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07/30/2003 Archived Entry: "Kerouac bobblehead doll giveaway"

HE DID HATE HIPPIES: I doubt it will inspire a book buying binge in Lowell, Mass. but the first 1 000 fans at a game between the Lowell Spinners and Williamsport Crosscutters of the Class A New York-Penn League will receive a bobblehead doll with the likeness of Jack Kerouac.

A lot of cultural conservatives love to hate him for indirectly inspiring the hippie movement but it should be noted that he was a Beat writer, not a hippie. Kerouac, in fact, disliked the hippie movement. And any man who could write the following has a warm place in my heart:

"Those books! If only I had time to read them, and more...I went to the University Library itself, and do you know, there were hundreds of thousands of books there I honestly felt I should read! And the ideas that rush through my mind. The impatience I feel! The time running off like sand." -- Orpheus Emerged

And sure to please Kathy Shaidle and Jeremy Lott, Kerouac once wrote: "I'm not a beatnik, I'm a Catholic."

Read on.

Replies: 5 comments

I remember reading somewhere -- I wish I could remember where, & by whom -- was it Ginsberg? I forget -- an account of Kerouac's reaction when some of his companions started playing with an American flag. He stopped them & took it, carefully folded it, & insisted that it be respected.

Posted by ForNow @ 07/30/2003 02:33 PM EST

Follow-up. There's some stuff on the Internet about this. For instance, at http://www.culturewars.com/CultureWars/1999/kerouac.html :

Neal [Cassady], now a follower of Edgar Cayce, was cranked on amphetamines and LSD. Jack was drunk and depressed, and instead of sitting on a couch a Prankster had draped the American flag over, he removed the flag and carefully folded it. The meeting was a fiasco.

Also interesting stuff:
------------
"Learning to Like Allen Ginsberg" by Jeffrey Hart, The Dartmouth Review Online
http://www.dartreview.com/archives/000254.php
When Kerouac called Ginsberg a flag-burner, he meant it contemptuously. On the Road is really a bohemian valentine to America. [snip] I was perfectly willing to accept his [Ginsberg's] denial that he had ever burned a flag, and to regard Kerouacís statement as a factoid and perhaps a metaphorical statement."
------------
"Neal Cassady" at Literary Kicks at
http://www.charm.net/~brooklyn/People/NealCassady.html

When Kesey and Cassady were in New York, a party was organized for the purpose of introducing Kerouac to Kesey. But Kerouac and Cassady had been changing in opposite directions, and the meeting did not go well, especially after Kerouac, offended by somebody's frivolous treatment of an American flag, solemnly rescued the flag and folded it.

Posted by ForNow @ 07/30/2003 03:02 PM EST

I've read a number of people who argued that if Kerouac wasn't a conservative, he at least was an old-fashioned liberal. I always gave him mild conservative props.

Posted by Steve Martinovich @ 07/30/2003 04:31 PM EST

This is interesting, though I haven't read Kerouac for many years.

What do you mean by "props"?

Here's somebody who claims that Kerouac was a conservative:

From "...excerpts from 'Literary Kicks' by Levi Ashe, with editing and additional material by MOE"

http://www.wtv-zone.com/moe/moesboomerabilia/page10.html

Like Kurt Cobain, another counter-culture celebrity who seemed to be truly (as opposed to fashionably) miserable, Kerouac expressed his unhappiness nakedly in his art and was not taken seriously. Despite the 'beatnik' stereotype, Kerouac was a political conservative, especially when under the influence of his Catholic mother. As the beatniks of the 1950's began to yield their spotlight to the hippies of the 1960's, Jack took pleasure in standing against everything the hippies stood for. He supported the Vietnam War and became friendly with William F. Buckley.

Posted by ForNow @ 07/30/2003 05:30 PM EST

I just meant that while I never considered him a conservative per se, I always considered him a kindred spirit.

Posted by Steve Martinovich @ 07/30/2003 08:28 PM EST