Beatnik for Jesus
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
I sat at my desk properly caffeinated, with the sound of the new Coldplay album in my ears as I extricated the lovely white goo from the center of maple frosted long John. I am basking in the glow of one of the best compliments I have ever received.
One of the girls in the office cut her hair last night. I told her it looked good. Later she told me, "AC, thanks for always making me feel good about myself."
If I can leave this world and people say that when they remember me, it will have been a good life. Those people that have done that for me have been the people I would do anything for and always valued what they had to say because they had added something to my life. That is very different from those people in my life who simply criticised me in the name of mentoring or helping without the authority that a real relationship provides.
Thanks for reading.
AC
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Tom Waits reads Charles Bukowski
I've started reading a little Bukowski lately and I really like him.
Here's one of his poems read by Tom Waits.
Thanks for reading,
AC
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
The Penguin Poet
Thanks for reading.
AC
Monday, September 12, 2011
Literary Steel Cage Match between Upton Sinclair and Somerset Maugham. Throwing folding chairs will be permitted...
I originally called this post "Of Human Bondage and Main Street-Reviews and Literary Theory of the Difference Between Novels and Essays.", and then I realized that would bring almost no hits, and sounded like some of the essays I wrote in college, so I added a little zing to it.
I recently read two very good novels:
The difference is that novels explore truths more completely by putting their characters in the midst of trying to live out what they believe. Not only that, but their beliefs are challenged by other characters in the novels who operate under different paradigms. Through the passage of time in the novel, we see characters changing their beliefs in response to their experiences. In this way, the novel has an almost organic feel to it. It does not seek to convince you of something based on reasoning alone, but instead uses the narrative as a vehicle to experiment with how different paradigms would play out in different situations. Now, because the novel does not rely on the same careful reasoning based on gathered evidence to prove its point, it has to convince the reader on a gut-level that the narrative resonates with their own real life experiences; the novel has to present a believable story, or any chance of proving any valid truths are lost.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Jack Kerouac's 30 Essentials for Spontaneous Prose
Jack Kerouac's writing was very unique and his prose especially has a certain quality
that you won't find in other authors. It's similar in some ways to Walt Whitman, but
to me, it has a desperate, hungry feel, as if each word were a meal to starving man,
He called it the Spontaneous Prose Method. Below is a list that he published of
30 essentials necessary to write in this method. Even if you aren't a writer, you
will find this interesting.
- Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
- Submissive to everything, open, listening
- Try never get drunk outside yr own house
- Be in love with yr 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 yourself
- 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
from a 1958 letter to Don Allen, in Heaven & Other Poems, Grey Fox Press, 1958, 1977, 1983.
Thanks for reading
AC
Saturday, September 10, 2011
The Zombie Hunters
I have always liked Zombie Movies, or anything Post-Apocalyptic. I'm sure there are thousands of essays about why those genres seem to appeal to so many people and I'm really not in the mood to explore that idea ad-nauseum.
My personal theory is that they are so popular because they put us in the situation where we can dream of throwing off all the bullshit of polite society and go back to simply surviving by our wits and strength and actually fighting for our lives. That's in place of the kind of political campaigning many of us do everyday as we try to keep our jobs intact or deal with teachers and classmates in college or high school.
I think it also appeals to throwing off a lot of the responsibilities of mowing our lawns, paying our taxes, keeping the oil changed in the mini-van. In a post apocalyptic zombie world, the lawn and insurance is the last thing you live for and you really live in the moment. You have no to-do lists, other than keep the clip full of ammo, the chainsaw full of gas and the door barricaded.
That, and I think we all would like to be able to loot...you know like a huge garage sale with no haggling over anything. By the way, The Zombie Hunters has an I HEART LOOTING T-Shirt on sale, its pretty cool....
(This weblog does not condone or encourage the illegal looting of homes or business of any kind, unless there was actually a Zombie emergency, in which case, it is our humble opinion it would be permissible....mkay?)
Thanks for reading.
AC