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Posts Tagged “Kerouac”
9/11 Memorial at UMass Lowell
Monument to the University of Massachusetts Lowell community (alumni and family members of alumni) who perished on September 11, 2001: Patrick J Quigley IV, Christopher Zarba ’79, Jessica Leigh Sachs, John A Ogonowski, ’72, Robert J Hayes, ’86, Brian K Kinney, ’95, and Douglas A Gowell, ’71. Photos by Tony Sampas. …
Read More »Did Football Damage Kerouac?, The New Yorker Asks
The New Yorker magazine’s online site has posted a thoughtful article by Ian Sheffler in which the writer examines the possibility that head injuries from his football days may explain some of the health and emotional disorders that plagued author Jack Kerouac as an adult. Read the article here. Jack…
Read More »Talk About ‘Place-Making’
There was some buzz and rattle on the web yesterday when the online appliance of a venerable magazine with a Boston root system, The Atlantic, posted a fizzy report about a made-up episode in the life and times of John L. Kerouac, all of it putting Lowell in the news…
Read More »Will Kerouac Stamp Proposal ‘Stick’ This Time?
Reporter Joel Kost in today’s Sun newspaper puts some gas in the tank of a long-time effort to get the US Postal Service to issue a commemorative stamp in honor of author Jack Kerouac. One of this blog’s loyal readers, Dean Contover, has been leading the stamp charge for about…
Read More »Farewell, Ray Manzarek
Ray Manzarek, one of the giants of 1960s rock and roll, died yesterday at the age of 74. The co-founder of The Doors performed in Lowell once with The Doors, at the Commodore Ballroom in 1967, and twice with poet Michael McClure at the Smith Baker Center for the annual…
Read More »Author Paul Theroux Reports on Lowell Visit for Barron’s Online
Acclaimed author Paul Theroux visited Lowell a few months ago on assignment from Barron’s online journal. The Medford native rode the train to Lowell, retracing his mother’s route to college in the late 1920s. She earned a teaching degree from Lowell Normal School. Theroux spent a day in Lowell, hosted…
Read More »‘Belief and Technique for Modern Prose’ by Kerouac
The website brainpickings.org recently posted on Facebook this list made by Kerouac in the 1950s. The document is titled “Belief and Technique for Modern Prose.” The editor prefaced the list, saying, “With items like ‘No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge’ and ‘Accept loss…
Read More »Poet Gary Snyder Turns 83
Gary Snyder portrait (web photo courtesy of seapoetry.wordpress) One of my early poetry heroes was Gary Snyder, who turned 83 this month. Not only was I drawn to Snyder’s concise and precise back-country poems of the 1960s and ’70s, but I was also in tune to his thoughts about repairing…
Read More »‘Visions of Gerard’ at the Old Court
More than 30 earnest readers of Jack Kerouac books gathered tonight upstairs at The Old Court Irish pub at Middle and Central streets to listen to a reading of excerpts (start to end) of Kerouac’s novel “Visions of Gerard.” The story is a bleak and sweetly candid remembrance of his…
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