For Kerouac scholars, who will find news here and there. General readers will do better to stick to On the Road .
Affectionate if unrevealing portrait of the Beat Generation icon.
Edie Parker came up in the tony suburb of Grosse Pointe, Mich., comfortable but “surrounded by the ‘me’ society” and ready for life in the big city. Making for New York as soon as she could leave her parents’ home, she met Jack Kerouac, then on a Columbia University football scholarship, and married him just as soon as she could post bail for him, Kerouac having been jailed as an accessory to murder in the Lucien Carr affair, about which Kerouac-Parker has little to add to the bulging literature on the subject. Indeed, sad to say, this book adds little to the store of Kerouacana, apart from a few gossipy tidbits: All of Jack’s friends were crazy on dope; Allen Ginsberg “could have been a great politician” but “chose to be friends with Kerouac, [William] Burroughs, and Lucien instead of women”; for a guy who would go on to write On the Road, Kerouac “never could learn to drive”; and so on. This slight, posthumously published memoir is, for all that, heartfelt, full of the naïve wonderment befitting an 18-year-old bride: “Being just married, with my love almost out of jail and the beer and the food, I was in heaven! Everyone was singing and we joined in. When our steaks came it was pure joy to cut into them and we never spoke until we were done.” Affectingly, Kerouac-Parker writes that she left Kerouac in 1946 because of the drugs and booze but would not do so again could she change the course of history; for his part, she adds, “Jack persisted in calling me his ‘life’s wife.’ ”
For Kerouac scholars, who will find news here and there. General readers will do better to stick to On the Road .Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-87286-464-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: City Lights
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2007
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s...
Music journalist and musician Wald (Talking 'Bout Your Mama: The Dozens, Snaps, and the Deep Roots of Rap, 2014, etc.) focuses on one evening in music history to explain the evolution of contemporary music, especially folk, blues, and rock.
The date of that evening is July 25, 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, where there was an unbelievably unexpected occurrence: singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, already a living legend in his early 20s, overriding the acoustic music that made him famous in favor of electronically based music, causing reactions ranging from adoration to intense resentment among other musicians, DJs, and record buyers. Dylan has told his own stories (those stories vary because that’s Dylan’s character), and plenty of other music journalists have explored the Dylan phenomenon. What sets Wald's book apart is his laser focus on that one date. The detailed recounting of what did and did not occur on stage and in the audience that night contains contradictory evidence sorted skillfully by the author. He offers a wealth of context; in fact, his account of Dylan's stage appearance does not arrive until 250 pages in. The author cites dozens of sources, well-known and otherwise, but the key storylines, other than Dylan, involve acoustic folk music guru Pete Seeger and the rich history of the Newport festival, a history that had created expectations smashed by Dylan. Furthermore, the appearances on the pages by other musicians—e.g., Joan Baez, the Weaver, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Dave Van Ronk, and Gordon Lightfoot—give the book enough of an expansive feel. Wald's personal knowledge seems encyclopedic, and his endnotes show how he ranged far beyond personal knowledge to produce the book.
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s personal feelings about Dylan's music or persona.Pub Date: July 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236668-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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