Sunday, December 04, 2011
Kerouac and the Clones
A correspondent suggests that Jack Kerouac has no place in the slice-and-dice Penguin anthology even though Ginsberg has, and would have made the cut but for those evil money-grubbers at HarperCollins. I've heard this kind of stupid prejudice against Kerouac many times, but I still can't help wondering what planet people live on. Everybody who isn't looking for the employee of the month badge at McDonald's or next year's £50 000 Anaemic Poetry Prize and the big seat at the English Department table in the University of Clones knows Kerouac is a great poet. Here's Ginsberg's own view on the matter from an old issue of Gargoyle Magazine.
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Of course, the important thing is, acceptance by anyone except real, living, free-spirited, intelligent people who aren't complete arseholes doesn't actually matter. Only a secretly aspirational observer of the literary scene would give a shit what the money men, the prize coveters, the dwellers in big houses, the drivers of self-consciously retro-styled vehicles, the pompous coffee-and-lit-mag-carrying lecturers in the university corridors think about the poetry of Kerouac. Let them live in their shallow graves. Let them write poetry like a thousand other poets, stuff nobody would recognize if you took their name from the top of the page.
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