moon traveller herald

John Updike who could turn a sentence like very few died Tuesday north of Boston. I was not a big Updike head - never got through one of his novels - but like many literate micks in this neck of the woods-o in the late 20th century I read and admired his poetry, short stories and literary criticism, especially in the New Yorker and New York Review of Books. He was not like more favorite fellow writers Mailer and Kerouac. He strove as said in NYT Obit for a burgherly life. No harm, no foul. The threads of his prose were poetic zephyrs - like larks a'wing. Moon Traveller Herald once did write about Updike. It was just when some people were beginning to grok on the possibility that Google was nigh on a Golden Calf. Where is all this algortighmic parsing and free text borrowing going? He pegged aptly the problem with the new Digital Google Golem to its bloody wall of techno pap. He sang the praise of the physical book, the oily old book store and reminded the Google-eyed usurpers of th...

"This world we have .. is a torrent of suffering. You can see it streaming across the newspapers in a blur of print." - Jack Kerouac, Kerouac's Letters V1 , p. 479

Last year saw release of the beat manuscript legend known as “And the Hippos Were Boiled in their Tanks,” a book about Lucien Carr’s killing of David Kammerer composed by Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs in their early writing days [circa 1945]. But that is not what I came here to talk about - Boston sports writer George Kimball does a real good job on the h'ippo' book in the Nov 8 issue of the Boston Phoenix in a piece entitled Back Beat ; I will take another tact. I am here to write about a short story by Kerouac called “cityCityCITY” . This is a Kerouac story stylistically unlike any of his others. In a beat buff blindfold test, I’d bet most people would guess that William Burroughs wrote it. Yes, stylistically it is closely related to the Missourian’s work. Kerouac saw this as another possible collaboration with Burroughs Thought it might outdo Mutiny on the Bounty, as a novelistic collaboration. As much as 'The Hippos', and available in anthologies for a while, i...

"Keep them dim lights burning, and let the music carry on..." -J.B. Hutto

Why not blues in the basement on a New Years Eve? It's getting aulde sometimes, but hey, just saw Bob Stroger on CBS! [Kennedy Center tribute to Morgan Freeman]. I thought I'd seen it all. Famous last words. What hubris! Here comes a year and it’s a roller coaster on steroids. Knock down. Pick up. Knock down. Pickup. Repeat. Hadn’t seen it all. Despite new lows, year had a good few moments and a great one. But I was disheartened and sorry too. Much loss. And you say, ‘me too,’ right? In terms of blog .. didn’t put a lot into it. I tried to focus on some other projects non-bloggish, and next year will tell if that time was better spent. Some stuff worth a second look. A very hard year especially for Cecelia. Her mother Wes died in March. Wes left the world; her place in it was a hard working positive place . She brought her children up much by herself, working long hours, to keep the house bill met, and keep the kids on the path. Very remarkable. Very spiritual. I was travellin...

- I remember a Special Ed Christmas party long ago - ...taking it in Holding it a long time til It tastes of drowning tears the mothers clatter and hum in my camera eye mind at the Special ed party in a lobe in an alternate Charlie brown universe just seven daysbefore Christmas watching the ceil while snow is falling Kitchen band clangorous carrying abundant joy great jubilee in this nebula life akimbo... http://moontravellerherald.blogspot.com/2007/12/kenosha-kitchen-band-christmas-first.html

Have been reading U.S. Grant’s Personal Memoirs this year. Finally: Big job, won’t finish soon. But here is my book report. This book has a reputation as one of the best autobiographies by a president or general and it fully lives up to that status. Grant wrote it, in need of money, as he battled cancer. He composed it at the behest of Mark Twain, and the writing at times reaches a level like Twain’s. It deals with the Civil War, Grant didn’t live to write about his presidency, which was a debacle, anyway. Grant was known to be somewhat taciturn – and with a bit of a dour countenance. Yet he was known for brilliant simplicity in his war making – in the way he wrote memos, as one example. His quietness belied a deep thinker; his writing style makes for great literature. Grant’s fame lies in the fact that he brought the Civil War to an end. Many would argue that he spilled too much blood in the process. His perspective was probably that shorter war equaled less blood. That, itself a bloo...