Beat News: April 3 1997

News

I just heard some sad news: Allen Ginsberg has been diagnosed with an inoperable case of liver cancer. Doctors expect the disease will be fatal within four to twelve months. More detailed information is available at Wired News.

This article is part of the Beat News series. The next post in the series is Beat News: April 4 1997. The previous post in the series is Beat News: February 28 1997.

No Responses to "Beat News: April 3 1997"

Letters

by Levi Asher Wednesday, November 3, 2010 10:40 pm

The C Programming Language by Kernighan and Ritchie

Prompted by Tom McCarthy's trendy new novel C, AbeBooks presents a tableau of one-letter (or two-letter) books. It's a lot of fun to look at. Of course, I'm an old school techie, so to me C will always be the title of a classic book by Kernighan and Ritchie.

Jack Kerouac

by Levi Asher Saturday, July 23, 1994 02:01 pm

Jack Kerouac was born Jean-Louis Kerouac, a French-Canadian child on March 12, 1922 in working-class Lowell, Massachusetts. Ti Jean spoke a local dialect of French called joual before he learned English. The youngest of three children, he was heartbroken when his older brother Gerard died of rheumatic fever at the age of nine.

Ti Jean was an intense and serious child, devoted to Memere (his mother) and constantly forming important friendships with other boys, as he would continue to do throughout his life. He was driven to create stories from a young age, inspired first by the mysterious radio show 'The Shadow,' and later by the fervid novels of Thomas Wolfe, the writer he would model himself after ...

... Read more and add your thoughts

The Beat Generation

by Levi Asher Monday, July 25, 1994 12:36 pm

Beat writers gathering at Cafe Trieste, North Beach, San Francisco

Like the French Impressionist artists of Paris, the Beat writers were a small group of close friends first, and a movement later. The term "Beat Generation" gradually came to represent an entire period in time, but the entire original Beat Generation in literature was small enough to have fit into a couple of cars (at times this nearly happened).

Gary Snyder

by Levi Asher Monday, July 25, 1994 02:03 pm

You have to be careful writing about Gary Snyder, because he's such a Zen guy you get the feeling anything you write will be vastly inferior to silence.

... Read more and add your thoughts

Big Sur by Jack Kerouac

by Levi Asher Saturday, August 6, 1994 08:55 pm

Levi Asher reviews "Big Sur", Jack Kerouac's shattering chronicle of his early 1960s crack-up.

... Read more and add your thoughts

Dharma Bums

by Levi Asher Sunday, August 7, 1994 12:52 pm

Levi Asher reviews "Dharma Bums", Jack Kerouac's warm and colorful send-up of American Buddhism.

Bob Kaufman

by Sean Daniel Singer Monday, November 13, 1995 08:19 am

Bob Kaufman was born on April 18, 1925 in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was, other than Langston Hughes, the greatest jazz poet who ever lived ...

... Read more and add your thoughts

Ted Joans

by Sean Daniel Singer Friday, January 12, 1996 08:21 am

Ted Joans was born Theodore Jones on July 4, 1928 on a riverboat in Cairo, Illinois. His father, a riverboat entertainer, put him off the boat in Memphis at age twelve and gave him a trumpet. He is a painter, a trumpeter, and a poet.

Poetry at the Old Longshoreman’s Hall

by Don Carpenter Friday, September 20, 1996 12:44 pm

Overlooking Fisherman's Whard in San Francisco, site of a joyful beatnik poetry reading in 1964

Novelist Don Carpenter recalls a joyful moment from 1964, during the height of the beatnik/hippie convergence in San Francisco, when he stepped up to organize a spontaneous (and surprisingly large) poetry reading at the Longshoreman's Hall in Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco, featuring Gary Snyder, Lew Welch and Philip Whalen.

... Read more and add your thoughts

When Corso Dropped his Bomb

by Caryn Thurman Friday, May 7, 2004 01:28 pm

Litkicks is proud to present, for the first time ever, an original 1970 recording of Gregory Corso performing his classic poem 'BOMB', courtesy of Graham Seidman.

... Read more and add your thoughts

John Fowles: Death of a Magus

by Levi Asher Tuesday, November 8, 2005 07:30 am

British novelist John Fowles, author of a postmodern sendup of ancient Greek mythology called 'The Magus', died this weekend at his home in Lyme Regis, England.

E. Howard Hunt, Novelist

by Levi Asher Tuesday, January 23, 2007 08:02 pm

E. Howard Hunt, pulp novelist and key Watergate operative, has died.

Milan Kundera and the Invisible Writer

by Jamelah Earle Thursday, March 15, 2007 06:09 pm

As a reader, I'm often interested in the lives of writers I admire, and want to read as much about and by them as I can. But as a writer, I find the notion of having people read anything other than the writing I want them to read a little bit -- for lack of a better word -- creepy. While I doubt that I'm ever going to be studied by scholars years after my death, let's just say for the purposes of this paragraph that it could happen. I'm really bothered by the idea that everything outside of my intended body of work might be fair game. Everything. My unfinished drafts unfit for anyone to see, my e-mails, letters, saved birthday cards, journals, notes, my book collection, my CD collection -- all of these things could be dissected by scholars to give a better picture of the writer behind the work. And not only that, but connections could be made between all the stuff I have and the writing I do. Certainly, my writing (such as it is) is a product of my life and experiences, but I'm a big fan of making things up (not a fan of autobiography), and I don't think it's necessary for people to know that I had braces twice to understand where my writing comes from ...

John Osborne’s Angry Looks

by Levi Asher Monday, March 26, 2007 09:20 pm

John Osborne's signature work is 'Look Back in Anger', which opened in 1956 and gave the "Angry Young Men" their name. It's the story of a fuming, flannel-shirt wearing London bloke named Jimmy who slaves away at a candy stand all day and plays hot trad jazz saxophone all night.

Cormac McCarthy: Owning My Hate

by Levi Asher Monday, April 2, 2007 07:29 am

Cormac McCarthy demonstrates his favorite squint

Levi Asher examines his deep hatred for the grim and mannered prose of Cormac McCarthy, and ponders the value of literary criticism in a world that proclaims McCarthy a genius.

Literary Kicks

Intellectual Curiosities and Provocations

Beat News: April 3 1997

Letters

Jack Kerouac

The Beat Generation

Gary Snyder

Big Sur by Jack Kerouac

Dharma Bums

Bob Kaufman

Ted Joans

Poetry at the Old Longshoreman’s Hall

When Corso Dropped his Bomb

John Fowles: Death of a Magus

E. Howard Hunt, Novelist

Milan Kundera and the Invisible Writer

John Osborne’s Angry Looks

Cormac McCarthy: Owning My Hate