Kerouac headed for the road…

I have come very late to Jack Kerouac, but I’m getting there.

On the Road lies buried beneath piles of unfinished books, to be exhumed eventually.

And that exhumation will happen much sooner thanks to the publication of Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954, now out in paperback.

We witness Kerouac in his early to mid twenties, working (on and off) on Town & the City, the immediate predecessor of On the Road.  And later, we’ll see him working on that masterpiece itself.  (I put that in future tense because I’m about 25% finished.)

Along the way are doubts, assurance, drop-ins from a crazed Allen Ginsberg, careful note of how many thousand words of new prose each day brought.

It’s refreshing to see that every writer has his or her own heavens and hells to negotiate.

Posted in Books | 2 Comments

In the beginning…

And thus a new web log is launched, and a soon-to-be-59-er (that would be I) joins the ranks of those bloggerrific folks who instantly publish to however many readers care to read, to however many commenters care to comment.

My writing career, such as it is, has been in the world of type, books, magazines, and paper, with the usual gatekeeper roles played by various literary agents and publishers.  I’ve had five novels published and two dozen plus short stories, for a list of which please click here.

To that, now, I add a foray into the blogosphere, the first entry of legions.  Many of these entries, though not most, will take up the topic of writing.  Others will touch upon other topics that rouse my passions–and though I’m soft-spoken, one of those quiet, simmering souls, I am in fact passionate about a great many things, as regular readers will soon discover.

And I like the idea, exhibitionist that I am, of crafting words and thereby an ever-evolving image of "me," whoever that is, and dropping those crafted words into the vast ocean of connected minds, seeing where the never-ending conversation takes us. 

For that’s what publishing of any kind is all about:  creating community; setting free the unique voice that is thy birthright; telling tales out of school, passing notes in school; being a true iconoclast, scorning, defying, and throwing down the gauntlet to every icon, every false god (and, man, are there heaps of those!); turning off the TV of canting conformity, nay, tossing the set out the window and heeding the still small voice within.  Attention must be paid!

Walt Whitman:  "I am large, I contain multitudes."

And so it is with us all.

Refuse to be small. 

Get in touch with those multitudes, nurture and become intimate with them.

Humbly trumpet the truth as you see it, and humbly be attuned to nuance, ever re-editing, ever re-visioning.

Here’s to communion!

(P.S.  Remiss would Robert be if he failed to acknowledge the magnificent website created for him by Fred Richart and Maryjo Faith Morgan of Fred’s Used Websites.  Fred and Maryjo are delightful to work with and highly recommended for anyone out there seeking a website developer.  Robert Carl sez check ’em out!) 

Posted in Weblogs | 4 Comments