Writing contest

I just sent off an entry, a poem, to a writing contest run by the SFBD Arts & Culture Blog (see details at SFBG LIT123 Contest).

Entries have to be exactly 123 words long - fiction, nonfiction, or poetry - and somehow reflect living in the Bay Area. My entry is a poem about meeting Jack's ghost in City Lights bookstore.

Write a 123-word piece and submit it! What have you got to lose except your inhibitions?

Heavy Kerouac news day

In my on-going efforts to bring you all things Kerouac, I discovered the following news pieces today:

Anne Waldman performs at UNK (We have not paid enough attention to the women beat writers.)

Baraka celebration (Amiri Baraka is another underappreciated beat writer.)

East Village (The East Village is definitely a mecca for Kerouacians.)

Big Sur Festival "09 (I drove through Big Sur in July - didn't know they had a festival there.)

Release of One Fast Move Or I'm Gone (I saw it last year at Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! 2008 and it is awesome!)

The Year Everything Changed: 1959

Here's a review of the book, The Year Everything Changed: 1959, by Fred Kaplan. According to the reviewer, Charles Kaiser, the book contains a particularly good description of the impact of the beat movement.

As usual, I scour the web for beat news so you don't have to!

Enjoy....

Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! 2009

Once again, I am reminding you of the annual Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! event in beautiful Lowell, MA, starting October 1 and running through Sunday October 4. For details, visit LCK! 2009.

If you're a Jack Kerouac fan, a visit to Lowell is highly recommended, and this is the perfect weekend to do it. I'll be leaving a copy of The Beat Handbook on Jack's grave (again) and video-documenting the event for YouTube (click here to see me reading there last year). This year I'll be reading from Dr. Sax, since it's the 50th anniversary of its publication. Plus we'll be participating in the tours, readings, and after hours events.

See you there!

Jack Kerouac was murdered

I've been reading Empty Phantoms: Interviews and Encounters with Jack Kerouac (see sidebar on the right). The last entry I read before falling asleep last night was a piece by Larry Vickers called "Jack Kerouac - End of the Road" from the book by John Montgomery, Kerouac at the 'Wild Boar' and Other Skirmishes. While I'd read this fact many times before (e.g., in bios), it struck me that the beating Kerouac took one night in a St. Petersburg bar preceded his death by only a short time.

The coroner's report said that Kerouac died of "gastrointestinal hemorrhage, due to bleeding gastric varix from cirrhosis of liver, due to excessive ethanol intake over many years." In an interview for Esquire in March 1970, Kerouac told Jack McClintock, "I got a goddamn hernia, you know that? My goddamn belly button is popping out."

If someone beats the shit out of a person who has a predisposition to gastrointestinal hemorrhage and an umbilical hernia, and the person dies soon after the beating - couldn't that be murder?

Makes sense to me. I say we re-open the case. Anyone want to file a complaint with the St. Petersburg police? Murder has no statute of limitations, right? I bet it'd make the news.

P.S. I came up with this theory myself, yet it's not the first time the murder supposition has surfaced. See this article.

Jack Kerouac: Quebecois?

Kerouacians may want to check out this article in The Walrus.

Kerouac in the movies

The new movie, Humpday, references Kerouac (unfortunately). Read about it HERE.