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Spurred by our Texas friend Frank Wagner’s essay about meeting Patti Smith in the late 1970s, an encounter with a cranky, thirty-something, tightly wound artist, we’re reprising this review-essay about Patti Smith’s most recent book, Year of the Monkey, just out in paperback. Note that former Lowell Sun journalists Nancye…
Read More »The Kerouac Book River “The Kerouac Book River is inspired by the legendary Merrimack and Concord rivers, which run through the author’s hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts. At the “source” of the river is the canon of first editions, beginning in 1950 with The Town and the City. Plentiful waters stir to…
Read More »Raymond Mungo is a writer whose books should be more familiar than they are to readers in the Merrimack Valley. He has lived in Southern California for many years, but he was born in Lawrence and graduated from Boston University, where he gained national attention as the politically radical editor…
Read More »I happened to be at the Kerouac Commemorative public artwork in Kerouac Park at Bridge and French streets yesterday, Jack’s Death Day, where I stopped while guiding a group of 17 arts administration master’s program students from Boston University around Lowell’s historic and cultural district. The flawless blue sky played…
Read More »The annual Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! literary festival is coming up, October 5-9. Here’s the schedule of events. My writing colleague from Somerville, Mass., Doug Holder, sent us this poem by his fellow faculty member at Endicott College, Dan Sklar, who teaches creative writing. Dan’s latest book, Flying Cats, Actually Swooping, was published…
Read More »Here’s the Mass Moments for today. Kerouac is writing “The Town and the City” in 1948, which would be his first published novel (1950).
Read More »Carrying a Torch for ‘Ti Jean’ We were talking about Bob Dylan getting the Nobel Prize for Literature last week and ole Jack Kerouac having received nothing in his life by way of awards and prizes, and so my friend and I went to the famous gravesite in Edson Cemetery…
Read More »Today’s Nobel Prize-winner Bob Dylan in Lowell in November, 1975, is seen below with fellow poet Allen Ginsberg at the Edson Cemetery grave of Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), whose writings influenced the young Dylan. Bob Dylan brought his Rolling Thunder Revue to Lowell in tribute to Kerouac and performed with his…
Read More »There’s a major museum exhibition in Paris about the Beat Generation writers this summer. Geoff Dyer, one of the best writers working today, has a piece about the show in The Spectator in England. He gives Jack Kerouac high marks for literary achievement but minces no words about the author…
Read More »Ammiel Alcalay Queens College and The Graduate Center, CUNY “‘Follow the Person’ / Out of the Schools & Into the Archives” Tuesday, March 8th at 3:30pm in Allen House UMass Lowell South Campus Please join the UMass Lowell Kerouac Center and Ammiel Alcalay as he discusses Lost & Found: The CUNY…
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