The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired. Central elements of "Beat" culture included experimentation with drugs, alternative forms of sexuality, an interest in Eastern religion, a rejection of materialism, and the idealizing of exuberant, unexpurgated means of expression and being.

Allen Ginsberg's ''Howl'' (1956), William S. Burroughs's ''Naked Lunch'' (1959) and Jack Kerouac's ''On the Road'' (1957) are among the best known examples of Beat literature. Both ''Howl'' and ''Naked Lunch'' were the focus of obscenity trials that ultimately helped to liberalize publishing in the United States. The members of the Beat Generation developed a reputation as new bohemian hedonists, who celebrated non-conformity and spontaneous creativity.

The original "Beat Generation" writers met in New York. Later, the central figures (with the exception of Burroughs) ended up together in San Francisco in the mid-1950s where they met and became friends with figures associated with the San Francisco Renaissance.

In the 1960s, elements of the expanding Beat movement were incorporated into the Hippie counterculture.

Significant Figures, Events, and Elements

Origin of name

Jack Kerouac introduced the phrase "Beat Generation" in 1948 to characterize a perceived underground, anti-conformist youth movement in New York. The name arose in a conversation with writer John Clellon Holmes. The adjective "beat" could colloquially mean "tired" or "beaten down", but Kerouac expanded the meaning to include the connotations "upbeat," "beatific," and the musical association of being "on the beat".

Columbia University

The origins of the Beat Generation can be traced to Columbia University and the meeting of Kerouac, Ginsberg, Lucien Carr, Hal Chase and others. Though the beats are usually regarded as anti-academic, many of their ideas were formed in response to professors like Lionel Trilling and Mark Van Doren. Classmates Carr and Ginsberg discussed the need for a "New Vision" (a term borrowed from Arthur Rimbaud), to counteract what they perceived as their teachers' conservative, formalistic literary ideals.

Burroughs was introduced to the group by an old friend, David Kammerer, who was enamored with Lucien Carr. Carr had befriended freshman Allen Ginsberg and introduced him to Kammerer and Burroughs. Carr also knew Kerouac's girlfriend Edie Parker, through whom Burroughs met Kerouac in 1944.

On August 13, 1944, Carr killed Kammerer with a Boy Scout knife in Riverside Park in what he claimed later was self-defense. He waited, then dumped the body in the Hudson River, later seeking advice from Burroughs, who suggested he turn himself in. He then went to Kerouac, who helped him dispose of the weapon. Carr turned himself in the following morning and later pleaded guilty to manslaughter. Kerouac was charged as an accessory, and Burroughs as a material witness, but neither was prosecuted. Kerouac wrote twice about this incident, once in his first novel, ''The Town and the City'', and again in one of his last, ''Vanity of Duluoz''. As well in a collaboration with Burroughs titled "And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks".

The Times Square "Underworld"

Burroughs had an interest in criminal behavior and got involved in dealing stolen goods and narcotics. He was soon addicted to opiates. Burroughs' guide to the criminal underworld (centered in particular around Times Square) was small-time criminal and drug-addict Herbert Huncke. The Beats were drawn to Huncke, who later started to write himself, perceiving he possessed a vital worldly knowledge unavailable to them from their largely middle-class upbringings.

Ginsberg was arrested in 1949. The police attempted to pull over Ginsberg while he was driving with Huncke, his car filled with stolen items Huncke planned to fence. Ginsberg crashed the car while trying to flee. He escaped on foot, but left incriminating notebooks behind. Ginsberg was given the option to plead insanity to avoid a jail term, and was committed for 90 days to Bellevue Hospital, where he met Carl Solomon.

Carl Solomon was arguably more eccentric than psychotic. A fan of Antonin Artaud, he indulged in self-consciously "crazy" behavior, like throwing potato salad at a college lecturer on Dadaism. Solomon was given shock treatments at Bellevue; this became one of the main themes of Ginsberg's "Howl", which was dedicated to Solomon. Solomon later became the publishing contact who agreed to publish Burroughs' first novel ''Junky'' in 1953.

Neal Cassady

Neal Cassady was introduced to the group in 1947, and had a number of significant effects. Cassady became something of a muse to Ginsberg; they had a romantic affair, and Ginsberg became Cassady's personal writing-tutor. Kerouac's road-trips with Cassady in the late 1940s became the focus of his second novel, ''On the Road''. Cassady's verbal style is one of the sources of the spontaneous, jazz-inspired rapping that later became associated with "beatniks". Cassady impressed the group with the free-flowing style of his letters, and Kerouac cited them as a key influence on his spontaneous prose style.

San Francisco and the Six Gallery reading

Allen Ginsberg had visited Neal and Carolyn Cassady in San Jose in 1954 and moved on to San Francisco in August. He fell in love with Peter Orlovsky at the end of 1954 and began writing ''Howl''. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, of the new City Lights Bookstore started to publish the City Lights Pocket Poets Series in 1955.

Kenneth Rexroth's apartment became a Friday night literary salon (Ginsberg's mentor William Carlos Williams, an old friend of Rexroth's, had given him an introductory letter). When asked by Wally Hedrick to organize the Six Gallery reading, Ginsberg wanted Rexroth to serve as master of ceremonies, in a sense to bridge generations.

Philip Lamantia, Michael McClure, Philip Whalen, Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder read on October 7, 1955 before 100 people (including Kerouac, up from Mexico City). Lamantia read poems of his late friend John Hoffman. At his first public reading Ginsberg performed the just finished first part of ''Howl''. It was a success and the evening led to many more readings by the now locally famous Six Gallery poets.

It was also a marker of the beginning of the Beat movement, since the 1956 publication of ''Howl'' (''City Lights Pocket Poets'', no. 4) and its obscenity-trial in 1957 brought it to nationwide attention.

The Six Gallery reading informs the second chapter of Kerouac's 1958 novel ''The Dharma Bums,'' whose chief protagonist is "Japhy Ryder", Kerouac's roman à clef for Gary Snyder. Kerouac was impressed with Snyder and they were close for a number of years. In the spring of 1955 they lived together in Snyder's Mill Valley cabin. Most Beats were urbanites and they found Snyder almost exotic, with his rural background and wilderness experience, as well as his education in cultural anthropology and Oriental languages. Lawrence Ferlinghetti called him "the Thoreau of the Beat Generation."

As documented in the conclusion of the The Dharma Bums, Snyder moved to Japan in 1955, in large measure in order to intensively practice and study Zen Buddhism. He would spend most of the next 10 years there. Buddhism is one of the primary subjects of ''The Dharma Bums'', and the book undoubtedly helped to popularize Buddhism in the West and remains one of Kerouac's most widely read books.

Women of the Beat Generation

The female contemporaries of Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs were intimately involved in the creation of Beat philosophy and literature, and yet remain markedly absent from the mainstream interpretation of the most important aspects and figures of the movement. Further, the Beat writings of Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs often portray female characters in flat, traditional gender roles most typical of an ideal 1950s American housewife. Rather than offering liberation from social norms, Beat culture actually often marginalized and further culturally repressed American women and, more specifically, many of the female writers of the time period. Although women are less acknowledged in histories of the first Beat Generation, the omission may be due more to the period's sexism than the reality. Joan Vollmer for instance did not write, although she appears as a minor figure in multiple authors' works. She has become legendary as the wife of William S. Burroughs, documented in Kerouac's novels, and killed by Burroughs in a drunken game of William Tell. Corso and Diane Di Prima, among others, insist that there were female Beats, but that it was more difficult for women to get away with a Bohemian existence in that era.

Notable Beat Generation women who have been published include Joyce Johnson; Carolyn Cassady; Hettie Jones; Joanne Kyger; Harriet Sohmers Zwerling; Diane DiPrima; and Ruth Weiss, who also made films. Poet Elise Cowen took her life in 1963. Later, women emerged who claimed to be strongly influenced by the Beats, including Janine Pommy Vega in the 1960s, Patti Smith in the 1970s, and Hedwig Gorski in the 1980s.

Drug use

The original members of the Beat Generation used a number of different drugs, often to excess, including alcohol, marijuana, benzedrine, morphine, and later psychedelic drugs including peyote, yage, and LSD. Much of this usage was "experimental," in that they were often initially unfamiliar with the effects of these drugs. They were inspired by intellectual interest, as well as simple hedonism.

The actual results of this "experimentation" can be difficult to determine. Claims that some of these drugs can enhance creativity, insight or productivity were quite common, as is the belief that the drugs in use were a key influence on the social events of the time (see recreational drug use).

Sexuality

Many of the key Beat Generation figures were homosexual or bisexual, some of them quite openly, including two of the most prominent writers (Ginsberg and Burroughs). Many of them met each other through homosexual social connections, specifically David Kammerer's interest in Lucien Carr.

One of the contentious features of Ginsberg's poem ''Howl'' for authorities were lines about homosexual sex. William Burroughs' ''Naked Lunch'' focuses on drug use, but also contains sexual content. In addition to references to homosexuality, it included explicit descriptions of alternative sexual practices. Both works were prosecuted for obscenity. Victory by the publishers in both cases in effect marked the end of literary censorship in the United States.

In comparison, though considered racy at the time, Kerouac's writings were relatively mild. ''On the Road'' mentions Neal Cassady's bisexuality without comment, while ''Visions of Cody'' confronts it. However, the first novel does show Cassady as frankly promiscuous. Kerouac's novels feature an interracial love affair (''The Subterraneans''), and group sex (''The Dharma Bums'').

Influences

Romanticism

Gregory Corso worshiped Percy Bysshe Shelley as a hero and was buried at the foot of Shelley's Grave in the Protestant Cemetery, Rome. Ginsberg mentions Shelley's ''Adonais'' at the beginning of ''Kaddish,'' and cites it as a major influence on the composition of one of his most important poems. Michael McClure compared Ginsberg's ''Howl'' to Shelley's breakthrough poem ''Queen Mab.''

Ginsberg's most important Romantic influence was William Blake. Blake was the subject of Ginsberg's self-defining auditory hallucination and revelation in 1948. Ginsberg would study Blake all his life. The first time Michael McClure met Ginsberg, they talked about Blake: McClure saw him as a revolutionary; Ginsberg saw him as a prophet. John Keats was also cited as an influence.

Early American sources

Important American inspirations for the Beats included Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville and especially Walt Whitman, who is addressed as the subject of one of Ginsberg's most famous poems ("A Supermarket in Cailfornia"). Edgar Allan Poe is occasionally acknowledged, and Ginsberg claimed Emily Dickinson was an influence on Beat poetry. The novel ''You Can't Win'' by Jack Black had a strong influence on Burroughs.

French Surrealism

Surrealism was still in many ways a vital movement in the 1950s. Carl Solomon introduced the work of Antonin Artaud to Ginsberg, and the poetry of André Breton had direct influence on the poem ''Kaddish.'' Rexroth, Ferlinghetti, John Ashbery and Ron Padgett translated French poetry. Second-generation Beat Ted Joans was named "the only Afro-American Surrealist" by Breton.

Philip Lamantia introduced surrealist poetry to the original Beats. The poetry of Gregory Corso and Bob Kaufman shows the influence of Surrealist poetry with its dream-like images and its random juxtaposition of dissociated images, and this influence can also be seen in more subtle ways in Ginsberg's poetry. As the legend goes, when meeting Marcel Duchamp Ginsberg kissed his shoe and Corso cut off his tie. Other shared Beat interests were Guillaume Apollinaire, Arthur Rimbaud and Charles Baudelaire.

Modernism

Though the Beat aesthetic posited itself against T. S. Eliot's creed of strict objectivity and literary modernism's new classicism, certain modernist poets were major influences on the Beats, including Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams and H.D.. Pound was specifically important to Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg.

William Carlos Williams was an influence on many of the Beats, with his encouragement to speak with an American voice instead of imitating the European poetic voice and European forms. When Williams came to Reed College to give a lecture, then students Snyder, Whalen, and Welch were deeply impressed. Williams was a personal mentor to Allen Ginsberg, both being from Patterson, New Jersey.

Williams published several of Ginsberg's letters to him in his epic poem ''Paterson'' and wrote an introduction to two of Ginsberg's books. And many of the Beats (Ginsberg specifically) helped promote Williams' writing. Ferlinghetti's City Lights published a volume of his poetry.

Gertrude Stein was subject of a book-length study by Lew Welch. Admitted influences for Kerouac include Marcel Proust, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe.

Influences on Western culture

upright|thumb|right|A section devoted to the beat generation at a bookstore in Stockholm, Sweden. While many authors claim to be directly influenced by the Beats, the Beat Generation phenomenon itself has had a pervasive influence on Western culture more broadly.

In 1982, Ginsberg published a summary of "the essential effects" of the Beat Generation:

Spiritual liberation, sexual "revolution" or "liberation," i.e., gay liberation, somewhat catalyzing women's liberation, black liberation, Gray Panther activism.

Liberation of the world from censorship.

Demystification and/or decriminalization of cannabis and other drugs.

The evolution of rhythm and blues into rock and roll as a high art form, as evidenced by the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and other popular musicians influenced in the later fifties and sixties by Beat generation poets' and writers' works.

The spread of ecological consciousness, emphasized early on by Gary Snyder and Michael McClure, the notion of a "Fresh Planet."

Opposition to the military-industrial machine civilization, as emphasized in writings of Burroughs, Huncke, Ginsberg, and Kerouac.

Attention to what Kerouac called (after Spengler) a "second religiousness" developing within an advanced civilization.

Return to an appreciation of idiosyncrasy as against state regimentation.

Respect for land and indigenous peoples and creatures, as proclaimed by Kerouac in his slogan from ''On the Road'': "The Earth is an Indian thing."

Counterculture effects

"Beatniks"

The term "Beatnik" was coined by Herb Caen of the ''San Francisco Chronicle'' on 2 April 1958, a portmanteau on the name of the recent Russian satellite Sputnik and Beat Generation. This suggested that beatniks were (1) "far out of the mainstream of society" and (2) "possibly pro-Communist". Caen's term stuck and became the popular label associated with a new stereotype: the man with a goatee and beret reciting nonsensical poetry and playing bongos, while free-spirited women wearing black leotards dance.

An early example of the "beatnik stereotype" occurred in Vesuvio's (a bar in North Beach) which employed the artist Wally Hedrick to sit in the window dressed in full beard, turtleneck, and sandals, creating improvisational drawings and paintings. By 1958 tourists to San Francisco could take bus tours to view the North Beach Beat scene, prophetically anticipating similar tours of the Haight-Ashbury district ten years later. A variety of other small businesses also sprang up exploiting (and/or satirizing) the new craze. In 1959, Fred McDarrah started a "Rent-a-Beatnik" service in New York, taking out ads in ''The Village Voice'' and sending Ted Joans and friends out on calls to read poetry. "Beatniks" appeared in many cartoons, movies, and TV shows of the time, perhaps the most famous being the character Maynard G. Krebs in ''The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.'' (1959–63)

While some of the original Beats embraced the beatniks, or at least found the parodies humorous (Ginsberg, for example, appreciated the parody in ''Pogo'') others criticized the beatniks as inauthentic posers. Kerouac feared that the spiritual aspect of his message had been lost and that many were using the Beat Generation as an excuse to be senselessly wild.

"Hippies"

During the 1950s, aspects of the Beat movement metamorphosed into The Sixties Counterculture, accompanied by a shift in terminology from "beatnik" to "hippie". Many of the original Beats remained active participants, notably Allen Ginsberg, who became a fixture of the anti-war movement. Notably, however, Jack Kerouac broke with Ginsberg and criticized the 60s protest movements as an excuse to be "spiteful"

There were stylistic differences between beatniks and hippies – somber colors, dark shades, and goatees gave way to colorful psychedelic clothing and long hair. The beats were known for "playing it cool" (keeping a low profile) but the hippies became known for "being cool" (displaying their individuality).

Beyond style, there were changes in substance: the Beats tended to be essentially apolitical, but the hippies became actively engaged with the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement.

Literary legacy

Among the emerging novelists of the 1960s and 1970s, a few were closely connected with Beat writers, most notably Ken Kesey (''One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest''). Though they had no direct connection, other writers considered the Beats to be a major influence, including Thomas Pynchon (''Gravity's Rainbow'') and Tom Robbins (''Even Cowgirls Get the Blues'').

William Burroughs is considered a forefather of postmodern literature; he also inspired the cyberpunk genre.

One-time Beat writer LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka helped initiate the Black Arts movement.

Since there was focus on live performance among the Beats, many Slam poets have claimed to be influenced by the Beats. Saul Williams, for example, cites Allen Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, and Bob Kaufman as major influences.

The Postbeat Poets are direct descendants of the Beat Generation. Their association with or tutelage under Ginsberg at The Naropa University's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and later at Brooklyn College stressed the social-activist legacy of the Beats and created its own body of literature. Known authors are Anne Waldman, Antler (poet), Andy Clausen, David Cope, Eileen Myles, Eliot Katz, Paul Beatty, Sapphire (author), Lesléa Newman, Jim Cohn, Sharon Mesmer, Randy Roark, Josh Smith, David Evans.

Rock and pop music

The Beats had a pervasive influence on rock and roll and popular music, including the Beatles, Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison: the Beatles spelled their name with an "a" partly as a Beat Generation reference, and Lennon was a fan of Jack Kerouac. Ginsberg later met and became friends with members of the Beatles. Paul McCartney played guitar on Ginsberg's album ''Ballad of the Skeletons.''

Ginsberg was close friends with Bob Dylan and toured with him on the Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975. Dylan cites Ginsberg and Kerouac as major influences.

Jim Morrison cites Kerouac as one of his biggest influences, and fellow Doors member Ray Manzarek has said "We wanted to ''be'' beatniks". Michael McClure was also friends with members of The Doors, at one point touring with keyboardist Ray Manzarek.

Ginsberg was friends with Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, a group of which Cassady was a member, which also included members of the Grateful Dead. In the 1970s, Burroughs was friends with Mick Jagger, Lou Reed, and Patti Smith.

British progressive rock band Soft Machine is named after Burroughs' novel ''The Soft Machine.''

Singer-songwriter Tom Waits, a Beat fan, wrote "Jack and Neal" about Kerouac and Cassady, and recorded "On the Road" (a song written by Kerouac after finishing the novel) with Primus. He later collaborated with Burroughs on the theatrical work ''The Black Rider''.

There was a resurgence of interest in the beats among bands in the 1980s. Ginsberg worked with the Clash. Burroughs worked with Sonic Youth, R.E.M., Kurt Cobain, and Ministry, amongst others. Bono of U2 cites Burroughs as a major influence, and Burroughs appeared briefly in a U2 video in 1997. Laurie Anderson featured Burroughs on her 1984 album ''Mister Heartbreak'' and in her 1986 concert film, ''Home of the Brave.'' King Crimson produced the album ''Beat'' inspired by the Beat Generation.

Criticism

Norman Podhoretz, a student at Columbia with Kerouac and Ginsberg, later became a critic of the Beats. His 1958 ''Partisan Review'' article "The Know-Nothing Bohemians," was a vehement critique primarily of Kerouac's ''On the Road'' and ''The Subterraneans,'' as well as Ginsberg's ''Howl''. His central criticism is that the Beat embrace of spontaneity is bound up in an anti-intellectual worship of the "primitive" that can easily turn toward mindlessness and violence. Podhoretz asserted that there was a link between the Beats and criminal delinquents.

Ginsberg responded in a 1958 interview with ''The Village Voice'', specifically addressing the charge that the Beats destroyed "the distinction between life and literature." "The bit about anti-intellectualism is a piece of vanity, we had the same education, went to the same school, you know there are 'Intellectuals' and there are intellectuals. Podhoretz is just out of touch with twentieth-century literature, he's writing for the eighteenth-century mind. We have a personal literature now—Proust, Wolfe, Faulkner, Joyce."

Internal criticism

In a 1974 interview, Gary Snyder comments on the subject of "casualties" of the Beat Generation:

Kerouac was a casualty too. And there were many other casualties that most people have never heard of, but were genuine casualties. Just as, in the 60s, when Allen and I for a period there were almost publicly recommending people to take acid. When I look back on that now I realize there were many casualties, responsibilities to bear.

The Beats comment on the Beat Generation

: "The so-called Beat Generation was a whole bunch of people, of all different nationalities, who came to the conclusion that society sucked." ::- Amiri Baraka

:Three writers do not a generation make. ::- Gregory Corso (sometimes also attributed to Gary Snyder).

:“Beat means to have all the blather knocked out of you by experience, suddenly seeing things as they are. Beat doesn’t mean a broken spirit, on the contrary, it’s scourged of external blather!” :: - Gregory Corso

:"Nobody knows whether we were catalysts or invented something, or just the froth riding on a wave of its own. We were all three, I suppose." ::- Allen Ginsberg

:"John Clellon Holmes... and I were sitting around trying to think up the meaning of the Lost Generation and the subsequent existentialism and I said 'You know John, this is really a beat generation'; and he leapt up and said, 'That's it, that's right!'" ::- Jack Kerouac

:"But yet, but yet, woe, woe unto those who think that the Beat Generation means crime, delinquency, immorality, amorality ... woe unto those who attack it on the grounds that they simply don’t understand history and the yearning of human souls ... woe in fact unto those who make evil movies about the Beat Generation where innocent housewives are raped by beatniks! ... woe unto those who spit on the Beat Generation, the wind’ll blow it back." ::- Jack Kerouac

Films about the Beat Generation

Jack Kerouac (wrote), Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie (directed) ''Pull My Daisy'' (1958)

''Heart Beat'' (1980)

Richard Lerner and Lewis MacAdams (directed) ''Whatever Happened To Kerouac?'' (1986) Documentary.

Chuck Workman (wrote and directed) ''The Source'' (1999)

Gary Walkow (wrote and directed) ''Beat'' (2000)

''Allen Ginsberg Live in London'' (1995)

''Howl'' (2010)

See also

Greenwich Village

Literary Kicks

San Francisco Oracle

Beat Scene

Postbeat Poets

Further reading

Campbell, James. ''This Is the Beat Generation: New York–San Francisco-Paris''. LA: University of California Press, 2001. ISBN 0-520-23033-7

Cook, Bruce ''The Beat Generation: The tumultuous '50s movement and its impact on today''. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971. ISBN 0-684-12371-1.

Gifford, Barry and Lawrence Lee''Jack's Book An Oral Biography Of Jack Kerouac'', New York: St. Martin's Press, 1978. ISBN 0-312-43942-3

Grace, Nancy''Jack Kerouac and the Literary Imagination'', New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. ISBN 1-4039-6850-0

Hemmer, Kurt ed. ''Encyclopedia of Beat Literature''. Facts on File, 2006. ISBN 0-8160-4297-7

Hrebeniak, Michael. ''Action Writing: Jack Kerouac's Wild Form'', Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 2006.

Johnson, Ronna C. and Nancy Grace ''Girls Who Wore Black: Women Writing the Beat Generation''. Rutgers, 2003. ISBN 081353065

McDarrah, Fred W. and Gloria S. McDarrah. ''Beat Generation: Glory Days in Greenwich Village'' Schirmer Books (September 1996) ISBN 0-8256-7160-4

McNally, Dennis. ''Desolate Angel: Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation, and America''. NY: DeCapo, 2003. ISBN 0-306-81222-3

Miles, Barry. ''The Beat Hotel: Ginsberg, Burroughs & Corso in Paris, 1957–1963''. NY: Grove Press, 2001. ISBN 0-8021-3817-9

Sargeant, Jack. "Naked Lens: Beat Cinema". NY: Soft Skull, 2009 (third edition)

Sanders, Ed ''Tales of Beatnik Glory'' (second edition, 1990) ISBN 0-8065-1172-9

Theado, Matt (ed.). ''The Beats: A Literary Reference''. NY: Carrol & Graff, 2002. ISBN 0-7867-1099-3

Watson, Steven. ''The Birth of the Beat Generation: Visionaries, Rebels, and Hipsters, 1944–1960''. NY: Pantheon, 1998. ISBN 0-375-70153-2

Notes

References

Charters, Ann (ed.) (1992) ''The Portable Beat Reader''. Penguin Books. ISBN 0-670-83885-3 (hc); ISBN 0-14-015102-8 (pbk). The table of contents is online.

Charters, Ann (ed.) (2001) ''Beat Down to Your Soul: What Was the Beat Generation?'' NY: Penguin, 2001. ISBN 0-14-100151-8

Knight, Arthur Winfield. Ed. ''The Beat Vision'' (1987) Paragon House. ISBN 0-913729-40-X; ISBN 0-913729-41-8 (pbk)

Knight, Brenda. ''Women of the Beat Generation: The Writers, Artists and Muses at the Heart of a Revolution''. ISBN 1-57324-138-5

McClure, Michael. ''Scratching the Beat Surface: Essays on New Vision from Blake to Kerouac''. Penguin, 1994. ISBN 0-14-023252-4

Miles, Barry. (2001) ''Ginsberg: A Biography''. London: Virgin Publishing Ltd., paperback, 628 pages, ISBN 0-7535-0486-3

Morgan, Ted (1983) ''Literary Outlaw The Life and Times of William S. Burroughs.'' ISBN 0-380-70882-5, first printing, trade paperback edition Avon, NY, NY

Phillips, Lisa. ''Beat Culture and the New America 1950–1965'' published by the Whitney Museum of American Art in accordance with an exhibition in 1995/1996. ISBN 0-87427-098-7 softcover. ISBN 2-08-013613-5 hardcover (Flammarion)

Raskin, Jonah. ''American Scream: Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" and the Making of the Beat Generation''. University of California Press, 2004. ISBN 0-520-24015-4

Starer, Jacqueline. Les écrivains de la Beat Generation éditions d'écarts Dol de Bretagne France. 1SBN 978-2-919121-02-1

External links

General Beat Generation pages

Biographies of Beat Generation writers, artists, & poets

Beat Generation and Bohemian Culture – the movement at digihitch

Kerouac Alley – Beat Generation directory

Beat Generation biographies and historical information

How Beat Happened by Steve Silberman (the Beat Generation in San Francisco)

Invisible Empires of Beatitude

Beat tourism pages

Denver Beat Photo Tour

Beats In Kansas: The Beat Generation in the Heartland

From Beatnik to Anarchist, in the town where William S. Burroughs died

Lowell Celebrates Kerouac!

Photographs

Beat Generation photographs (starting in 1965) by Larry Keenan

Photos, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, Patti Smith

421 W 118th Street Building where Joan Vollmer Adams & Edie Parker lived

419 W 115th Street – "The Cragsmoor" another building where Joan Vollmer Adams lived.

Photos, Neal Cassady Sr. Gravesite

Photos, Jack Kerouac's Last House, St. Petersburg, FL

Photos of the Kerouac Gas Station in Longmont, CO

A Photographic Essay of Beat Generation Landmarks in New York City

Beat Memories - slideshow by ''The New York Times''

Category:Cultural generations Category:American literature Category:Literary circles Category:Literary movements Category:Postmodern writers

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Coordinates	45°30′″N73°40′″N
Name	Bob McFadden
Birth date	19 January 1923
Birth place	East Liverpool, Ohio, USA
Death date
Death place	Delray Beach, Florida, USA }}

Robert "Bob" McFadden (January 19, 1923 — January 7, 2000) was a singer and voiceover actor best known for his many contributions to animated cartoons. His best known characters were Milton the Monster, Cool McCool, and the ThunderCats' Snarf. In cereal commercials, he played Franken Berry and others.

Life and career

McFadden was born in East Liverpool, Ohio and was in the United States Navy in World War II when he got his start as a singer and impressionist. He went on to do an opening act for the likes of Harry Belafonte in Pittsburgh where he worked at a steel mill. McFadden continued in this vein for years until a move to New York in the mid 1960s, which resulted in a great deal of voice-over work in commercials and animation. In the late 1950s he collaborated with Rod McKuen on a single entitled "The Mummy", the "B" side "The Beat Generation" parodied the then-emerging literary community of the name; on this record, McKuen used the pseudonym "Dor" and later claimed that Bill Haley & His Comets were the band used for the recording session, though this has not been confirmed. McFadden and McKuen also released a full-length album in 1959 called "Songs Our Mummy Taught Us" (Brunswick 54056). In 1963, McFadden released the parody album "Fast, Fast Relief From TV Commercials" (Audio Fidelity AFSD 6112).

He lived in Leonia, New Jersey. McFadden continued to work until the late 1980s, when poor health put him into retirement. He died in Delray Beach, Florida in 2000, twelve days before he would have turned 77.

References

External links

Category:1923 births Category:2000 deaths Category:Beat Generation Category:American male singers Category:American voice actors Category:People from Leonia, New Jersey

Coordinates	45°30′″N73°40′″N
name	Jack Kerouac
birth name	Jean Louis Kerouac
birth date	March 12, 1922
birth place	Lowell, Massachusetts, U.S.
death date	October 21, 1969
death place	St. Petersburg, Florida, U.S.
occupation	Novelist, Poet, Painter
nationality	American
genre	Beat Poets
movement	Beat
notableworks	''On the Road''''The Dharma Bums''''Big Sur''
religion	Catholic
influences	Henry Miller, Thomas Wolfe, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Marcel Proust, Jack London, James Joyce, Neal Cassady, Walt Whitman, Charlie Parker, Arthur Rimbaud, Hart Crane, Ernest Hemingway, William S. Burroughs, Gary Snyder, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Honoré de Balzac, John Fante, Herman Melville, Matsuo Basho, the Diamond Sutra, Lester Young
influenced	Thomas Pynchon, Tom Robbins, Richard Brautigan, Ken Kesey, Russell Banks, Joyce Johnson, Jim Morrison, Roy Harper, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Tom Wolfe, Tom Waits, Jerry Garcia, Haruki Murakami, Ben Gibbard, Will Clarke, Joe Cutler, Jim Dodge, Blake Schwarzenbach, Russell Brand, Hunter S. Thompson
signature	Jack Kerouac signature.svg }}

Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac ( or ; March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969) was an American/French-Canadian novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic spirituality, jazz, promiscuity, Buddhism, drugs, poverty, and travel. His writings have inspired other writers, including Ken Kesey, Bob Dylan, Richard Brautigan, Thomas Pynchon, Lester Bangs, Tom Robbins, Will Clarke, and Haruki Murakami. Critics of his work have labeled it "slapdash", "grossly sentimental", and "immoral". Kerouac became an underground celebrity and, with other beats, a progenitor of the Hippie movement, although he remained antagonistic toward it. In 1969, at age 47, Kerouac died from internal bleeding due to long-standing abuse of alcohol. Since his death Kerouac's literary prestige has grown and several previously unseen works have been published. All of his books are in print today, among them: ''On the Road'', ''Doctor Sax'', ''The Dharma Bums,'' ''Mexico City Blues'', ''The Subterraneans'', ''Desolation Angels'', ''Visions of Cody'' and ''Big Sur.

Biography

Adolescence

Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, to French-Canadian parents, Léo-Alcide Kéroack and Gabrielle-Ange Lévesque, natives of the province of Quebec, Canada. There is some confusion surrounding his original name partly due to variations on the spelling of Kerouac, and partly because of Kerouac's own promotion of his name as ''Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac''. His reason for doing so seems to be linked to an old family legend that the Kerouacs had descended from Baron François Louis Alexandre Lebris de Kerouac. Kerouac's baptism certificate lists his name simply as ''Jean Louis Kirouac'', and indeed Kirouac is the most common spelling of the name in Quebec. Kerouac claimed he descended from a Breton nobleman, granted land after the Battle of Quebec, whose sons all married Native Americans. Research has shown that Kerouac's roots were indeed in Brittany, and he was descended from a middle-class merchant colonist, Urbain-François Le Bihan, Sieur de Kervoac, whose sons married French Canadians. Kerouac's own father had been born to a family of potato farmers in the village of Saint-Hubert-de-Rivière-du-Loup. He also had various stories on the etymology of his surname, usually tracing it to Irish, Breton, or other Celtic roots. In one interview he claimed it was the name of a dead Celtic language and in another said it was from the Irish for "language of the water" and related to ''Kerwick''. Kerouac, derived from ''Kervoach'', is the name of one hamlet situated in Brittany in Lanmeur, near Morlaix.

|thumb|left|250px|His third of several homes growing up in the West Centralville section of Lowell, Jack Kerouac later referred to 34 Beaulieu Street as "sad Beaulieu". The Kirouack family was living there in 1926 when Jack's big brother Gerard died of rheumatic fever at the age of nine. Jack was four at the time, and would later say that Gerard followed him in life as a guardian angel. This is the Gerard of Kerouac's novel Visions of Gerard. Despite the future elaborations, around the house during his childhood, Kerouac was referred to as ''Ti Jean'' or ''little John''. Kerouac spoke the French-Canadian dialect called Joual until he learned English at age six, not speaking it confidently until his late teens. He was a serious child who was devoted to his mother who played an important role in his life. She was a devout Catholic, instilling this into both her sons; this can be seen throughout his works. Kerouac would later go on to say that his mother was the only woman he ever loved. When he was four, he was profoundly affected by the death of his nine-year-old brother, Gérard, from rheumatic fever, an event later described in his novel ''Visions of Gerard''. His mother sought solace in her faith, while his father abandoned it wallowing in drinking, gambling and smoking. Some of Kerouac's poetry was written in French, and in letters written to friend Allen Ginsberg towards the end of his life, he expressed his desire to speak his parents' native tongue again. Recently, it was discovered that Kerouac first started writing ''On the Road'' in French, a language in which he also wrote two unpublished novels. The writings are in dialectal Quebec French.

On May 17, 1928, while six years old, Kerouac had his first Sacrament of Confession. For penance he was told to say a rosary, during the meditation of which he could hear God tell him that he had a good soul, that he would suffer in his life and die in pain and horror, but would in the end have salvation. This experience, along with his dying brother's vision of the Virgin Mary, and the nuns' fawning over the dying boy, convinced that he was a saint, incorporated with later found Buddhism and ongoing commitment to Christ, solidified into his worldview which informs his work.

There were few black people in Lowell, so the young Kerouac was not raised in an environment of racial hatred as many were at the time. Kerouac once recalled to Ted Berrigan, in an interview with the ''Paris Review'', an incident from the 1940s, in which his mother and father were walking together in a Jewish neighborhood in the Lower East Side of New York, saying "And here comes a whole bunch of rabbis walking arm in arm... teedah- teedah - teedah... and they wouldn't part for this Christian man and his wife. So my father went POOM! and knocked a rabbi right in the gutter." His father, after the death of his child and apostasy, had treated a priest with similar contempt, angrily throwing him out of the house after an invitation by Gabrielle.

Kerouac's skills as a running back in American football for Lowell High School earned him scholarship offers from Boston College, Notre Dame and Columbia University. He entered Columbia University after spending a year at Horace Mann School, where he earned the requisite grades to matriculate to Columbia. Kerouac cracked a tibia playing football during his freshman season, and he argued constantly with Coach Lou Little who kept him benched. While at Columbia, Kerouac wrote several sports articles for the student newspaper, the ''Columbia Daily Spectator'' and joined the fraternity of Phi Gamma Delta. He also studied at The New School.

Early adulthood

When his football career at Columbia soured, Kerouac dropped out of the university. He continued to live for a period on New York City's Upper West Side with his girlfriend, Edie Parker. It was during this time that he met the people—now famous—with whom he would always be associated, the subjects injected into many of his novels: the so-called Beat Generation, including Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, John Clellon Holmes, Herbert Huncke and William S. Burroughs.

Kerouac joined the United States Merchant Marine in 1942, and in 1943 joined the United States Navy, but he only served eight days of active duty before arriving on the sick list. According to his medical report Jack Kerouac said he “asked for an aspirin for his headaches and they diagnosed me Dementia Praecox and sent me here.” The medical examiner reported Jack Kerouac’s military adjustment was poor, quoting Kerouac: “I just can’t stand it; I like to be by myself”. Two days later he was honorably discharged on psychiatric grounds (he was of "indifferent character" with a diagnosis of "schizoid personality").

In 1944, Kerouac was arrested as a material witness in the murder of David Kammerer, who had been stalking Kerouac's friend Lucien Carr since Carr was a teenager in St. Louis. William Burroughs was himself a native of St. Louis, and it was through Carr that Kerouac came to know both Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. According to Carr, Kammerer's obsession with Carr turned aggressive, causing Carr to stab him to death in self-defense. After turning to Kerouac for help, together they disposed of evidence. Afterwards, as advised by Burroughs, they turned themselves in to the police. Kerouac's father, unwilling and unable, refused to pay his bail. Kerouac then agreed to marry Edie Parker if she'd pay the bail. Their marriage was annulled a year later, and Kerouac and Burroughs briefly collaborated on a novel about the Kammerer killing entitled ''And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks''. Though the book was not published during the lifetimes of either Kerouac or Burroughs, an excerpt eventually appeared in ''Word Virus: A William S. Burroughs Reader'' (and as noted below, the novel was finally published late 2008). Kerouac also later wrote about the killing in his novel ''Vanity of Duluoz''.

Later, he lived with his parents in the Ozone Park neighborhood of Queens, after they also moved to New York. He wrote his first novel, ''The Town and the City'', and began the famous ''On the Road'' around 1949 while living there. His friends jokingly called him "The Wizard of Ozone Park," alluding to Thomas Edison's nickname, "the Wizard of Menlo Park" and to the film ''The Wizard of Oz''.

Early career: 1950–1957

Kerouac wrote constantly, carrying a notebook with him everywhere. Letters to friends and family members tended to be long and rambling, including great detail about his daily life and thoughts. Prior to becoming a writer, he tried a varied list of careers. He was a sports reporter for ''The Lowell Sun''; a temporary worker in construction and food service; a United States Merchant Marine and he joined the United States Navy twice.

''The Town and the City'' was published in 1950 under the name "John Kerouac" and, though it earned him a few respectable reviews, the book sold poorly. Heavily influenced by Kerouac's reading of Thomas Wolfe, it reflects on the generational epic formula and the contrasts of small town life versus the multi-dimensional, and larger, city. The book was heavily edited by Robert Giroux; some 400 pages were taken out.

For the next six years, Kerouac continued to write regularly. Building upon previous drafts tentatively titled "The Beat Generation" and "Gone on the Road," Kerouac completed what is now known as ''On the Road'' in April 1951, while living at 454 West 20th Street in Manhattan with his second wife, Joan Haverty. The book was largely autobiographical and describes Kerouac's road-trip adventures across the United States and Mexico with Neal Cassady in the late-40s, as well as his relationships with other Beat writers and friends. He completed the first version of the novel during a three-week extended session of spontaneous confessional prose. Kerouac wrote the final draft in 20 days, with Joan, his wife, supplying him bowls of pea soup and mugs of coffee to keep him going. Before beginning, Kerouac cut sheets of tracing paper into long strips, wide enough for a type-writer, and taped them together into a long roll he then fed into the machine. This allowed him to type continuously without the interruption of reloading pages. The resulting manuscript contained no chapter or paragraph breaks and was much more explicit than what would eventually be printed. Though "spontaneous," Kerouac had prepared long in advance before beginning to write. In fact, according to his Columbia professor and mentor Mark Van Doren, he had outlined much of the work in his journals over the several preceding years.

Though the work was completed quickly, Kerouac had a long and difficult time finding a publisher. Before ''On the Road'' was accepted by Viking Press, Kerouac got a job as a "railroad brakesman and fire lookout" traveling between the East and West coasts of America to collect money, so he could live with his mother. During this period of travel, he conspired what was to be "his life's work", "The Legend of Duluoz."

Publishers rejected ''On the Road'' because of its experimental writing style and its sympathetic tone towards minorities and marginalized social groups of post-War America. Many editors were also uncomfortable with the idea of publishing a book that contained what were, for the era, graphic descriptions of drug use and homosexual behavior—a move that could result in obscenity charges being filed, a fate that later befell Burroughs' ''Naked Lunch'' and Ginsberg's ''Howl''.

According to Kerouac, ''On the Road'' "was really a story about two Catholic buddies roaming the country in search of God. And we found him. I found him in the sky, in Market Street San Francisco (those 2 visions), and Dean (Neal) had God sweating out of his forehead all the way. THERE IS NO OTHER WAY OUT FOR THE HOLY MAN: HE MUST SWEAT FOR GOD. And once he has found Him, the Godhood of God is forever Established and really must not be spoken about." According to his authorized biographer, historian Douglas Brinkley, ''On the Road'' has been misinterpreted as a tale of companions out looking for kicks, but the most important thing to comprend is that Kerouac was an American Catholic author - for example, virtually every page of his diary bore a sketch of a crucifix, a prayer, or an appeal to Christ to be forgiven.

In late 1951, Joan Haverty left and divorced Kerouac while pregnant. In February 1952, she gave birth to Kerouac's only child, Jan Kerouac, though he refused to acknowledge her as his own until a blood test confirmed it 9 years later. For the next several years Kerouac continued writing and traveling, taking extensive trips throughout the U.S. and Mexico and often fell into bouts of depression and heavy drug and alcohol use. During this period he finished drafts for what would become 10 more novels, including ''The Subterraneans'', ''Doctor Sax'', ''Tristessa'', and ''Desolation Angels'', which chronicle many of the events of these years.

In 1954, Kerouac discovered Dwight Goddard's ''A Buddhist Bible'' at the San Jose Library, which marked the beginning of his immersion into Buddhism. However, Kerouac had taken an interest in Eastern thought in 1946 when he read Heinrich Zimmer's Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization. Kerouac's stance on eastern texts then differed from when he took it up again in the early to mid-1950s. In 1955 Kerouac wrote a biography of Siddhartha Gautama, entitled ''Wake Up'', which was unpublished during his lifetime but eventually serialised in ''Tricycle: The Buddhist Review'', 1993–95. It was published by Viking in September 2008.

Politically, Kerouac found enemies on both sides of the spectrum, the right disdaining his association with drugs and sexual libertinism and the left contemptuous of his anti-communism and Catholicism; characteristically he watched the 1954 Senate McCarthy hearings smoking pot and rooting for the anti-communist crusader, Senator Joe McCarthy. In ''Desolation Angels'' he wrote, "when I went to Columbia all they tried to teach us was Marx, as if I cared" (considering Marxism, like Freudianism, to be an illusory tangent).

In 1957, after being rejected by several other firms, ''On the Road'' was finally purchased by Viking Press, which demanded major revisions prior to publication. Many of the more sexually explicit passages were removed and, fearing libel suits, pseudonyms were used for the book's "characters". These revisions have often led to criticisms of the alleged spontaneity of Kerouac's style.

Later career: 1957–1969

In July 1957, Kerouac moved to a small house at 1418½ Clouser Avenue in the College Park section of Orlando, Florida, to await the release of ''On the Road''. Weeks later, a review appeared in ''The New York Times'' proclaiming Kerouac the voice of a new generation. Kerouac was hailed as a major American writer. His friendship with Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and Gregory Corso, among others, became a notorious representation of the Beat Generation. The term “Beat Generation” was invented by Kerouac during a conversation held with fellow novelist Herbert Huncke. His fame came as an unmanageable surge that would ultimately be his undoing.

Kerouac's novel is often described as the defining work of the post-World War II Beat Generation and Kerouac came to be called "the king of the beat generation," a term that he never felt comfortable with. He once observed, "I'm not a beatnik, I'm a Catholic", showing the reporter a painting of Pope Paul VI and saying, "You know who painted that? Me."

The success of ''On the Road'' brought Kerouac instant fame. His celebrity status brought publishers desiring unwanted manuscripts which were previously rejected before its publication. After nine months, he no longer felt safe in public. He was badly beaten by three men outside the San Remo Bar at 189 Bleecker Street in New York City one night. Neal Cassady, possibly as a result of his new notoriety as the central character of the book, was set up and arrested for selling marijuana.

In response, Kerouac chronicled parts of his own experience with Buddhism, as well as some of his adventures with Gary Snyder and other San Francisco-area poets, in ''The Dharma Bums'', set in California and Washington and published in 1958. It was written in Orlando between November 26 and December 7, 1957. To begin writing ''Dharma Bums'', Kerouac typed onto a ten-foot length of teleprinter paper, to avoid interrupting his flow for paper changes, as he had done six years previously for ''On the Road''.

Kerouac was demoralized by criticism of ''Dharma Bums'' from such respected figures in the American field of Buddhism as Zen teacher Ruth Fuller Sasaki and Alan Watts. He wrote to Snyder, referring to a meeting with D. T. Suzuki, that "even Suzuki was looking at me through slitted eyes as though I was a monstrous imposter." He passed up the opportunity to reunite with Snyder in California, and explained to Whalen, "I'd be ashamed to confront you and Gary now I've become so decadent and drunk and don't give a shit. I'm not a Buddhist any more."

Kerouac also wrote and narrated a "Beat" movie entitled ''Pull My Daisy'' (1959), directed by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie. Originally to be called ''The Beat Generation'', the title was changed at the last moment when MGM released a film by the same name in July 1959 which sensationalized "beatnik" culture.

The CBS Television series ''Route 66'' (1960-64), featuring two untethered young men "on the road" in a Corvette seeking adventure and fueling their travels by apparently plentiful temporary jobs in the various U.S. locales framing the anthology styled stories, gave the impression of being a commercially sanitized misappropriation of Kerouac's "On The Road" story model. Even the leads, Buz and Todd, bore a resemblance to the dark, athletic Kerouac and the blonde Cassady/Moriarty, respectively. Kerouac felt he'd been conspicuously ripped off by ''Route 66'' creator Stirling Silliphant and sought to sue him, CBS, the Screen Gems TV production company, and sponsor Chevrolet, but was somehow counseled against proceeding with what looked like a very potent cause of action.

John Antonelli's 1985 documentary ''Kerouac, the Movie'' begins and ends with footage of Kerouac reading from ''On the Road'' and ''Visions of Cody'' on ''The Tonight Show'' with Steve Allen in 1957. Kerouac appears intelligent but shy. "Are you nervous?" asks Steve Allen. "Naw," says Kerouac, sweating and fidgeting.

Kerouac developed something of a friendship with the scholar Alan Watts (renamed Arthur Wayne in Kerouac's novel ''Big Sur'', and Alex Aums in ''Desolation Angels''). Kerouac moved to Northport, New York in March 1958, six months after releasing ''On the Road''., to care for his aging mother Gabrielle and to hide from his new-found celebrity status.

In 1968, he appeared on the television show ''Firing Line'' produced and hosted by William F. Buckley. The visibly drunk Kerouac talked about the 1960s counterculture in what would be his last appearance on television.

Death

On 20 October 1969, around 11 in the morning, Jack was sitting in his favorite chair, drinking whiskey and malt liquor, trying to scribble notes for a book about his father's print shop in Lowell, Mass. He suddenly felt sick to his stomach, which was nothing unusual, and headed for the bathroom. He began to throw up massive amounts of blood, and yelled to his wife, "Stella, I'm bleeding." Eventually he was convinced to go to the hospital and was taken out by ambulance to St. Anthony's Hospital in St. Petersburg. Blood continued to pour from his mouth and he underwent numerous transfusions. Eventually that evening Jack underwent surgery in an attempt to tie off all the burst blood vessels, but his liver, destroyed by years of drinking, would not let his blood clot. Kerouac finally died at 5:15 am the following morning, 21 October 1969, having never regained consciousness from the operation.thumb|right|250px| Lowell, Massachusetts Grave site, Lowell Massachusetts His death, at the age of 47, resulted from an internal hemorrhage (bleeding esophageal varices) caused by cirrhosis, the result of a lifetime of heavy drinking. Kerouac is buried in his hometown of Lowell and was honored posthumously with a Doctor of Letters degree from his hometown's University of Massachusetts Lowell on June 2, 2007.

At the time of his death, he was living with his third wife, Stella Sampas Kerouac, and his mother, Gabrielle. Kerouac's mother inherited most of his estate. When she died in 1973, Stella inherited the rights to his works under a faked will purportedly signed by his mother. Family members challenged the will and, on July 24, 2009, a judge in Pinellas County, Florida ruled that the will of Gabrielle Kerouac was fake, citing that Gabrielle Kerouac would not be physically capable of providing her own signature on the date of the signing.

In 2007, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of ''On the Road'''s publishing, Viking issued two new editions: ''On the Road: The Original Scroll,'' and ''On the Road: 50th Anniversary Edition''. By far the more significant is ''Scroll,'' a transcription of the original draft typed as one long paragraph on sheets of tracing paper which Kerouac taped together to form a scroll. The text is more sexually explicit than Viking allowed to be published in 1957, and also uses the real names of Kerouac's friends rather than the fictional names he later substituted. Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay paid $2.43 million for the original scroll and allowed an exhibition tour that concluded at the end of 2009. The other new issue, ''50th Anniversary Edition,'' is a reissue of the 40th anniversary issue under an updated title.

The Kerouac/Burroughs manuscript, ''And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks'' was published for the first time on November 1, 2008 by Grove Press. Previously, a fragment of the manuscript had been published in the Burroughs compendium, ''Word Virus''.

Works

Style

Kerouac is generally considered to be the father of the Beat movement, although he actively disliked such labels. Kerouac's method was heavily influenced by the prolific explosion of Jazz, especially the Bebop genre established by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, and others. Later, Kerouac would include ideas he developed from his Buddhist studies that began with Gary Snyder. He often referred to his style as ''spontaneous prose'', a literary technique akin to nothing. Although Kerouac’s prose was spontaneous and purportedly without edits, he primarily wrote autobiographical novels (or Roman à clef) based upon actual events from his life and the people with whom he interacted. Many of his books exemplified this approach, including ''On the Road'', ''Visions of Cody'', ''Visions of Gerard'', ''Big Sur'', and ''The Subterraneans''. The central features of this writing method were the ideas of breath (borrowed from Jazz and from Buddhist meditation breathing), improvising words over the inherent structures of mind and language, and not editing a single word (much of his work was edited by Donald Merriam Allen, a major figure in Beat Generation poetry who edited some of Ginsberg's work as well). Connected with his idea of breath was the elimination of the period, preferring to use a long, connecting dash instead. As such, the phrases occurring between dashes might resemble improvisational jazz licks. When spoken, the words might take on a certain kind of rhythm, though none of it pre-meditated.

Kerouac greatly admired Gary Snyder, many of whose ideas influenced him. ''The Dharma Bums'' contains accounts of a mountain climbing trip Kerouac took with Snyder, and also whole paragraphs from letters Snyder had written to Kerouac. While living with Snyder outside Mill Valley, California in 1956, Kerouac was working on a book centering around Snyder, which he was thinking of calling ''Visions of Gary''. (This eventually became ''Dharma Bums'', which Kerouac described as "mostly about [Snyder].") That summer, Kerouac took a job as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak in the North Cascades in Washington, after hearing Snyder's and Philip Whalen's accounts of their own lookout stints. Kerouac described the experience in his novel ''Desolation Angels''.

He would go on for hours, often drunk, to friends and strangers about his method. Allen Ginsberg, initially unimpressed, would later be one of its great proponents, and indeed, he was apparently influenced by Kerouac's free flowing prose method of writing in the composition of his masterpiece "Howl". It was at about the time that Kerouac wrote ''The Subterraneans'' that he was approached by Ginsberg and others to formally explicate his style. Among the writings he set down specifically about his Spontaneous Prose method, the most concise would be ''Belief and Technique for Modern Prose'', a list of 30 "essentials".

# Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy # Submissive to everything, open, listening # Try never get drunk outside yr own house # Be in love with yr life # Something that you feel will find its own form # Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind # Blow as deep as you want to blow # Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind # The unspeakable visions of the individual # No time for poetry but exactly what is # Visionary tics shivering in the chest # In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you # Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition # Like Proust be an old teahead of time # Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog # The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye # Write in recollection and amazement for yourself # Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea # Accept loss forever # Believe in the holy contour of life # Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind # Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better # Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning # No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge # Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it # Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form # In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness # Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better # You're a Genius all the time # Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

Some believed that at times Kerouac's writing technique did not produce lively or energetic prose. Truman Capote famously said about Kerouac's work, "That's not writing, it's typing". Despite such criticism, it should be kept in mind that what Kerouac said about writing and how he wrote are sometimes seen to be separate. According to Carolyn Cassady, and other people who knew him, he rewrote and rewrote. However, it should be taken into account that throughout most of the '50s Kerouac was constantly trying to have his work published, and consequently he often revised and re-arranged manuscripts in an often futile attempt to interest publishers, as is clearly documented in his collected letters (which are in themselves examples of his style). ''The Subterraneans'' and ''Visions of Cody'' are possibly the best examples of Kerouac's free-flowing spontaneous prose method.

Although Kerouac is known mainly as being a novelist, he was a poet as well and performed his work as spoken word. He “developed a new definition for American haiku in his journal ''Some of the Dharma'' which are short three-line confessional poems that served to enlighten. The haiku style he used was not meant to be difficult nor apply to any traditional methods of prose. Some were as quick as a breath and just as witty, honest, abstract and sometimes glum. For example, "Arms folded/ to the moon,/ among the cows", is direct and honest but also draws a picture of a man staring at the moon in the middle of the country side among animals. There is a hint of desolation in the voice of a man who is standing "arms folded" pondering during the night. Kerouac experimented with a variety of methods, including strong jazz influence as can be seen with the dashes. Jack Kerouac performed several spoken word pieces that are still available for listening today. His haiku had a spontaneous sound which described minute everyday occurrences as seen below.

Close your eyes -

Landlord knocking

On the back door.

The bottoms of my shoes

are wet

from walking in the rain

In my medicine cabinet,

the winter fly

has died of old age.

Evening coming—the office girl

Unloosing her scarf.

November - how nasal

the drunken

Conductor's call

Although the body of Kerouac's work has been published in English, recent research has suggested that, aside from already known correspondence and letters written to friends and family, he also wrote unpublished works of fiction in French. A manuscript entitled ''Sur le Chemin'' (On the road) was discovered in 2008 by Québécois journalist Gabriel Anctil. The novela was completed in five days in Mexico during December 1952 is a telling example of Kerouac's attempts at writing in Joual, a dialect typical of the French-Canadian working class of the time, which can be summarized as a form of expression utilising both old patois and modern French mixed with modern English words (''windshield'' being a modern English expression used casually by some French Canadians even today). Set in 1935, mostly on the American east coast, the short manuscript (50 pages) explores some of the recurring themes of Kerouac's literature by way of a narrative very close to, if not identical to, the spoken word. It tells the story of a group of men who agree to meet in New York, including a young 13-year-old Kerouac whom he refers to as ''Ti-Jean''. Ti-Jean and his father Leo (Kerouac's father's real name) leave Boston by car, traveling to assist friends looking for a place to stay in the city. The story actually follows two cars and their passengers, one driving out of Denver and the other from Boston, until they eventually meet in a dingy bar in New York's Chinatown. In it, Kerouac's "French" is written in a form which has little regard for grammar or spelling, relying often on phonetics in order to render an authentic reproduction of his French-Canadian vernacular. The novel starts: ''Dans l'mois d'Octobre 1935, y'arriva une machine du West, de Denver, sur le chemin pour New York. Dans la machine était Dean Pomeray, un soûlon; Dean Pomeray Jr., son ti fils de 9 ans et Rolfe Glendiver, son step son, 24. C'était un vieille Model T Ford, toutes les trois avaient leux yeux attachez sur le chemin dans la nuit à travers la windshield.'' Even though this work shares the same title as one of his best known English novels, it is rather the original French version of a short text that would later become ''Old bull in the Bowery'' (also unpublished) once translated to English prose by Kerouac himself. ''Sur le Chemin'' is Kerouac's second known French manuscript, the first being ''La nuit est ma Femme'' written in early 1951 and completed a few days before he began the original English version of ''On the Road'', as reveiled by journalist Gabriel Anctil in the montreal daily Le Devoir. .

Influences

Kerouac's early writing, particularly his first novel ''The Town and the City'', was more conventional, and bore the strong influence of Thomas Wolfe. The technique Kerouac developed that later made Kerouac famous was heavily influenced by Jazz, especially Bebop, and later, Buddhism, as well as the famous "Joan Anderson letter" authored by Neal Cassady. The Diamond Sutra was the most important Buddhist text for Kerouac, and "probably one of the three or four most influential things he ever read". In 1955, he began an intensive study of this sutra, in a repeating weekly cycle, devoting one day to each of the six Pāramitās, and the seventh to the concluding passage on Samādhi. This was his sole reading on Desolation Peak, and he hoped by this means to condition his mind to emptiness, and possibly to have a vision.

However, often overlooked but perhaps his greatest literary influence may be that of James Joyce whose work he alludes to, by far, more than any other author. Kerouac had the highest esteem for Joyce, emulated and expanded on his techniques. Regarding ''On the Road'', he wrote in a letter to Ginsberg, "I can tell you now as I look back on the flood of language. It is like Ulysses and should be treated with the same gravity." Indeed, Old Angel Midnight has been called "the closest thing to Finnegans Wake in American literature."

Legacy

Kerouac is considered by some the "King of the Beats", a title with which Kerouac himself was deeply uncomfortable. Kerouac's plainspeaking style of prose and his nearly long-form free verse style of novelistic "neologism", inspired countless beat writers and neo-beat writers and artists, such as painter George Condo, poet and philosopher Roger Craton, and filmmaker John McNaughton.

In 1974 the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics was opened in his honor by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman at Naropa University, a private Buddhist university in Boulder, Colorado. The school offers a BA in Writing and Literature, MFAs in Writing & Poetics and Creative Writing, and a summer writing program.

From 1978 to 1992, Joy Walsh published 28 issues of a magazine devoted to Kerouac, ''Moody Street Irregulars''.

In 1997, the house on Clouser Avenue where ''The Dharma Bums'' was written was purchased by a newly formed non-profit group, The Jack Kerouac Writers in Residence Project of Orlando, Inc. This group provides opportunities for aspiring writers to live in the same house in which Kerouac was inspired, with room and board covered for three months.

In 2007, Kerouac was awarded a posthumous honorary degree from the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

In 2009, the movie ''One Fast Move or I'm Gone - Kerouac's Big Sur'' was released. It chronicles the time in Kerouac's life that led to his novel ''Big Sur'', with actors, writers, artists, and close friends giving their insight into the book. The movie also describes the people and places on which Kerouac based his characters and settings, including the cabin in Bixby Canyon. An album released to accompany the movie, "One Fast Move or I'm Gone", features Benjamin Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie) and Jay Farrar (Son Volt) performing songs based on Kerouac's ''Big Sur''.

In 2010, during the first weekend of October, the 25th anniversary of the literary festival "Lowell Celebrates Kerouac" was held in Kerouac's birthplace of Lowell, Massachusetts. It featured walking tours, literary seminars, and musical performances focused on Kerouac's work and that of the Beat Generation.

Bibliography

Discography

;Studio albums

''Poetry for the Beat Generation'' (with Steve Allen) (1959)

''Blues and Haikus'' (with Al Cohn and Zoot Sims) (1959)

''Readings by Jack Kerouac on the Beat Generation'' (1960)

;Compilation albums

''The Jack Kerouac Collection'' (1990) [Box] (Audio CD Collection of 3 studio albums)

''Jack Kerouac Reads On the Road'' (1999)

References

Further reading

Amburm, Ellis. ''Subterranean Kerouac: The Hidden Life of Jack Kerouac''. St. Martin's Press, 1999. ISBN 0-312-20677-1

Amram, David. ''Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac''. Thunder's Mouth Press, 2002.ISBN 1-56025-362-2

Bartlett, Lee (ed.) ''The Beats: Essays in Criticism''. London: McFarland, 1981.

Beaulieu, Victor-Lévy. ''Jack Kerouac: A Chicken Essay''. Coach House Press, 1975.

Brooks, Ken. ''The Jack Kerouac Digest''. Agenda, 2001.

Cassady, Carolyn. ''Neal Cassady Collected Letters, 1944-1967''. Penguin, 2004. ISBN 0-14-200217-8

Cassady, Carolyn. ''Off the Road: Twenty Years with Cassady, Kerouac and Ginsberg''. Black Spring Press, 2007.

Challis, Chris. ''Quest for Kerouac''. Faber & Faber, 1984.

Charters, Ann. ''Kerouac''. San Francisco: Straight Arrow Books, 1973.

Charters, Ann (ed.) ''The Portable Beat Reader''. New York: Penguin, 1992.

Charters, Ann (ed.) ''The Portable Jack Kerouac''. New York: Penguin, 1995.

Christy, Jim. ''The Long Slow Death of Jack Kerouac''. ECW Press, 1998.

Clark, Tom. ''Jack Kerouac''. Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1984.

Coolidge, Clark. ''Now It's Jazz: Writings on Kerouac & the Sounds''. Living Batch, 1999.

Cook, Bruce. ''The Beat Generation''. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971. ISBN 0-684-12371-1

Dagier, Patricia; Quéméner, Hervé. ''Jack Kerouac: Au Bout de la Route ... La Bretagne''. An Here, 1999.

Dagier, Patricia ; Quéméner Hervé. ''Jack Kerouac, Breton d'Amérique''. Editions Le Télégramme, 2009.

Edington, Stephen. ''Kerouac's Nashua Roots''. Transition, 1999.

Ellis, R.J., ''Liar! Liar! Jack Kerouac - Novelist''. Greenwich Exchange, 1999.

French, Warren. ''Jack Kerouac''. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1986.

Gaffié, Luc. ''Jack Kerouac: The New Picaroon''. Postillion Press, 1975.

Giamo, Ben. "''Kerouac, The Word and The Way''". Southern Illinois University Press, 2000.

Gifford, Barry. "''Kerouac's Town''". Creative Arts, 1977.

Gifford, Barry; Lee, Lawrence. "''Jack's Book: An Oral Biography of Jack Kerouac''". St. Martin's Press, 1978. ISBN 0-14-005269-0

Goldstein, N.W., "Kerouac's On the Road." Explicator 50.1. 1991.

Haynes, Sarah, Exploration of Jack Kerouac's Buddhism:Text and Life"

Heller, Christine Jack Kerouac and Gary Snyder: Chasing Zen Clouds

Hemmer, Kurt. ''Encyclopedia of Beat Literature: The Essential Guide to the Lives and Works of the Beat Writers''. Facts on File, Inc., 2007.

Hipkiss, Robert A., ''Jack Kerouac: Prophet of the New Romanticism''. Regents Press, 1976.

Holmes, John Clellon. ''Visitor: Jack Kerouac in Old Saybrook''. tuvoti, 1981.

Holmes, John Clellon. ''Gone In October: Last Reflections on Jack Kerouac''. Limberlost, 1985.

Holton, Robert. ''On the Road: Kerouac's Ragged American Journey''. Twayne, 1999.

Hrebeniak, Michael. ''Action Writing: Jack Kerouac"s Wild Form''. Carbondale IL., Southern Illinois UP, 2006.

Huebel, Harry Russell. ''Jack Kerouac''. Boise State University, 1979. available online

Hunt, Tim. ''Kerouac's Crooked Road''. Hamden: Archon Books, 1981.

Jarvis, Charles. ''Visions of Kerouac''. Ithaca Press, 1973.

Johnson, Joyce. ''Minor Characters: A Young Woman's Coming-Of-Age in the Beat Orbit of Jack Kerouac''. Penguin Books, 1999.

Johnson, Joyce. ''Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters, 1957-1958''. Viking, 2000.

Johnson, Ronna C., "You're Putting Me On: Jack Kerouac and the Postmodern Emergence". College Literature. 27.1 2000.

Jones, James T., ''A Map of Mexico City Blues: Jack Kerouac as Poet''. Southern Illinois University Press, 1992.

Jones, James T., ''Jack Kerouac's Duluoz Legend''. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999.

Jones, Jim. ''Use My Name: Kerouac's Forgotten Families''. ECW Press, 1999.

Jones, Jim. ''Jack Kerouac's Nine Lives''. Elbow/Cityful Press, 2001.

Kealing, Bob. ''Kerouac in Florida: Where the Road Ends''. Arbiter Press, 2004.

Kerouac, Joan Haverty. ''Nobody's Wife: The Smart Aleck and the King of the Beats''. Creative Arts, 2000.

Leland, John. ''Why Kerouac Matters: The Lessons of On the Road (They're Not What You Think)''. New York: Viking Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-670-06325-3

Maher Jr., Paul. ''Kerouac: The Definitive Biography''. Lanham: Taylor Trade P, July 2004 ISBN 0-87833-305-3

Maher, Paul, Jr. We Know Time: The Literary Cosmos of Jack Kerouac (unpublished work-in-progress)

McNally, Dennis. ''Desolate Angel: Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation, and America''. Da Capo Press, 2003. ISBN 0-306-81222-3

Miles, Barry. ''Jack Kerouac: King of the Beats''. Virgin, 1998.

Montgomery, John. ''Jack Kerouac: A Memoir ...'' Giligia Press, 1970.

Montgomery, John. ''Kerouac West Coast''. Fels & Firn Press, 1976.

Montgomery, John. ''The Kerouac We Knew''. Fels & Firn Press, 1982.

Montgomery, John. ''Kerouac at the Wild Boar''. Fels & Firn Press, 1986.

Mortenson, Erik R., "Beating Time: Configurations of Temporality in Jack Kerouac's On the Road". College Literature 28.3. 2001.

Motier, Donald. ''Gerard: The Influence of Jack Kerouac's Brother on his Life and Writing''. Beaulieu Street Press, 1991.

Nicosia, Gerald. ''Memory Babe: A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac''. Berkeley: U of Cal P, 1994. ISBN 0-520-08569-8

Parker, Brad. "''Jack Kerouac: An Introduction''". Lowell Corporation for the Humanities, 1989.

Sandison, David. ''Jack Kerouac''. Hamlyn, 1999.

Swick, Thomas. "''South Florida Sun Sentinel''". February 22, 2004. Article: "Jack Kerouac in Orlando".

Theado, Matt. ''Understanding Jack Kerouac''. Columbia: University of South Carolina, 2000.

Turner, Steve. ''Angelheaded Hipster: A Life of Jack Kerouac''. Viking Books, 1996. ISBN 0-670-87038-2

Walsh, Joy, editor. ''Moody Street Irregulars: A Jack Kerouac Newsletter''

Weinreich, Regina. ''The Spontaneous Prose of Jack Kerouac''. Southern Illinois University Press, 1987.

Wills, David, editor. ''Beatdom'' Magazine. Mauling Press, 2007.

External links

Jack Kerouac Papers at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Columbia University

Category:1922 births Category:1969 deaths Category:Alcohol-related deaths in Florida Category:American nomads Category:American novelists Category:American people of Breton descent Category:American people of French-Canadian descent Category:American poets Category:American Roman Catholics Category:American sailors Category:Beat Generation writers Category:Buddhist writers Category:Columbia Lions football players Category:Deaths from cirrhosis Category:English-language haiku poets Category:French-language writers Category:History of Denver, Colorado Category:People from Florida Category:People from Greenwich Village, New York Category:People from Lowell, Massachusetts Category:People from New York City Category:People from Orlando, Florida Category:Postmodern writers Category:Travel writers

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David Amram (born November 17, 1930) is an American composer, musician, conductor, and writer. As a classical composer and virtuoso performer, his integration of jazz (including being one of the first noted as an improvising jazz French hornist), ethnic and folk music has led him to work with the likes of Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Willie Nelson, Langston Hughes, Charles Mingus, Leonard Bernstein, Sir James Galway, Tito Puente, Mary Lou Williams, Joseph Papp, Arthur Miller, Miles Davis, Arturo Sandoval, Stan Getz, Pete Seeger, Elia Kazan, Odetta, Dustin Hoffman, Steve Allen, Machito, Earl "Fatha" Hines, Allen Ginsberg, Nina Simone, Gregory Corso, Bob Dylan, Steve Goodman, Hunter Thompson, Johnny Depp and Jack Kerouac throughout the course of his career.

Biography

Amram was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Shortly before his seventh birthday, he and his family moved to a farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. His grandfather, David Werner Amram, had been active in early American Zionist circles and had spent considerable time in what is now Israel. His father, Philip Werner Amram, introduced David to cantorial music and classical music. Amram's uncle loved jazz, introducing him to recordings of great jazz artists.

At the age of seven, Amram began piano lessons. In 1948 he spent a year at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, but earned a bachelor's degree in European history from George Washington University in 1952. He also began composing music for the theater, led his own innovative sextette.

David Amram has composed more than 100 orchestral and chamber music works, written many scores for Broadway theater and film, including the classic scores for the films Splendor in the Grass and The Manchurian Candidate; two operas, and the score for the landmark 1959 documentary Pull My Daisy, narrated by novelist Jack Kerouac. He is also the author of three books: the autobiography "Vibrations," and the memoirs "Offbeat: Collaborating With Kerouac" and "Upbeat: Nine Lives of a Musical Cat."

A pioneer player of jazz French horn (along with Julius Watkins), he is also a virtuoso on piano, numerous flutes and whistles, percussion, and dozens of folkloric instruments. He has collaborated with Leonard Bernstein, who chose him in 1966 as the first composer-in-residence for the New York Philharmonic; Langston Hughes, Dizzy Gillespie, Dustin Hoffman, Willie Nelson, Thelonious Monk, Odetta, Elia Kazan, Arthur Miller, Charles Mingus, Lionel Hampton, E. G. Marshall, Johnny Depp, Betty Carter and Tito Puente. One of Amram's most recent works "Giants of the Night" is a flute concerto dedicated to the memory of Charlie Parker, Jack Kerouac and Dizzy Gillespie, three American artists Amram knew and worked with. It was commissioned and premiered by Sir James Galway.

Today, as he has for over fifty years, Amram continues to compose music while traveling the world as a conductor, soloist, bandleader, visiting scholar, and narrator in five languages. He is also currently working with author Frank McCourt on a new setting of the Mass, "Missa Manhattan".

On September 29, 2007, Symphony Silicon Valley opened its sixth season at the California Theater in San Jose, California with Amram's ''Symphonic Variations on a Song by Woody Guthrie'', a work commissioned by the Guthrie family several years prior to its premiere. The song referred to in Amram's title is ''the'' Guthrie song - "This Land is Your Land" - and each of the symphony's six movements paints a picture of America's landscape during Guthrie's time. Symphony Silicon also commissioned and performed his Piano Concerto No. 1 in January, 2009. Jon Nakamatsu was the soloist.

He is the recipient of six honorary doctorates, awarded for his pioneering use of world music in his classical compositions and performances and his collaborations with Jack Kerouac in presenting the first jazz/poetry readings.

David Amram has been chosen as the Composer In Residence for the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado. He will be involved in several performances during this historic convention.

On February 12, 2009, David joined the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College orchestra and chorus, along with the Riverside Inspirational Choir and NYC Labor Choir, in honoring Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday at the Riverside Church in New York City. Under the direction of Maurice Peress, they performed Earl Robinson's "The Lonesome Train: A Music Legend for Actors, Folk Singers, Choirs, and Orchestra" in which David was the Square Dance caller.

All his concert music is published by C.F. Peters Corporation (B.M.I.)

Discography

As leader

Year	Album	Personnel	Label
1957	''Jazz Studio No. 6: The Eastern Scene''		Decca Records
1961	''Jazz Portrait''	Bobby Jaspar, Harold Land, George Barrow	Decca Records
1971	''No More Walls''	Jerry Dodgion, Pepper Adams, Candido,	Flying Fish Records
1972	''Subway Night''		RCA Records
1977	''Havana/New York''		Flying Fish Records
1977	''Triple Concerto''		Flying Fish Records
1980	''At Home/Around the World''		Flying Fish Records
1982	''Latin Jazz Celebration''	Joe Wilder, Jimmy Knepper, Steve Berrios, George Barrow, Pepper Adams, Jerry Dodgion, Duduka Fonseca, Machito, Victor Venegas, Candido	Elektra/Musician
1990	''Autobiography''		Flying Fish Records
1995	''Pull My Daisy''		Premier Records
1996	''Final Ingredient: An Opera of the Holocaust''		Premier
1999	''Southern Stories''		Chrome Records
2002	''On the Waterfront''		Varèse Sarabande

As sideman

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Amram was featured in Raffi's hit song "Peanut Butter Sandwich Made With Jam: One for Me and One for David Amram,".

Bibliography

2001: ''Vibrations: The Adventures and Musical Times of David Amram'' (Thunder's Mouth Press) ISBN 1-56025-308-8

2003: ''Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac'' (Paradigm) ISBN 1-56025-460-2

2007: ''Upbeat: Nine Lives of a Musical Cat'' (Paradigm) ISBN 1-59451-544-6

Douglas Brinkley writing in the introduction to ''Vibrations: The Adventures and Musical Times of David Amram'' (Thunder's Mouth Press, 2001) ISBN 1-56025-308-8

References

External links

David Amram's home page

David Amram's upcoming appearances and performances

David Amram Videos and Quotes

David Amram oral history

Category:20th-century classical composers Category:American classical horn players Category:American film score composers Category:American jazz horn players Category:George Washington University alumni Category:Living people Category:Manhattan School of Music alumni Category:Musicians from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Category:Jewish musicians Category:RCA Records artists Category:1930 births

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