Originally posted Saturday, December 15, 2012
I went to a holiday party last night at an old friend's house. We went to high school together and were college roommates. After college, we worked in the same factory and started a band that became fairly successful. Then it was over, for the most part. Our lives took different paths, yada, yada, yada.
Last night we sat in a room together and talked. We hadn't done that in a long while. It was reminiscing, mostly, an attempt to hold on to memories that were fading, trying to get the details right about people and places and events. It is the sort of common thing when observed from the outside looks and sounds awful, the sort of scene they try to make meaningful in schlocky films . . . two old friends sitting on a porch with beers remembering this and remembering that with a chuckle and warm postures. Truly, I hate those scenes. Still, I had fun.
We have each been voracious readers, and eventually the conversation turned to books, things remembered in much the way we recalled old sporting victories or past girlfriends or dangerous nights, even reconstructing the plots of novels we once thought so important which have little meaning in the world today. He was talking about moving to his new home and culling his library having given away so many books. It is O.K., I said. Most would never be read or referenced again. We began to talk about seminal books, things that would remain touchstones, and the first I mentioned was "On the Road."
"It's not a great book to reread," I said, "but you have to have it. It is the beginning of the new literature. Without that book, there would be no Gay Talese or Norman Mailer or Tom Wolf or Hunter S. Thompson or Charles Bukowski. It was the beginning of a new form that gave permission to them all. He ushered in the New Journalism." And we talked about that group, that crowd, each of us having had direct experiences with many of the beats, and we began with remembrances anew, stories of Philip Lamantia and Neely Cherkovsky and Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsburg and others, people whose works once moved us to live in a certain direction but whose works we would not read again. We knew it would be embarrassing.
Kerouac's search for meaning in the void, the drunken zen he passed down to a couple generations. . . it got us all into trouble. There was a crazy, tender sweetness to it, though, that was very, very seductive. If you've never seen him reading from the novel while Steve Allen plays piano, you might want to watch this video from 1959. They had some pretty good television even then, I guess.
Last night we sat in a room together and talked. We hadn't done that in a long while. It was reminiscing, mostly, an attempt to hold on to memories that were fading, trying to get the details right about people and places and events. It is the sort of common thing when observed from the outside looks and sounds awful, the sort of scene they try to make meaningful in schlocky films . . . two old friends sitting on a porch with beers remembering this and remembering that with a chuckle and warm postures. Truly, I hate those scenes. Still, I had fun.
We have each been voracious readers, and eventually the conversation turned to books, things remembered in much the way we recalled old sporting victories or past girlfriends or dangerous nights, even reconstructing the plots of novels we once thought so important which have little meaning in the world today. He was talking about moving to his new home and culling his library having given away so many books. It is O.K., I said. Most would never be read or referenced again. We began to talk about seminal books, things that would remain touchstones, and the first I mentioned was "On the Road."
"It's not a great book to reread," I said, "but you have to have it. It is the beginning of the new literature. Without that book, there would be no Gay Talese or Norman Mailer or Tom Wolf or Hunter S. Thompson or Charles Bukowski. It was the beginning of a new form that gave permission to them all. He ushered in the New Journalism." And we talked about that group, that crowd, each of us having had direct experiences with many of the beats, and we began with remembrances anew, stories of Philip Lamantia and Neely Cherkovsky and Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsburg and others, people whose works once moved us to live in a certain direction but whose works we would not read again. We knew it would be embarrassing.
Kerouac's search for meaning in the void, the drunken zen he passed down to a couple generations. . . it got us all into trouble. There was a crazy, tender sweetness to it, though, that was very, very seductive. If you've never seen him reading from the novel while Steve Allen plays piano, you might want to watch this video from 1959. They had some pretty good television even then, I guess.
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