Kerouac's On the Road 50 Years Later

Kerouac's On the Road 50 Years Later:

• Gilbert Millstein's original New York Times review
• David Gates in Newsweek
• Alicia Rebensdorf in AlterNet
• Sean O'Hagan in The Observer
• Various articles on Kerouac from The New York Times

When Kerouac's scroll went on the road

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2004 NPR story on the scroll

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Photo of the scroll from Christie's

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David Havird Essay on James Dickey in Spring 2000 Virginia Quarterly Review

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Charles Murray in The American on why the SAT should be abolished (Murray is a libertarian who works for the American Enterprise Institute and co-authored the controversial book, The Bell Curve

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Site for the very cool Found Magazine

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Brad Land's Goat as the summer "Big Read" at Coastal Carolina University:

• Selection of book announced
• Book selection "shelved"
• Editorial on censorship of Goat

Brad Land's Pilgrims Upon the Earth

I just finished former student Brad Land's first novel, Pilgrims Upon the Earth. This one follows by three years his wildly successful memoir, Goat, which we used in fall 2005 as a common text for our freshman classes at Francis Marion University, his alma mater. Students (and critics) raved about that book, and I was proud of the fact that Brad made a start on it as a final project for my Literary Nonfiction class. He went on to UNC-Wilmington, where his MFA was in nonfiction, and the harrowing story that became Goat was his thesis.

From the get-go and to an astonishing extent, Brad had a distinctive but unaffected style. He would say, I know, that this voice, veering between the florid and the clipped, has been honed and tempered by the likes of novelist Cormac McCarthy and poet Jack Gilbert, also affected by the lyric essay as exemplified by John D'Agata plus many others. But Brad's language is distinctive and only occasionally tips over into the precious.

Pilgrims tells what is on the surface a pretty basic story. Terry Webber, whose mother commits suicide shortly after his birth, lives with a sympathetic but ineffective millworker father in South Carolina. Terry is a dopehead and a slacker but is rendered endearing by his off-kilter, sensitive take on the world around him. He falls for Alice Washington, the two embark on a journey to visit her sister, and Alice has a fatal accident. This rocks Terry's world and seems all the more wrenching for the flat, matter-of-fact indiscriminate approach he seems to adopt toward this and other events, both minor and major, in his life. He engages in petty crimes with his mates, gets kicked off the soccer team, intermittently reconnects with his dad, and finally lights out for the territories, in this case Colorado and Alice's sister, the destination they had in mind when it all came apart.

There is an enigmatic sort of redemption or hope or something kindled by the novel's end. But what emerges best of all and keeps the story rolling is Brad's sometimes zany and always inventive language, a diction and kick that reveals an entire world-view, albeit a sometimes jaded, maddeningly passive-aggressive one.

Searching "Brad Land" on the web still gives you a ton of Goat references and only a few for this novel. But presumably that ratio will alter this fall when his book tour kicks off. I could see hordes of young people getting into this one, just as they did Goat, even if the subject matter is not as vivid and immediate.

Reviews of Pilgrims Upon the Earth:

David L. Ulin in the Los Angeles Times

Craig Brandhorst in the Charleston Post and Courier

Brief Review in Publishers' Weekly

Charles McNair in Paste Magazine

Matt Wake story on Land from UpstateToday.com

Maxwell Autrey Driggers

My grandson Maxwell Autrey Driggers was born at 1:13 a.m. August 7. He weighed in at 8 lb. 10 oz., large enough but smaller than his 6-year-old sister Amelia (9 lb. 6 oz.) and 3-year-old Boyd (10 lb. 6 oz.). Nell was induced and labored for some 16 hours. Max and Nell will be home today. Janne and I are here in Ocean Springs for several days trying to help with the transition.

R.I.P. Bergman and Antonioni

Dana Stevens obit on Ingmar Bergman in Slate



Rick Lyman obit on Michaleangelo Antonioni in The New York Times

A Poem a Day

No Certain Claim
(villanelle, poem for July 31, 2007)

The restless waiting holds me like a spell.
My daughter’s son will take my father’s name.
Which door will open? None of us can tell.

The summer’s long demise, its ghostly knell
sounds out, and nothing stays the same.
The eager waiting holds me like a spell.

Some days I pass like heaven’s infidel,
a lonely wanderer, no certain claim.
Which door will open? None of us can tell.

I hear my mother’s voice, clear as a bell,
call out to me, her world a shrinking frame.
The awful waiting holds me like a spell.

Grandchild and parent, each within a cell,
will find the key to this confining game.
Which door will open? None of us can tell.

These lonely vigils: who can stand them well?
I keep my peace and feed the earthly flame.
The endless waiting holds me like a spell
Which door will open? None of us can tell.

I've written a poem a day since July 1. This perhaps crazy and compulsive mass production started as a mutual challenge with my colleague Beckie Flannagan to write a daily poem, start to finish, for a month. Now, we're well into August, and the poems keep coming. Naturally, some of them are pretty bad, while others show some promise. No doubt some will remain buried in the depths of my poetry drawer. Others, though, I will certainly revise and send out. Among the 34 poems produced to date are three sonnets (July 13 and 20, August 2), a sestina (July 28), and a villanelle (July 31).

I'm not sure how long this will continue. At some point, certainly once I get into the thick of fall semester, I'm sure I'll want to spend more time evaluating and revising what I've done. Still, the past month's work reinforces what I've long known about the habit of writing and the importance of regular, if not daily, word work. William Stafford started each day with poetry writing, and many others have done the same. It's difficult to write strong, publishable poems, but it's not hard to write daily, especially once you've designated a time and place to do so. It's a lesson I try to teach all my students. The often-quoted Latin phrase for this is "nulla dies sine linea" (never a day without lines).

Ilija Melentijević, a Serbian who maintains a blog called "Nulla dies sine linea", applies this slogan to his art: "Never a day without a drawing." The writer and writing teacher Don Murray wrote and sketched daily (see my blog entry on Murray for 4 January 2007).

See the flickr page that attributes this dictum to Pliny, the Elder.
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Ron Silliman's blog , 3 August 2007, contains a good discussion of rhythm and change in poets' work, esp. as applied to John Ashbery

Charles Simic

Photo: Sara Barrett

Charles Simic named poet laureate

Cortland Review interview with Simic

Simic at the Academy of American Poets site

Recordings of several Simic poems

Artful Dodge interview with Simic

Lady Bird and Woody

Lady Bird Johnson and Woody Guthrie, both born in 1912

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Here's the Washington Post editorial on Lady Bird Johnson (1912-2007), who died July 11. Much has been said about her attention to the environment, her campaign for beautification and the planting of wild flowers along interstates, not to mention her charm and firm grace as First Lady. But perhaps her most lasting contribution to history will prove to be the superb and detailed diary she kept of her years in the White House. Here's the moving, wonderfully written entry for March 31, 1968, the day President Johnson announced that he would not run for re-election. I wrote a considerably less articulate diary entry on that topic myself the next day. I was in the Peace Corps in Asamankese, Ghana and I recall lying in bed when I heard the news over our scratchy little Phillips radio.

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Woody Guthrie would have been 95 (about the same age as Lady Bird Johnson) on July 14. Here's the WG website with links to all his lyrics, as well as special WG events and a photo of Guthrie with his guitar labeled "This machine kills Fascists."

A sample of Guthrie's great lyrics from "Grand Coulee Dam":

In the misty crystal glitter

Of the wild and windward spray,

Men have fought the pounding waters

And met a watery grave.

Why, she tore their boats to splinters,

But she gave men dreams to dream

Of the day the Coulee Dam

Would cross that wild and wasted stream.

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Yale professor William Deresiewicz in The American Scholar on depictions of English teachers in film

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Terry Eagleton in The Guardian: "For almost the first time in two centuries, there is no eminent British poet, playwright or novelist prepared to question the foundations of the western way of life."

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Alan Gilbert reviews Tracy K. Smith's Duende in The Village Voice

(SEE also 3/5/07 blog)

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Joseph Joffe on John Lukacs biography of George Kennan

(SEE also 5/5/07 blog)

R.I.P Marlette

Photo by Tom Gilbert - AP

Obit for cartoonist Doug Marlette

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Review of Andrew Keen's The Cult of the Amateur

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Web site for Chip Heath and Dan Heath's engaging book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

Cheney, Booth, Ondaatje

7 "New" Wonders of the World

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"Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency" - a series in The Washington Post

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N.Y. Times Obit for Philip Booth

Reviews of Michael Ondaatje's Divisadero:

San Francisco Chronicle (Marcela Valdes)

Straight.com

Christian Science Monitor (Yvonne Zipp)

International Herald Tribune (Janet Maslin)

AARP Magazine (Ellen Kanner)

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Background on Ondaatje's Previous Work

Last Night in Rome

Last Night in Rome

Thinking to tire ourselves out
and sleep like the Caesars
before tomorrow’s long flight,
we put on our walking shoes
and go down in our hotel’s elevator,
sturdy cage with an accordion-type
inner door and on every floor
heavy outer grillwork
that clanks pleasingly when closed.
We pass the café on the corner,
where white-capped guys yell
“Macchiato!” or “Cappucino!”
and bang the old grounds
out of the espresso scoop
before adding fresh coffee.
We hike down the hill, skirting
the coliseum once more
and wander the ghostly Forum
past where Julius Caesar was stabbed,
past Marmertine Prison where
St. Peter was held, and then
west across the Tiber to Travastere.
The African traders are out
for the dinner crowds, peddling
purses arrayed on bright cloths.
Arcing back to Centro Storico,
we find the Pantheon,
and our feet ache, but we push on
to Trevi Fountain, then the Spanish Steps
teeming with loungers, and by then
we’re ready for the long
trek back down Via Corso
to our hotel near the terminal.

Pisa

Pisa

It is impossible for me
to see the leaning tower
without imagining it
as a pile of pizzas
about to topple
onto the greensward.
The photos never show
the huge cathedral beside it,
majestic and serious,
or its ornate baptistery.
Instead we see only
the tower and its funny tilt,
as though it stands alone
on the Field of Miracles,
a prop for photos showing
tourists pretending to hold it up
or trying to match its angle.
Walking back to the train
through congested streets,
I buy a triangle of pizza
with round mushrooms,
oblong anchovies,
and squares of mozzarella.
As the slice leans toward
my mouth, the waitress
smiles like Mona Lisa.

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Terry Eagleton on a new book about Bakhtin

"Language for Bakhtin is a cockpit of warring forces, as each utterance finds itself occupied from within by alien significations. Every sign glances sideways at other signs, bears the traces of them within its body, and faces simultaneously towards speaker, object, context and addressee."

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Visual Journal Sites

1000 Journals

Dan Eldon

Zettiology (Tracy V. Moore)

Sabrina Harrison

Manarola

Manarola

One evening before the gulls
flew to bed we saw a boat
hanging from the sky.
A giant crane snatched it
from the tiny harbor
and cranked it to the street
that drapes over the hill.
With no cars in town,
the fishing boats parallel
park in front of the shops.
Houses rise like a wall
of colored blocks.
Alleys and stairways thread
the town, fissures in bedrock.
Above it all, vineyards grip
the sky to catch the first
and last sun of the day.

Vatican

Vatican

21 May 1972 Laszlo Toth, an unemployed geologist, walked into Saint Peter's Basilica, strode up to the front altar and climbed onto Michelangelo's Pietà. While standing to the side of the work, Toth produced a hammer from underneath his coat. With the hammer Toth struck the Pietà while shouting, "I am Jesus Christ!" He hit the work 15 times before being pulled away from it by an Italian fireman and several plainclothes guards.

From “A Partial Guide to the Tools of Art Vandalism” by Steven Goss

Without knife or hammer, pistol or blow torch,
I join the early arrivals at St. Peter’s,
heading straight for the Pieta, encased
behind bullet-proof glass just inside
the door exactly thirty-five years
from the day Laszlo Toth took
a sledge hammer to Mother Mary.
She and Jesus glisten like new
behind the protective shield
near the sealed jubilee door
that opens every twenty-five years.
Morning light enters the basilica
like a heavenly revelation.
The cavernous space swallows
my footsteps. It’s large enough
to hold 95,000, old enough
to erase the memory of Laszlo Toth,
who was confined in a mental hospital
for two years before being deported
to Australia and disappearing from view.

Later I climb the 400 steps
to the top of the dome, a winding
travail as cramped as the path
to heaven itself. Then, stepping
out onto the narrow encircling balcony,
I look down on the giant keyhole
of Bernini’s piazza swarming with people.
Beyond the encircling colonnade,
the Via della Conciliazione stretches
toward the Tiber. I am as high as anyone
in Rome. I wind back down
to the souvenir shop, buy Vatican stamps
and espresso. On the crowded street
I scan the Roman faces for Laszlo.

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Reviews of Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach

Jonathan Lethem in The New York Times

Jennifer Reese in Entertainment Weekly

Natasha Walter in Guardian Unlimited

Colm Toibin in The London Review of Books

Venice

Venice

And suddenly the train dumps you on the lip
of the Grand Canal and you catch the vaporetto
that follows the watery “s” to the San Giglio stop,
and you cross three bridges on your way
to the albergo, and within an hour
you see that Venice is filled with saints,
and the black gondolas glide like sleek carriages
beneath the bridges, and the gondoliers
really do wear striped shirts and sing
as they skull along, and it’s all an act,
but the city itself seems a theatrical maze,
and you’re going to get lost on your way
to St. Mark’s Square where you’ll visit
the Doge’s Palace and walk through
one of Europe’s largest rooms
and cross the Bridge of Sighs
to the cramped dungeons and scrawled-on walls
that only hint at the anguish that remains
as solid as anything in the city built on water.

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Interview with Charles Bernstein about L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Poetry

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Wall Street Journal video about Guantanamo prison poetry

Florence

Duomo and Bell Tower
Ponte Vecchio

Florence

When the train takes us toward Bologna,
when we leave behind Brunelleschi’s Duomo
and the sienna-tiled roofs of Florence,
after we close the door on the albergo
run by Allesio and Asumi, each day
the shopkeepers will sell diamonds
on the Ponte Vecchio, the sun will set
over Santa Trinita, and the marble
of Michelangelo’s David will glow
like new skin. His massive hand
will cradle the killing stone,
waiting for Goliath, as though
any afternoon the giant, as tall
as the cathedral bell tower,
will stride past Dante’s stone house,
moving north through narrow streets,
past pizzerias and souvenir shops,
the army of the Philistines at his back.

Bologna

Bologna

In Bologna, too early in the day
for tourists, a man and his son
hold accordions under a colonnade.
The man’s fingers skim the keys
like butterflies on “Roll Out the Barrel.”
His brow-wrinkled son grips
his too-large instrument, battered
and gray, trying to play along.
He’s got the moves, the in and out
of the bellows, the erratic foot-tap.
But his notes punch the air at random,
go off in directions all their own.
They lean toward one another
like the old towers down the street.
I toss a euro into their cup and walk
two blocks to the piazza
where Neptune’s Fountain
murmurs day and night. A constellation
of coins glistens beneath the water.
In the nearby palazzo is a stairway
wide enough for a team of horses.

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David Shumway on Rock Stars and Hip Hop
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Keeping Old Italian violins in shape

DeLillo's New Novel

Reviews of Don DeLillo's new novel, Falling Man:

New York Times

Literary Review

Newsweek

New York Sun

Guardian Unlimited

Kirkus Reviews

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The Don DeLillo Society Website

Baggage

Baggage

My mother, now bedridden, helpless, a moored vessel,
sees travel as mere skittering across the surface of culture.
She wanted only to set up housekeeping in another country.

Wherever she went--Colombia, Brazil--she packed along
her settled way, her ease in baking rolls or chicken.
Now she cannot walk, much less venture onto the llanos.

Her stories have been cast off—or locked inside.
Now I have the power of the word. She needs me.
Occasionally her good right hand reaches

across her placid body to the left arm, inert
on its pillow, to rub or reposition it, coax it
back into action. It’s the most she can do.

Early on, we harbor the fear that someone listens,
and then, the fear that no one does. As I pack for Italy,
my mother says she’s glad she doesn’t have to go.

The great dark outside blankets all of us, outlasts
even the ravages of sunlight, said to be stunning

in Rome. Her voice grows faint over the phone.

Lawrence Halprin

Lawrence Halprin, born in 1916 and presumably now 90, made his mark as a landscape and urbanscape architect, designing for such spaces as Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco. He is a traveler who records his observations visually and verbally in a pleasing combination. I first learned about him through his Notebooks: 1959-1971. Like many innovators, he is hard to categorize neatly. Best know for his urban designs, his notebooks demonstrate his interest in a variety of natural and manmade phenomena. His wife Anna is a dancer/choreographer, and he apparently has spent a lot of time exploring connections between his architectural perspectives and her craft. In my travels, I'd like to learn to slow down and take the time that it must require to do observational sketches and notations like this one from a town in Norway (click on it for a closeup):

Smailovic and Graduation

Who is Vedran Smailovic?

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Robert Fulghum on Smailovic
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Bill Moran, formerly provost at Francis Marion College/University, gave yesterday's commencement address and received an honorary degree for his past service to FMU and to the cause of higher education in South Carolina. He left our campus to become President of Lander University and retired from there several years ago. He spoke to the graduates about the cellist Vedran Smailovic, who persisted in playing his cello in Sarajevo surrounded by destruction and danger--the one small thing he could do to pay tribute to the innocent dead and to bring some light to the living. He used his talent in the best way he could. Moran's message to the graduates was to take Smailovic's courage and dedication to heart. Make the best possible use of your own abilities, however modest. Bill is an absolutely admirable man. He was fair and firm as a provost, and he never forgot his roots in the English Department. He taught a course each semester, sometimes a freshman comp. course. He has returned to FMU frequently on various occasions. In 2005 and 2006, he attended the lecture series given his name: the Moran Lectures--an annual spring opportunity for one retiring or recently retired member of the faculty to address students and colleagues.