You Can't Look 'Beat' And Neat At The Same Time...

Beatniks against a Sanforized society. 1963

I Just Dropped By To Say Hello / Jack Kerouac On Facebook

...........................................the what? I dunno. Oh, hello. Who are you? You're a friend? Are you? 

He had over 1,000 Facebook friends.........................................he'd even met three of them - in the flesh!

............................

"The only people for me are the Facebook ones, the ones who are mad to share pictures of cats, mad to talk nonsense, mad to be on Facebook, desirous of 'likes', the ones who never say a meaningful thing, but 'like', 'like', 'like' like fabulous virtual friends exploding like spiders across the internet." - Jack Kerouac....if he was alive today.......................................................................?

I just dropped by to say "Hello", to myself. It's good to talk, to yourself. You get to understand what you're thinking..............sometimes. Sometimes you don't. Understand, that is. Sometimes the person in your head is telling you something you really do not understand...................you wonder what they're going on about.......you wish they'd be quiet, but they never are. They sing you songs you don't want to hear. They tell you truths you don't want to hear. They tell you to do things that are good for you but you ignore them. Sometimes you ignore the bad things they tell you to do too........................

..........................who is that in the mirror................................................................................?

I'll start again.

Hello.

I have nothing to say.

Except to ask......................

...........................................Is this not one of the greatest songs ever written, sung by one of the greatest ballad singers?

'Nothing special that I want to say,

I just came to pass the time of day.
I've told my heart it mustn't show,
I just dropped by to say hello.'

Well don't let me bore you any more...

Webern Boulez Bladder Scenario

It's not often you'll see Pierre Boulez and Anton Webern's names in the same sentence as 'Bladder', but that's the kind of crazy place this is. Ha-ha. Truth is I wouldn't have this box set if my bladder hadn't been fit to burst.

I'd got off the bus in Kentish Town yesterday morning and had the tough choice of walking home whilst desperate for a pee or going to the café, where I could use their toilet. I'd had one coffee already, although I do occasionally unleash the hedonist within and indulge in two whilst foraging for kulture in town. I already had a bag full of books but going to the café would mean absolutely having to check out the charity shops nearby. Decisions, decisions...it's not easy being me...in Kentish Town...having spent a fair bit already but faced with more shops...

So I went to the café, where I like to sit watching the dregs of society hobble past (not that I feel superior, of course, but look at the state of her! And why do slobs insist on walking around in tracksuit bottoms?!). One mad man did go by, alerting me to his presence by barking unfathomable words at the top of his voice, thus interrupting the creative flow pouring onto the notepad on the table before me...such lines as: 'Ought to really get LJ to cut my hair tonight', and 'Why am I writing? I have nothing to say' - oh yes, Kerouac's got nothing on me when it comes to spontaneous prose, I tell you....

So of course I went into the charity shop and having looked at the books then went to the vinyl in a fit of optimism because there's never anything there but utter shite and I do wonder if those bastards who share rare electronic music claiming to have done so from albums they found for $2 are just winding us all up because I've never, ever found anything that good for that kind of price. Well, I've found things like this, but they're hardly essential listening, you'll be surprised to learn.

But there sat Webern's Complete Works Opp 1-31 conducted by Pierre Boulez. The sleeve notes state that it's Volume One, but another was never released. I wonder why...it couldn't have been because this box set didn't reach sales expectations, surely. Wasn't the world clammering for Webern records in 1978? No?

The cover clinched it, of course. I mean, look at it - Kandinsky's 'The Black Circle' (1923). Did the Columbia people choose it because that black circle looks like the kind people always used to gain so much pleasure from on their hi-fidelity stereos? I wonder. Was Kandinsky thinking of the 10-inch record in relation to the modernist world and all that Jazz? I dunno.

Oh, and more than that, or at least equal to that, was the price tag. £1.49. Yes, £1.49. The records had to be in a terrible condition for that price, surely, but as soon as I tried to pull one from it's sleeve and felt that gentle resistance immaculate vinyl puts up, as if trying not to be spoilt, I knew I was onto a winner - all pristine, every one of the four discs. A Cliff Richard album would be priced more highly, but then, they've more chance of selling that, presumably. Who wants a box set like this? A man with a comfortably empty bladder, and only slightly emptier pockets, thank you.

Oh, and by the way, Boulez's recording's of Webern were No.1 in The Wire's "100 Most Important Records Ever Made" back in '92.

Smith-Corona Christmas Ad 1967

Smith-Corona didn't kill off pencil (why not pen?) and paper...computers did that. But the portable electric probably helped nudge nations towards being unable to write by hand. I know how liberated I felt buying my first typewriter (manual), then the electric, which really made me feel like my fingers could keep up with my thoughts. I soon realised that my fingers were capable of moving faster than my thoughts, actually, although for a few months I pretended to be Kerouac on speed and henceforth typed all letters, as well as poems and terrible not-even-half-finished novels about neo-Beats in London on the dole listening to Jazz...kind of autobiographical, you might say.... 

The In and Out Book - Robert Benton & Harvey Schmidt (Viking Press 1959)

In/Out, Up/Down, Bless/Blast, Hip/Square...such lists have long graced magazines as largely ironic signifiers of social trends. This tongue-in-cheek (what else could it be?) book captures the spirit of '59 in the USA, by which time the Beat Generation was 'OUT', as was seeing Kerouac in public. Aside from the content, I love the wonderfully stressed cover. 

Jack Kerouac On Jazz - Last Words & Other Writings (Zeta Press 1985)

Rummaging through my books I came across this Zeta Press booklet, which I bought from Compendium, the best bookshop in London then. It's going for silly money now, but I've no idea how many of these essays are available in other forms. 

The Holy Barbarians - Lawrence Lipton (Four Square Paperback 1962)

I featured the hardback here, which is far superior, but seeing this I couldn't resist it, especially at £1.49. The good thing about this beat-en up copy is that it looks like it might have travelled in the back pocket of an aspiring British beat circa '62 as he waved bye-bye to mummy and daddy with just a duffle coat to sleep in whilst dreaming of being Jack Kerouac but after five days looked homeward because it rained too much and motorway caffs just don't have the glamour of diners and there were no big rolling trains to jump into or Jazz joints to discover. I was going to hit The Road once but got as far as the door when Mum said 'D'you want a cuppa tea before you go?', and I did. And that was the end of that.

 

Miscellany: Illustration, Miles, Buddy Rich, Machine Brain, Improvised Writing

Here's a lovely illustration of finches:

Here's Buddy Rich smoking a pipe whilst playing drums. Perfect Playboy music...

Incongruous Yamaha product placement tie-in with Roman Polanski's 'Rosemary's Baby':

Playboy July 1968

The clocks having just been turned back here in the UK, I marvel at the computer's ability to do so automatically. I think it knows a lot more than I give it credit for. It probably knows a lot more than I do. It knows about many things, except my life story, and my thoughts, which are deeply personal and sacred... unless I put them all into the computer and into the public domain. People do this. They feed the machine. Perhaps one day the thoughts people feed into the machine will be used against us all...the machine is learning from us...learning how smart, stupid, frail, creative, strong and boring we can all be. One day it may start to sing 'Daisy, Daisy give me your answer do...'...

The art of improvising in music is best illustrated by America's great Jazz musicians, as you know, although I recently had a little online debate about their qualities compared to those of UK exponents, and whilst comparisons in competitive form are somewhat stupid, it lasted a while, and at the end of it neither of us had changed our opinion, as is so often the way in debates. My friend suggested that the works of Nucleus were equal to what Miles Davis was doing around the same time, to which I responded: 'Rubbish!', without saying 'Rubbish!'. But it is rubbish, because for all the admirable efforts of UK Jazz Fusioneers they did not produce anything like the genius of 'In A Silent Way', or the 'Jack Johnson' sessions...or the music that can be heard on several 'live' albums made by Miles back then. No-one will ever convince me otherwise.

I was going improvise on this keyboard but got distracted by having to make a coffee, then clean part of the kitchen floor 'cause it was filthy and by the time I'd say back down the desire to do that had subsided - then I thought I'd write about not improvising, and how I'd love to be the writing equivalent of Charlie Parker, which, contrary to popular opinion, would not make me another Kerouac because Kerouac was more like Sonny Rollins in his later years, ie, improvising at length, don't you think? Whereas an improvised poem, brief, would be more in tune with Bop - and perhaps Lester Bangs fancied himself as an improviser, and no doubt was, more in the mould of late-Coltrane, Sanders etc...now I'm thinking that all writing is improvising to start with, but the parts that musicians cannot leave out are what get edited out by either editors or the writers themselves, which you could call 'mistakes', or meanderings, or longueurs if they prove 'boring', that being a subjective term, of course, because I don't know about you but I like the fact that blogging is a form of freedom of expression without an editor interfering unless the writer's internal editor gets to work and that, they say of novels, is very necessary in the end, and I agree to a point, but only a point, which depends on the writers attitude, philosophy, intent since, I do believe, that some of the most interesting parts of anyone's writing, should they be allowed to remain, are those free-range passages. Too much writing is the equivalent of factory farming.

I Was Thinking...

I was thinking this morning. It was quite a strain I can tell you because, let’s be honest, it requires some effort and you rarely get any reward, well I don’t anyway. It often leads to confusion rather than the kind of clarity one may hope for, which in turn might lead to action, perhaps, or at least an arrival at a decision.
   I should have thought more before I began writing this. I should have made notes and formulated a tightly-controlled theme that could be expressed concisely, perhaps. But then, I love Jazz and, in the back of the box where Thinking takes place there’s a small voice which persists in encouraging me to try and ape my improvisational heroes in word form. Most of the time I do that unconsciously because I’ve found over the years that to be too self-conscious can lead to the immobilisation of all faculties. Sometimes it doesn’t pay to think too much.
   Incoherent, rambling manifestation of continually evolving thought can, however, have a lot more going for them than finely-tuned writing. For starters, they express the reality (or something akin to it) of what’s going on in the writer’s head. This, I know, cannot be allowed in professional publications. There is an editor whose job it is to curtail such tendencies, or simply reshape the mess into something publishable. And many (most?) folk don’t want to read the workings of a mind. As Martin Amis once said, when quoting his father, I believe, readers of novels like the author to be in control of what he’s doing just as they do the captain of an airplane. I’m paraphrasing, by the way.
   Back when I thought more about Henry Miller than I do now I used to love the way he appeared to improvise on themes. To others, he needed a good editor. The most obvious example might be Jack Kerouac, who took great pride in the ‘First thought, best thought’ idea and the results are there for all to marvel at, or reject. I marvel, mostly, or used to, when I read him, which I no longer do. I no longer read Miller either. Both were big in my life at one point, and partly shaped the way I approached writing, despite the fact that I neither lead a wild Beat life of late-night bongo-playing, poetry-reading, and drug-fuelled chin music, nor live in Paris (or Big Sur) and publish novels containing raw expressions of sexuality mixed with philosophical musings of Life and Art.
   I live a quite life; a fairly ordinary life, you might say. And common advice to writers is ‘Write what you know about’, but I’m not sure about the wisdom of that, considering how many of us lead very ordinary lives. Perhaps this explains the amount of dull novels on the racks. It’s quite possible, however, to write about an ordinary life in an extraordinary way, I suppose. But that is not the kind of literature I wish to read.
   In another life I’d be off across Europe having adventures, meeting interesting women, have affairs with them. And men, dangerous men who get me embroiled in life-threatening situations, and taking loads of drugs, perhaps, and making loads of money then blowing it all at a casino – whilst taking notes that would lead to an action-packed yet philosophical, true-to-my-life novel.
   Oh well, here I am, writing this...

Everything is OK!

The title of this post sounds like it belongs to a self-help book...and it probably does...as in ‘I’m OK, You’re OK’...or ‘OK, I’m Stupid, So What?’, and the one that’s yet to be written, ‘OK, So The World’s Ending’, which someone will publish when we hear of the giant meteor heading unstoppably towards Earth. That or it will be the last best-seller ever before civilisation as we know it comes to an end due to an ecological catastrophe. OK. So what.

   Right now everything is only OK. I’m reading Charles Portis’s ‘True Grit’ as prep for the film (which I suspect will be OK), but it’s only OK, mainly because for some bizarre reason he refuses to condense any word spoken, and so supposedly raw characters like Rooster Cogburn only ever says ‘I will’ and ‘It is’ or ‘That is’. You get the idea. This refusal to create naturalistic speech started to annoy me after a while. A man like that, like most common men or women would be saying ‘I’ll’, ‘It’s’, and ‘That’s’ all the time. Perhaps that is just me being picky but I am not happy and I do not suppose I will finish the book anytime soon, and that is a fact. Huh. That’s OK, I’ve started Neil Coombs’ ‘Dark Windows’ (subtitled ‘or the death of Godard’, and because of that I could not resist it) – and since you hang on my every word regarding literature, I shall be posting a full, detailed, insightful review, or maybe I won’t...and if I don’t, that’ll be OK.

   A still from the ‘On The Road’ film appeared in The Guardian on Saturday. I looked at it in disbelief. Could they have got it so wrong? Look for yourself and tell me you have great hopes for the venture.

   It seems they’ve made it as a teen movie...for American teenagers today. Because it’s impossible to shoot a film about youths of the 40s without thinking it has to really be about kids today, isn’t it? Otherwise, how will they relate? More to the point, why would they bother going to see it? Kerouac’s book still has a large fan base amongst The Kids today, but not enough to justify the budget, I presume.

   The only aspect of this that interests me is how well Viggo Mortensen is going to play ‘Old Bull Lee’. Peter Weller in ‘Naked Lunch’ did a good job, capturing the essence of Burroughs without trying to impersonate him.

   How will they deal with all the drug-taking without appearing to – shock! – promote drugs? And Cassady was a notoriously wild driver. So, potentially, it could have ended up as a film extolling the joys and kicks of driving like a maniac whilst high on Benzedrine. This seems unlikely. The funniest part of what could unintentionally be a hilariously bad film could be when they encounter jazz, which is, as you know, crucial to driving the attitude and process of Kerouac’s spontaneous bop prose. If I could bare to part with the money I’d like to see these two try to be convincing in their adulation for Be-bop. As part of their research, I like to think the director filled them with Benzedrine and locked them in a room with Charlie Parker’s music blasting out for a couple of hours. I doubt that this happened.

   In OK! Magazine (where else?) Garrett Hedlund, who plays Dean Moriarty, says: ‘Improv was highly welcomed, to make scenes flow and have a rhythm. We had the freedom to fly.’ Wow. I bet they had a ball. And I’m sure this free-wheeling improvisational attitude created screen magic that will be the acting equivalent of a Charlie Parker solo. Yes, sir. If not, that’s OK.

Playboy, January 1965

Only in Hefner’s universe would Harold Pinter and pin-ups collide as they do in the January 1965 issue. Here, the playboy may contemplate not only the delightful curves of Miss January, but also the cultural allure of Kerouac, Nabokov, Wodehouse, Southern and Bradbury. Yes, Penthouse Man could not survive on carnal pleasure and fast cars alone, apparently. Between playing chess and seducing beautiful women after a hard day on Madison Avenue he was reading quality literature.  

Here comes the obligatory beatnik joke...text by Peter Ustinov.

Below are suggested Christmas presents...what man wouldn't be happy to receive a Dunhill book bar?

 

Miss January has a go at some 'dabstract' art...

To prove that the playboy is not politically unaware or inherently right-wing...



How My Mind Wandered...

Tired of music I opt for what I’m tempted to call ‘silence’ whilst knowing that there will not be total silence. Despite being situated in London there is, however, a wonderful absence of noise. Right now, the main soundtrack is the light patter of rain falling on leaves in the front garden, the low hum of the computer, and the inevitable passing car now and again...the high whine of a cutting instrument from the workmen at the house to our right...what sounds like a lorry passes the junction at the bottom of the road...
   ...my mind wanders, recalling the time, three mornings ago, when I sat outside a cafe in Marylebone...it was cold, and it rained, and I felt like an actor, wondering who was directing the film I was in...and what my role was...an assassin for Melville, perhaps...or a criminal on the run for JLG, with Anna K in tow...
   ...and as I fantasised a middle-aged man in a dark blue raincoat opened the door of the Merc parked just to the right, threw a bag on the front seat and returned to the building next door...he was being directed by Chabrol, although he did not know it...his wife was cheating on him...and when he returned to drive away, pulling a fast turn in the road, he was going to kill his wife’s lover...
   ...I left the cafe to walk through Paddington Street gardens where a row of wooden park benches were occupied only by brown fallen leaves from the planes trees...
   ...that was Wednesday...
   ...and Thursday? I find it hard to recall anything of note, least of all what I may have imagined because unless they’re written down these imaginings will, like dreams, disappear...yet I am not a compulsive note-taker...I am not a novelist...which reminds me of the interview with Paul Auster on TV last night and the way they spoke about The Author and his job, his role, and such pompous, self-important bullshit, the kind of thing I would have fallen for years ago, back when I too saw novelists as a special breed with important work to contribute to society...
   ...now a quote from Paul Weller comes to mind, simply because I had given it some thought with a view to writing about it the other day. He said, having chosen ‘Milestones’ as his favourite Miles Davis album: 'It’s so controlled and it’s not any of that ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ bollocks that a lot of the jazzers do’...what an idiot, that was my initial response before correcting myself and acknowledging that anyone is free to make stupid statements about Jazz, should they choose...I should know, I wrote a book of them...(he says, self-effacingly)...but Paul, are you really dismissing a school of Jazz and if so, which do you have in mind? Be-Bop, with its rapid reworking of standards along with quick-fire improvisation? Are you dismissing the school in which Miles was tutored? Are you saying that only a certain type of playing is acceptable, and that the rest is ‘bullshit?’ OK, I concede that you are allowed an opinion, even that opinion, because I know that many pick just a few fruits from the vast orchard of Jazz...those that are to their liking...and I am not about to get high-and-mighty about a failure to appreciate everything, from Trad to Improv...no sir...
   ...I pause, look back at what I’ve written, and stop reading before coming to this point for fear of disappointment, dissatisfaction...in the spirit, perhaps, of Kerouac’s supposed philosophy of first thought best thought and to hell with editing, even though, I believe, this was not always adhered to...
   ...make a fresh coffee...
   ...when I return I note a bracketed ‘1’ in the Facebook tab, take a look and find that somebody ‘likes’ a link I posted...which naturally gives me a small sense of satisfaction...I also notice that ‘Facebook’ is in the Word programme’s dictionary, but I can’t remember if I added it or not...it wouldn’t surprise me if Microsoft had written the social network into their dictionary...it certainly isn’t in the Collins English book variety which sits on my desk because it was published in 1979, and the message written on an inner page testifies that it was given to me for Christmas, 1980 by the parents of my then girlfriend...did they think my vocabulary needed expanding? Perhaps, although dating their daughter for three-and-a-half years did allow for a reasonably communicative relationship to build...
   ...30 years...christ...we would split up that year...my last memory of her father being him opening the door in his pyjamas because I was stupid enough to knock on it too early in the morning having spent the night trying to sleep in a telephone box just down the road...not to be near her, but because I was stranded after a disco I had attended, perhaps in the hope of finding someone new...who knows, who can remember motives that are 30 years old? And of course, like all of us who have lived long enough, I wonder where past lovers are and what they are doing...is she on Facebook, and if so, would I even want to get in touch with her? It’s so difficult, is it not, to rekindle what went out years ago...
   ...now I become too conscious of what I’m writing, wary of straying into the personal because...because I do not wish to reveal too much...there are plenty of blogs out there in which writers expose themselves fully...the blog as psychiatric couch...the internet as provider of all the answers one could think to ask...with so many voices joining in the babble, willing to supply answers to anything from how to change a light bulb to dealing with cancer...
   ...oh to be able to supply you, dear reader, with the answers to something, anything...as opposed to this, my improvisational meandering...which, I feel, must come to an end...
   ...right...
   ...about...
   ...now...

Hit The Road, Monte (and Kenneth)

Been soaking my eyeballs in America pop culture iconography recently, starting with the bad trip that is ‘Two-Lane Blacktop’ (1971), wherein hippy petrol heads James Taylor and Dennis Wilson hit the road on what feels like an eternal downer. It’s a cult classic – yes – but...isn’t it also a comedown after the previous decade’s high of new-found ideals and cultural revolutionary zeal? Monte makes what happens as exciting or interesting as listening to a marijuana plant grow. But these boys don’t even do drugs (just burgers and Coke – the all-American drug). Warren Oates is the only live-wire as an insecure serial liar sucked into the race, and I found him more interesting (likeable, even) than The Driver and The Mechanic. ‘But it’s all existential’, you might say. Maybe it is, and maybe I’m missing the point. If the point is the pointlessness of going on the road in search of anything, ma-a-n, because, well, you know, there’s nothing to find and no place worth getting to, Hellman delivers. It’s a cynical 70s riposte to Kerouac’s joy and kicks two decades before. If I had produced this, I’d have told Monte: ‘Look, you can contemplate the futility of life for young people now and the nihilistic existential nature of life in a world of shattered dreams but, you know, at least make the car races exciting.’

From cars to bikes and Kenneth Anger’s ‘Scorpio Rising’ (1964) – known as an underground classic, which I’m sure it is. The camera lingers lovingly on the muscle-bound biker boys (of course, this being our Ken) along with the contents of Bruce Byron’s room (thus highlighting the pop culture significance of all its artefacts) – before going on to a biker’s party where the boys (straight boys) lark about acting gay. Then there’s the sacrilegious church scene in which the biker rants (unheard) from the pulpit. There’s a Nazi flag too – what is Anger saying? Religious zealots are no better than political ones? It all plays out to a soundtrack of choice pop tunes, the use of which pre-date every filmmakers use of pop and striking imagery – for that, you must give Anger credit, along with his humorous use of a Hollywood biblical movie cut into all this. Anger was a rebel, for sure, but whether he had a cause or not, I don’t know.

Improv No.1 – Of Bundles Of Bones, Books & Other Things...

On the bus today I looked at the crowds and remembered something I once wrote in a story about how the people were just ‘bundles of flesh and bones wrapped in skin’ – so the character thought to himself as he sat on the top deck of the bus. I was at street level coming home, the bus being a bendy one, the same kind I had journeyed into the West End on this morning where, sat opposite, a man was in his iPod world and, as I always do, I wondered what he was listening to but looking him over (very non-descript) could not guess.
I scored a major victory in the Guess What The Stranger’s Taste In Music Is game a long time ago whilst sitting on a park bench with a girlfriend watching a girl pass by carrying a record bag (remember them?). I suggested Kate Bush and intercepted the girl to find out – correct!
I was impressed with myself, so was the girlfriend. It’s one of my major achievements in life, along with getting this far. Perhaps this makes my life rather...unexceptional – and it could be – but all things being relative, if I compare my life to the kind spent working 6 days-a-week for peanuts to provide barely enough for the family with whom this imaginary person shares a flat in a Hackney tower block where he sits slumped on the sofa every night, too tired to think, or act otherwise, wishing he was anywhere but there living that kind of life...mine doesn’t seem to bad and my achievements not so small...because, I tell myself, I’ve managed to achieve not living that kind of life.
But do we choose a kind of life or does Lady Luck throw the dice for us? I’ll leave that question right there...
On the bus my fiction came back to me as if I was the character...it took over, you might say, because I saw the people as he did, not as I wrote him seeing them...but I should say that the character was probably ‘me’ to begin with, to an extent, except that he was an agent for a secret organisation about to start work on infiltrating the gang that worked on behalf of aliens who had started taking over the minds of the population...something like that.
The story has long since joined all the sheets of paper packed into draws and cupboards which constitutes my Work (finished and unfinished) – my Life’s Work! I fantasise that after I’m Gone it will all be published and pored over by Lit Crits in ‘papers that have realised my genius too late – ha-ha. Forget Bolano...and Nabokov’s unfinished work...what about mine?
So, that will not happen. I was not born to literary greatness. Few are. Few strike me as Great anyway, and what matters other than our own opinion of a novel? Experts may unanimously praise some writers but their opinion is irrelevant if we do not see it ourselves.
I concede, also, that my boundless enthusiasm will not convince the refusenik that fails to hear the brilliance of, say, Charlie Parker. That is the way they listen. The penny may drop later, I sometimes tell myself. But what does it matter?
I console myself in times of doubt regarding the value of my life that I did once write a book about jazz which, according to some correspondents, sparked enthusiasm for certain artists. OK, it’s not on a par with Darwin or even Kerouac, but it’s something...
I joked with the shop assistant in Oxfam the other day that I was making my book-buying decisions based on their size, these days, because I live in a small flat. ‘Oh, why don’t you move house?’ he said with a smile. To which I replied ‘I can’t afford it, I spend all my money in here.’ I handed over three very slim books to prove my point.
I was only half-joking anyway. I truly do not wish to read anything thicker than two centimetres, on average, although I could be deceived by very small font size, in which case I should be stopping at around page 12 instead of the usual 30.
Fiction is such a bore, but as I told someone the other day, I love the thrill of the chase (as I did when desperate for girlfriends in my youth) – but like them, what follows is so often a disappointment.
I should say that the disappointment was no doubt mutual, except for those I ‘ditched’, as we used to say. There have been a few. But I’m not getting into that right here.
I now lord it over all the writers of novels...picking and choosing as I wish and, yes, ‘ditching’ them at will – the power! There’s nothing like slinging a supposed ‘classic’ away is there? ‘Hah!’ We tell ourselves. ‘Is that the best they can do? I demand better! My taste is more refined...and I am master of my own reading matter of nothing else!’ Well, that’s what I would say to myself, if I thought about it.
Authors have a talent (for pleasing publishers, if nothing else)...but when all’s said and done, most are just a bundle of flesh and bones wrapped in skin...

Reading: On The Strange Celestial Road With Sun Ra & Another Road With Jack Kerouac

She said “When’s the last time you finished a book?”

I said “I dunno.”
I didn’t know.
Don’t know.
The question reminded me of a girlfriend who loved the way her books looked (books do furnish a room, as the title of one by Anthony Powell suggested) and kept a few unread ones just because they were impressive titles.
But I don’t keep certain books because of the intellectual clout they'll carry should anyone come into the room.
Few people come into the room.
Fewer people I know are interested in what books are on my shelf.
The less people you know, the less likely it is that you will be asked what a certain book is like; one that sits on your shelf unread.
Relative isolation has its benefits.
The last novel I remember finishing was Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road’. That was...3 years ago (!)
Correction: that was the last novel I remember finishing because it’s the best I’ve read for a long time.
I have finished others but they don’t seem to be on the shelves and so I must have thought them not worthy of keeping because I’d never re-read them.
Now I prefer non-fiction...to browse...read a line, paragraph or chapter.
Here’s my latest non-fiction purchase:

I found it in Oxfam. Didn’t even know it existed.
Here’s a poem from the book:

To The Peoples Of Earth

‘Proper evaluation of words and letters
In their phonetic and associated sense
Can bring the peoples of earth
Into the clear light of Cosmic Wisdom.’

If my words are properly evaluated I doubt that they’ll bring you into the clear light of Cosmic Wisdom. No. But Sonny’s music brings those of us who love it into the clear light of wisdom. We are wise to the fact that he was one of the 20th century’s great artists. Perhaps you are not.
So what.
Towards the back of the book is a list of Sun Ra’s reading.
Now, for a minute, I fantasise that my book is there, between John Eric Sydney Thompson’s ‘Maya Hieroglyphic Writing’ and Peter Tompkins’ ‘Secrets Of The Great Pyramids’.
But of course my book wouldn’t be there - Sonny died 7 years before it was published.
Jack Kerouac died 40 years ago, almost to this day. I sometimes think that he was the last novelist to change me the way authors and their works are supposed to if you take that idea seriously.
If ‘The Road’ impressed me more than any other novel of recent times, ‘On The Road’, back when I was 17, knocked me out. I can honestly say that it did change the way I saw books, the way they could be written and most of all the way they could speak of a cool world and the metaphorical road that was my life, which seemed to stretch out a long way ahead back then.

And having read the book I dreamt of a road paved with interesting poets, and writers. And we’d form a band of outsiders hell-bent on defying the square world, the materialistic world, the world of Mr & Mrs People.
It took me a few more years to travel the ‘railroad’ to a new life in London and get closer to my version of the beat life, the jazz life, the night life of Kerouac’s world. I even got to meet Slim Gaillard, just as Jack did. I considered it a holy connection of some kind.
Well, ‘Old Bull Lee’, as Jack called William Burroughs in the book, turned out to have written novels that would intrigue me for far longer than Jack’s – but none of them changed me the way ‘On The Road’ did back then.