Comments on: Go Moan for Man, Jack Kerouac

By: Elana

Elana — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 16:03:20 +0000

Thanks for reminding me. I didn’t realize it was the book’s anniversary. On The Road was one of the books that was soo important to me as a young teenager. I think it should be required reading in high school. Of course, the same year I read On The Road (I think 9th grade) I remember writing an essay for class on why required reading was a bad policy because it told kids how to think or it turned reading from fun into a chore. God I was so predictable.

By: BC in SA

BC in SA — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 02:25:19 +0000

Man, that Kerouac/Allen clip is quite a find. Watching that made my evening.

Call me pre-ironic, but I loved “On The Road”- and I didn’t get around to reading it until a couple of years ago. I’ll take the beat generation over today’s cynical, hipper-than-hip fashion slaves. In Kerouac’s day, if you weren’t part of the “American Dream” you were truly an outcast. Watch “The Wild Ones” and you’ll see that what back then was considered a shocking outlaw threat to polite society was nothing more than people who just wanted to be their own self & not a cookie-cutter consumer.

Thanks Jason, and thanks Jack- and thank you Mrs. Cagilicudy, wherever you are (sp?)

By: Tom Watson

Tom Watson — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 01:40:58 +0000

Love the Steve Allen video…but Macca for Kerouac in 1969 - who had the better work still to come?

By: Dan Leo

Dan Leo — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 21:35:19 +0000

Carroll might not be a total jerk, wwolfe. I think the historical context here is that at that time, 1969, there was an odd but very pervasive rumor going around that Paul McCartney had died, but that his death had been kept secret for some strange reason (people were smoking a lot of pot in those days). So the young Jim Carroll was probably just expressing his youthful preference for whom he would have dead, if someone had to be dead. He must have been a Lennon fan. Also, he’d probably just heard “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” for the first time.

By: wwolfe

wwolfe — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 18:01:44 +0000

I don’t know enough about Kerouac to have a worthwhile opinion. But based on that one quote at the top of the essay, I’m absolutely convinced that Jim Carroll is a total jerk.