Relics
by Levi Asher on Monday, September 21, 2009 06:14 pm
1. Catholic boy to the end ... from Cassie Carter's long-running fan site, here's Jim Carroll's funeral card.
2. Hemingway does Hemingway: actress Mariel Hemingway intends to create a movie based on her grandfather's gossipy classic A Movable Feast (via The Millions).
3. St. Francis College in Brooklyn is hosting a conference on Walt Whitman and the Beats and has issued an open call for papers.
4. I don't know what to expect from the new film version of J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace. I hated John Malkovich's overacting in A Portrait of a Lady, and I'm concerned that he'll turn this book's blank narrator into a volcano of emotion, as is his way. Still, I am looking forward to seeing the film and I hope for the best. Here are some reactions via Literary Saloon.
5. I'm skeptical when everybody gets excited about a newly found lost work by a great author, especially when very few of these people have read any of the already-published works by said great author. Still, Carl Jung's "Red Book" has a hell of a back story. Jung is a LitKicks favorite and I recommend him highly, though I think newcomers are better off jumping in with The Undiscovered Self or Memories, Dreams, Reflections rather than this new apparent beast.
6. Don DeLillo, Paul Auster, Eve Ensler and Art Spiegelman will appear at a PEN America event to read from recently released USA government memos about torture.
7, Aquinas (via Books Inq.).
8. If Charles Bukowski were Charles M. Schulz.
9. A new book provides a sideways glance at Moby Dick by including only the parts a different "easy version" of the book left out. Let's just hope nobody gets a brilliant idea for "Moby Dick and Zombies".
10. Maud Newton gathers expressions.
11. Jamelah Earle evaluates words.
12. A new Jason Reitman/George Clooney movie called Up In The Air is based on a novel by Walter Kirn, one of the better regular critics at the New York Times Book Review.
13. Interesting thoughts about how a book's intended level of sophistication may affect its chosen point of view.
14. Like Fire is a new literary blog created by Lisa Peet and other refugees from Readerville.
15. Two months ago I wrote a post titled "Not the Jack Kerouac Estate Battle Again". If you didn't catch it the first time, I wrote this because a new court ruling has upset a long-running dispute about the Kerouac archives, and I just knew we'd be getting into it again. Since then, many interested parties have responded to this article's comments thread, including several notable individuals connected to Jack Kerouac in one way or another.
As I've said before, I don't take this battle as seriously as many of the principals do. With Jack Kerouac long safe-in-heaven dead, the battle has narrowed to a catfight over the disposition of his relics, and I've never been particularly interested in any writer's relics. Some observers locate the blame for Jack's daughter Jan Kerouac's troubled life and early death on this mess, but I don't see a clear connection there. Anyway, the conversation in this comments thread are fascinating in their own way, and I wonder if someday somebody will write a book about the Jack Kerouac estate battle. If they do, the discussion in this thread may provide some raw material. It's not a book I'd want to write, though I probably wouldn't be able to resist reading it.
4 reponses to "Relics"
I always assumed the Kerouac Estate battle was over publishing rights, royalties, use of name & image, etc.
If the fight is over relics, who owns the rights to his work?
Bill, as I understand it the Florida judge's decision that Gabrielle Kerouac's will was forged is a moral victory that does not appear to change the ownership of anything, either rights or royalties or relics. Rights and royalties remain with the Sampas family, the family of Jack's late wife Stella -- as for relics, I think they are widely scattered and, as we know, possession is 9/10's of the law.
Also as I understand it, Jan Kerouac (the heir on the "other side") did receive royalties when she was alive. What's not clear -- and I am curious to learn -- is whether or not the surviving relative Paul Blake, son of Jack's sister Nin, is contesting the status quo in any way on the basis of the Florida decision that the will was forged.
Hi Levi,
I hadn't seen the newer posts to the Kerouac estate thread.
When I saw the same old blowhard creeps appear here for the first time and begin their same old disgusting irrational assaults on Gerry Nicosia I did not want to continue with the same dreck.
(I wrote a novella on this when it occurred that sits untyped up in a notebook. I did post the very first part to the list oh so many years ago).
________
Thanks for the Jim Carroll funeral card.
It's a beautiful Jim Carroll tribute funeral card.
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