Jack Kerouac's New Year's Resolutions

Brian Fairbanks — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 18:01:00 GMT

Jack Kerouac is dead, so obviously these are what we call "vintage" rules to live by. (In fact, this coming year will mark the 40th Anniversary of the Beat Generation writer's death, which was due to cirrhosis of the liver.)

And while these chunks of wisdom, taken from his Belief and Technique in Modern Prose (or, at least, the style of rapid-fire modern prose he invented and brought down with him), are geared toward writers, they are words to live by in 2009-- so says us:

Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for your own joy
Submissive to everything, open, listening
Try never get drunk outside your own house
Be in love with your life
Something that you feel will find its own form
Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
Blow as deep as you want to blow
Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
The unspeakable visions of the individual
No time for poetry but exactly what is
Visionary tics shivering in the chest
In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
Like Proust be an old teahead of time
Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
Write in recollection and amazement for yrself
Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
Accept loss forever
Believe in the holy contour of life
Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better
Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
You're a Genius all the time
Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

True, we don't understand half of what he says, but everyone can take a line or two and run with it. The man who once wrote "I want to marry my novels and have short stories for children" would have turned 86 this past year.

Via Wikipedia.

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The Greatest Dive Bars: The White Horse Tavern

Brian Fairbanks — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 19:53:00 GMT

Continuing our new monthly feature on this country's finest places to drink to ruin, this time we're featuring Manhattan's White Horse Tavern, home base for many of America's finest gritty male writers, including animated medicine cabinet Hunter S. Thompson and infamous female terrorizer Norman Mailer.

These and other intellectual graffiti grace the hallowed stalls of the White Horse (there's also, if you can find it, a note directed toward the late Jack Kerouac, who drank off and on again till his death from cirrhosis of the liver in 1969, saying kindly, "JACK GO HOME!"

The greatest White Horse Tavern story is actually about Dylan Thomas, the Welsh poet and some believe Robert Zimmerman in disguise, who finished the last day of his life at this very bar.

On 5 November, at the White Horse Tavern, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, when he started to feel ill. He decided go back to his room at the Hotel Chelsea, where he later collapsed and slipped into a coma. An ambulance was called, which took him to St Vincent's Hospital. Thomas died four days later on 9 November 1953 at around 1pm.
The most popular myth is that Thomas' last words were, "I've had eighteen straight whiskies, I think that is a record." [Wikipedia]

While the West Village has become too classy for anything resembling a dive bar to survive, The White Horse nonetheless qualifies for its sheer old age and the presence of regular barflies. So, have one on all the great writers at West 11th and Hudson-- and remember... if you're having a ball when it comes to last call, do not go gentle into that goodnight.

Previously: The Greatest Dive Bars: The Saturn Bar

Scanner : jack kerouac

Jack Kerouac's New Year's Resolutions

3 Things We Wish We'd Gotten For Christmas, Or: Scanner Verena Is A Sucker For Infomercials

New Year's Celebrations Lacking Balls

What Do Cubans Really Think of Cuba?

The Greatest Dive Bars: The White Horse Tavern