey's in the oven.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

The Big Cage by Robert Lowry

In Jim Christy's The Long Slow Death of Jack Kerouac (curated here), he mentions a 1949 book by Robert Lowry titled, The Big Cage. I blogged about purchasing that book here. FYI, my copy is a paperback second printing from October 1952.

While I'm not curating Lowry's book per se, I did want to mention it again after having read it. Here is what Christy said about The Big Cage:

Not too long after reading On the Road, I discovered the works of Robert Lowry, particularly The Big Cage, in which his autobiographical hero covers much the same territory during the same years as Kerouac's characters. (p. 40) 

In short, The Big Cage is an autobiographical Bildungsroman. Similar to Kerouac in Visions of Gerard, Lowry's central character remembers things from a very early age. In this case, his "baby bunk." And the novel unfolds from there as the protagonist experiences the trials and tribulations of youth and early adulthood, the writing life, women (not that much sex despite the covers implying such), reading, family matters, travel, and so on.

I say "and so on" because there is a lot here to digest (415 pages), but it never once gets so bogged down with details that one wants to stop reading. At least that's how it was for me. Lowry's writing style is very traditional -- not like Kerouac's -- but it gets the job done for a memoir-like novel.

You can find this book on-line at various outlets like Amazon and Abebooks and eBay. Or you could use Bookfinder.com, a useful resource my great friend Richard turned me on to. You probably wouldn't regret the 10 or so bucks you'd need to plunk down to buy it. The cover's worth that.

Jack Kerouac's FBI file redux

My recdent curation project got me thinking about whether Kerouac indeed has an FBI file despite my previous attempts to ascertain that possibility (Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4). Perhaps I used the wrong name for them to search when I requested that info from the FBI before, or perhaps they searched for "Kerouvac" as indicated in the subject line of their response. I don't recall the names I used, but I know I didn't use Jean Louis Kirouac, which could be how they have him identified. This time I used that spelling as well as provided alternative names: Jack Kerouac and John L. Kerouac.

Between the asterisks is the text of my Freedom of Information Act request sent October 27, 2018 (in case you want boilerplate to do your own search for someone's file):

**********************

Federal Bureau of Investigation

Records/Information Dissemination Section

170 Marcel Drive

Winchester, VA 22602-4843

Subject: FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT REQUEST

Dear Sir or Madam:

This is a request for records under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act.

I request all records concerning a deceased individual named Jean Louis Kirouac,
most famously known as Jack Kerouac but also John L. Kerouac.

This individual was born on March 12, 1922 in Lowell, Massachusetts and died on
October 21, 1969 in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Jean Louis Kirouac was the birth certificate name of famous author Jack Kerouac,
who lived in various places in the country including Lowell, MA, New York City,
Florida, and San Francisco.

As proof of death, I enclose a printout of a Wikipedia article.

Please search both your automated indices and the older general (manual)
indices.

Please also search the ELSUR electronic surveillance indices. Please also search
the indices of all Field Offices.

I authorize you to spend up to two hours searching for responsive records, but no more.
This is an individual request for research and study purposes, and I agree that
I will pay up to $30 for fees, if necessary. Please notify me in advance if fees are
expected to exceed that amount. If the file is likely to result in more than 250 pages,
I would appreciate receiving a digital copy of the file on a CD-ROM rather than
in paper form.

.

If you have any questions, please call me at ###-###-####.

Sincerely,

Dr. Richard E. Dale

**********************

Below is page one of letter I received yesterday (dated November 13, 2018). Page 2 is irrelevant (it's the closing). The FBI stated, "We were unable to identify any main file records responsive to your request and; therefore, your request is being administratively closed."

Grammar aside, it looks like the FBI is saying that our buddy Jack has no FBI file. I still find that hard to believe, but I've exhausted my efforts in this regard so we'll leave it at that. I know Allen Ginsberg has one: see http://ginsbergblog.blogspot.com/2015/05/allen-ginsbergs-fbi-files.html. What about William S. Burroughs?

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?

Quoting Jack Kerouac

If you have occasion to quote Jack Kerouac -- or anyone, for that matter -- it is important to make sure of two things:

1. The quoted person actually said or wrote the words.

2. The quoted words are accurately reproduced.

This is easier said than done in the Internet age, as quotes run amok on-line. 

Your safest bet to quote Kerouac and be sure he said or wrote the words (#1 above) is to get your quote directly from one of his published books. You then can rest assured that he wrote them (more or less -- publishers fuck up, too). It helps to cite the book title and copyright date and publisher and page number(s). Then quote away. Even if it doesn't meet #2 above, you can blame it on the source (as long as you reproduced accurately). This includes his published letters, which, again, if it doesn't meet #2, you can blame it on the source. Another option that is less safe is to quote a legitimate secondary source such as one of the many well-regarded biographies. This won't ensure meeting #2, but, once again, you can blame it on the source.

What you should not do is take a quote from Goodreads or any of the many other quotation sources on-line. They are often not cited at all, or correctly cited, and they are often not accurate. That is, they don't meet #1 or #2 above. Note the difficulty in capturing an accurate Kerouac quote that I posted about here.

One exception to this rule seems to be the Jack Kerouac Wikiquote. It seems to meet #1 and #2 and even includes a list of misattributed Kerouac quotes. If you find a mistake on there, fix it. Be part of the solution and not part of the problem.

Still, your best bet is to open a book like On The Road and carefully transcribe your Kerouac quote directly from the source.

And cite your work. For posterity. Please.

Kerouac: Beat Painting

I didn't know there was another book of Kerouac's paintings in addition to Departed Angels: The Lost Paintings by Jack Kerouac (curated here). This is "the catalog of an exhibition mounted, between December 2017 and April 2018, at the MAGA Gallery at Gallarate in northern Italy" according to this article in the Los Angeles Review of Books. The Amazon description (see link below) says that most of the 80 paintings and drawings included here have never before been published, so you may want to get this for your Kerouac bookshelf as a supplement to Departed Angels.

Hopefully, MAGA doesn't stand for an American political slogan. I think it stands for Museo Arte Gallarate, but, if so, why the extra A? Asking for a friend . . . .