“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature — the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”
RACHEL CARSON, Silent Spring
Illustration: “Flycatcher and plum” (ink and watercolor on hosho washi) by Lisa Chakrabarti. Visit Lisa’s website CloudDragonArt.com to learn more about this amazing, gifted L.A.-based artist.
“Believe in the holy contour of life.” JACK KEROUAC
Photo: Tom Wolbers, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”
JACK KEROUAC, The Dharma Bums
Painting: “There and Here, State I” by Edward Ruscha (2007)
“I saw that my life was a vast glowing empty page and I could do anything I wanted.”
JACK KEROUAC (1922-1969)
Photo: Dan Allison (Street art in Boulder, Colorado)
Born on March 12, 1922 as Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac at 9 Lupine Road in Lowell, Massachusetts, to French-Canadian parents, Beat novelist Jack Kerouac lived a short, eventful life (he passed away at age 47) — but his books and poetry continue to inspire. His mantra was ecstasy — and he encouraged all of us to find joy everywhere and in everything.
“…the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.” JACK KEROUAC, On the Road (1957)
Bon anniversaire, Jean-Louis!
In honor of Jack Kerouac’s birthday, we are going to reprise some of the many Kerouac-inspired posts we’ve run since starting this blog in June 2012.
Yesterday, I took a walk and wandered into one of the OUT OF THE CLOSET thrift stores that brighten the world here in Southern California. This is my favorite place to look for books — because the people who contribute have great taste in literature and the prices are the low, low, lowest anywhere.
My three finds on Tuesday, March 5, 2013, we among the best I’ve ever hit. Is this the way people who play slot machines feel when three cherries appear? I paid just $1 for each of these books — and all were in beautiful condition.
Without further ado, here they are (along with a passage from each)…
“The address that Patrolman Mancuso was looking for was the tiniest structure on the block, aside from the carports, a Lilliput of the eighties. A frozen banana tree, brown and stricken, languished against the front of the porch, the tree preparing to collapse as the iron fence had done long ago. Near the dead tree there was a slight mount of earth and a leaning Celtic cross cut from plywood. The 1946 Plymouth was parked in the front yard, its bumper pressed against the porch, its taillights blocking the brick sidewalk. But, except for the Plymouth and the weathered cross and the mummified banana tree, the tiny yard was completely bare. There were no shrubs. There was no grass. And no birds sang.” From the novel A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES by John Kennedy Toole, first published by Grove Press in 1980 (and winner of a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for the author).
THE GROVE PRESS READER 1951-2001, edited by S.E. Gontarski, also features work by Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett, Marguerite Duras, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Jean Genet, D.H. Lawrence, Harold Pinter, and scores of other leading authors of this half-century in international arts and letters.
The cover blurb of THE AMERICAN NIGHT: The Writings of Jim Morrison, Volume 2 reads: “A literary last testament from rock’s poet of the damned.” (Is that really a sales pitch?) As most breathing humans (and some animals) know, Jim Morrison (1943-1971) was the driving force of the seminal 1960s band, The Doors.
AN AMERICAN PRAYER (Excerpt)
by Jim Morrison
Do you know the warm progress
under the stars?
Do you know we exist?
Have you forgotten the keys to the Kingdom?
Have you been born yet
& are you alive?
Let’s reinvent the gods, all the myths
of the ages
Celebrate symbols from deep elder forests
[Have you forgotten the lessons
of the ancient war]
And, finally, one of my all-time favorite books — I’ve given away probably 10 copies of ON WRITING by Stephen King and always snap up a copy when I find one.
Here are some words of wisdom from the writing wizard: “I believe that plotting and the spontaneity of real creation aren’t compatible…my basic belief about the making of stories is that they pretty much make themselves. The job of the writer is to give them a place to grow (and transcribe them, of course)…stories are found things, like fossils in the ground…stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world. The writer’s job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as possible.”
“Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn’t try to write fiction. It’s not a grand enough job for you.”
FLANNERY O’CONNOR (1925-1964)
Illustration: Flannery O’Connor street art, photo by Billy Craven
March is Women’s History Month. Here at Silver Birch Press, when we think of history, our mind first travels to literary history. So during the month of March, we will celebrate some of the women authors who have inspired us, starting with writer par excellence Flannery O’Connor (whose birthday also happens to fall in March). With her short story collections and novels, O’Connor proved one of the best writers — woman or man — of the 20th Century. In her short life — O’Connor died from complications of lupus at age 39 — she left a legacy that will live forever.
For great (and intense) reads, check out:
A Good Man Is Hard to Find (short stories, 1955)
Wise Blood (novel, 1952)
CHICAGO’S NELSON ALGREN
Photographs and Text by Art Shay
Foreword by David Mamet (below)
I hear the Chicago accent, and I am a gone goose. Decades of living away, acting school, speech lessons, and the desire to make myself understood in a wider world are gone, and I am saying dese, dem and dose, and am back on the corner, tapping the other fellow on the forearm to make my point, and happy. Art Shay’s writing, and his photos, have the Chicago accent, which may be to say he’s telling you the truth as he knows it, as what right-thinking person would consider doing anything else?
I remember Algren’s Chicago. I remember Algren, sitting alone, in the back at Second City, regularly. I remember the pawnshops on West Madison street—I used to shop there; Sundays at Maxwell Street, and the ventors pulling on your arm and talking in Yiddish; police headquarters at 11th and State, and getting dragged down there on this or that bogus roust when I drove a cab. Art’s photographs are so real that I reflect that I, like them, must have all occurred in black and white.
I think it takes a realist to see the humor in things. I know it takes a realist to see the depth of tragedy. Art’s work feels like the guy tapping me on the forearm.
***
In the book’s preface, photographer Art Shay quotes Ernest Hemingway’s assessment of Nelson Algren, after reading The Man with the Golden Arm, “…He has been around a long time but only the pros know him…This is a man writing and you should not read it if you can’t take a punch. I doubt if any of you can. Mr. Algren can hit with both hands and move around and he will kill you if you are not awfully careful…Boy, Mr. Algren, you are good.”
***
Chicago’s Nelson Algren is photographer Art Shay‘s account of visits during the 1950s to Chicago’s “lower depths” with novelist Nelson Algren — at the time, a resident of the city’s Near Northwest Side.
Here’s an excerpt from book’s description from the Amazon.com page: Algren gave Shay’s camera entrance into the back-alley world of Division Street, and Shay captured Algren’s poetry on film. They were masters chronicling the same patch of ground with different tools. Chicago’s Nelson Algren... [is] a deeply moving homage to the writer and his city.
“A rumor of neon flowers bleeding all night long, along those tracks where endless locals pass…” NELSON ALGREN, Chicago: City on the Make
Photo: “Pabst Blue Ribbon beer sign lights up Illinois Central Railroad freight cars parked in Chicago’s South Water Street freight terminal” by Jack Delano, 1943
Silver Birch Press 