Kerouac at UMass Lowell

10/25/2021

“The Sopranos” star Michael Imperioli will be hosting and executive producing “Kerouac and Me,” an audio project created by bestselling authors Dave Wedge and Casey Sherman. The project, based on Kerouac’s writings, “will see stars of music, film, television, literature, politics, sports and business share in-depth stories of how the writer influenced their work.”

Read the full article to learn more!

EXCLUSIVE: Michael Imperioli is adding his voice to another project. The Sopranos star, who narrates feature prequel The Many Saints of Newark and co-hosts his own Talking Sopranos podcast, is to h…

10/19/2021

Before personal computers existed, 20th century writers were forced to continuously insert new paper into their typewriters as they typed; however, Jack Kerouac found a workaround to this. In 1951, he cut tracing paper into 12-foot sheets and taped them together, allowing him to type without pause, before embarking on a three-week typing binge which resulted in the completion of the first full draft of “On the Road” known as "the scroll"—essentially a 120-foot-long paragraph!

To find out more about Jack Kerouac and current projects, visit www.jackkerouac.org

10/15/2021

www.jackkerouac.org

10/11/2021

While Kerouac was hyped up on coffee as he typed “On the Road,” he was barely awake for the writing of “Book of Dreams.” In the book’s preface, he explains, “ ‘Book of Dreams’ was the easiest book to write—When I woke up from my sleep I just lay there looking at the pictures that were fading slowly like in a movie fadeout into the recesses of my subconscious mind.”

Upon waking, Kerouac would begin transcribing his dream experiences down on paper, still heavy-eyed. He admitted that after his morning coffee, he would often look back critically on what he’d written. It pained his judgmental, conscious mind to see “such naked revelations so insouciantly stated.” However, he ultimately felt that it was important for his dreamy, subconscious mind to “speak for itself in its own form.”

“Book of Dreams” is a prime example of Kerouac’s experimental writing style.

To learn more about Jack Kerouac and current projects, visit www.jackkerouac.org

10/05/2021

In 1956, Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Bookstore risked his own well-being in the name of freedom of expression when he dared to publish Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl: And Other Poems.” The poem’s depiction of drug use and homosexuality clashed with the cultural norms of 1950s America, leading Ferlinghetti to brace for the possibility of prosecution. As he had feared, local police stormed the bookstore in June 1957, arresting the store manager for selling obscenity. Ferlinghetti was in Big Sur during the raid but turned himself in soon later. At trial, respected writers and academics testified in his defense, and ultimately, the judge ruled that “Howl” was not obscene. The trial’s media attention helped to put Beat Generation writers, such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, on the cultural map. City Lights Bookstore is now a historic landmark.

An assistant at the Kerouac archive visited San Francisco this summer and took these photos. Enjoy!

To learn more about Jack Kerouac and current projects, visit www.JackKerouac.org

Photos: The Kerouac Team

09/30/2021

Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! (LCK) is a non-profit organization whose mission is to promote Jack Kerouac’s life and literature with events and tours.

09/27/2021

Ever been to Big Sur? What'd you think?



www.jackkerouac.org

Photo: Max and Dee Bernt (Altered by the Kerouac Team)

09/24/2021

It’s national punctuation day! Kerouac was notorious for clashing with editors who tinkered with his unconventional use of punctuation. While punctuation generally adheres to strict grammatical rules, Kerouac enjoyed bending those rules. For instance, he often used dashes where editors would commonly use commas and colons. To him, the dash better represented the act of taking a breath and gave his writing an organic, improvisational rhythm that resonated with the improvisational style of jazz music. In a 1968 Paris Review interview by Ted Berrigan, Kerouac was asked what it was like working with editors, to which he replied that his editor Malcom Cowley “made endless revisions and inserted thousands of needless commas like, say, “Cheyenne, Wyoming” (why not just say “Cheyenne Wyoming” and let it go at that, for instance).” Kerouac went on to say that all of his editors after Cowley “have had instructions to leave [his] prose exactly as [he] wrote it.”

Photo: John Cohen 1959

To learn more about Jack Kerouac and current projects, visit https://jackkerouac.org

09/21/2021

Jack Kerouac sketched quite a bit. Check out his original conception for an "On the Road" book cover!

To explore over 300 different Kerouac book covers from around the world, check out the "Kerouac Book River," inspired by Lowell's Merrimack River: https://jackkerouac.org/kerouac-book-river/

“I submit this as my idea of an appealing commercial cover expressive of the book," Kerouac wrote.

09/20/2021

http://jackkerouac.org/

09/14/2021

“It’s 4 A.M. in the morning and I am about to try the experiment and I’m scared.”

This line comes from Jack Kerouac’s Nov. 14, 1951 journal entry regarding his exploration of an experimental writing process he called “tranced fixation.” This process seemingly entailed Kerouac nudging himself into a meditative state, where he would then explore his own memories and imagination, unhindered by the nagging presence of analytical thought. In these self-induced trances, he would find material to write about before returning to a more wakeful state, where he would then transcribe his experiences down on paper. The full journal entry can be found in "The Unknown Kerouac."

To learn more about Jack Kerouac and current projects, visit https://jackkerouac.org

Photo: Tom Palumbo circa 1956

09/13/2021

This cover of “On the Road” comes from one of Jack’s personal journals. Jack sketched the trip he embarked on between July and October 1947—an adventure which largely inspired the novel. Interestingly, there was no interstate highway system as we know it when Kerouac took this cross-country hitchhiking trip, making his travels all the more immersive.

Click here to explore over 300 different Kerouac book covers: https://jackkerouac.org/kerouac-book-river/

To find out more about Jack Kerouac and current projects, visit https://jackkerouac.org/