Beat Generation, a play...

Doubting Timus <woesong DeleteThis @yahoo.com> wrote:

> Other nuministic nuncios for Mrs Cassady were: The Rosicrucians; Edgar
> Caycee; Jonathon Livingston Seagull; the amazing Abuejo, psychic surgeon
> from South America; and anybody else with a preternatural pretense.

All of those? She clearly has a mystic bent. Fortunately it doesn't
prevent her being a very nice human being. I know that's not a
fashionable qualification but I reckon it counts for a lot. And for a
book written by somebody with a mystical tendency, 'Off the Road' has
its feet pretty firmly on the ground when it comes to describing the
cast of characters.
--
Peter
 >> Stay informed about: Beat Generation, a play... 

One of my discoveries in looking over the notes from Anne Murphy for
her own version of events was how diminished was the supernatural in
more current accounts. I had arrived from a rural Texas plains
community in another universe right into the heart of the Northern
California metaphysical experience in 1972. It was drastic.

I mean, perfectly ordinary intelligent folks would sit in the living
room at Bancroft Way and chat amiably about a visitor from outer space.
One of my first questions from a friend of Carolyn's was "Have you
ever astral traveled?" The main movement at the time was a clinging to
the life and legend of a San Francisco character named Gavin Arthur,
who was an astrologer, among other claims, and recently deceased.
There were a series of wakes for Gavin Arthur, and I attended one of
them on a pleasure barge out in San Francisco Bay, featuring Alan Watts
as moderator. Big Daddy Nord was there, but I'm not sure anyone else
from the Beat era showed up except for Carolyn.

Yes, she was good at describing accurately; I'm convinced better than
Kerouac, in some cases. I know of a couple of scenes she corrected for
me from the K literature, and I'm sure she was right. After all, we
don't read K strictly as a historian, do we?
 >> Stay informed about: Beat Generation, a play... 

Hi,
I just tried to open the link to the times review but the page doesn't
come up...I don't suppose you could please copy-paste the article,so that
I can read it?
 >> Stay informed about: Beat Generation, a play... 

Dave Moore <dave.TakeThisOut@dsPaMmEjnOtmoore.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:

> On the fateful day Mr. Lapham described, a film crew making "The
> Subterraneans," based on Kerouac's novel of the same title, came by looking
> to hire extras.

Good god... I remember seeing that turkey when it came out, at the
Essoldo cinema Chelsea I think it was... Gerry Mulligan proving that as
an actor, he was a fine sax player... All neat and shiny and bright
colours. I find it almost impossible to believe that the supporting cast
was actually recruited from a SF bar rather than from the 'teen' pool of
some Californian casting agency.

I knew it was bad, but the death of the Beat generation? So it was
dangerous too. I live and learn.
--
Peter
 >> Stay informed about: Beat Generation, a play... 

In the visual posTV era, validation is when the movie comes out. You might
as well try and make a movie out of a prose experience like a Merriam as The
Subterraneans. I remember my disgust with a hideous bore of pseudo-Beats
lounging around their traditional media habitats, groaning and smoking. The
best part of it was indeed the Gerry Mulligan sequence.

There was a Rubicon crossed in the fifties. Stories are now told in visual
format. That cuts off language, or thought, at the knees, and you cannot
drag old bones from preposthistoric eras into the day. It's Paris Hilton
time, folks. I don't know of a single film exploiting the era I would ever
watch again.

Forget the movies. Tell me who caught the glaring typo in Big Sur. That's
what I want to know. Or, how about that amazing hike of Henry Morley in
Bums to "drain the crankcase" before the hike up Matterhorn? I missed that
the first two or three times I read the book.

Text. That's the game. It wasn't called Bop Plasticity.


--
Doubting Timus
ubi dubium ibi libertas
timus.DeleteThis@nerdnosh.com
 >> Stay informed about: Beat Generation, a play... 

Hello,and many thanks very much for copy-pasting the article!...quite an
ironic bit that one wasn't it?
Oh well...
 >> Stay informed about: Beat Generation, a play...