Describing the famous Gallery Six poetry reading in The Dharma Bums, Kerouac writes,
The other poets were either hornrimmed intellectual hepcats with wild black hair like Alvah Goldbrook, or delicate pale handsome poets like Ike O'Shay (in a suit), or out-of-this-world genteel looking Renaissance Italians like Francis DaPavia (who looks like a young priest), or bow-tied wild-haired old anarchist fuds like Reinhold Cacoethes, or big fat bespectacled quiet booboos like Warren Coughlin.
Who are or were these five poets in real life?
I'm can only make a stab at the last one: Warren Coughlin = Allen Ginsberg?
Posted by: Alan Richardson | Thursday, October 14, 2010 at 07:21 PM
No, but one of the characters is Allen Ginsberg.
Posted by: Bill Vallicella | Friday, October 15, 2010 at 09:20 AM
I think I got it:
Warren Coughlin = Philip Whalen
Alvah Goldbrook = Alan Ginsburg
Ike O'Shay = Michael McClure
Francis DaPavia = Philip Lamantia
Posted by: Nathan Pierce | Friday, October 15, 2010 at 11:59 AM
My first post on my favorite blog and I misspell "Allen Ginsberg." Sorry...
Posted by: Nathan Pierce | Friday, October 15, 2010 at 12:10 PM
Bill, I have a question for you, though it has nothing to do with Kerouac.
Is it possible that content has anything to do with the likelyhood of something's existing? I mean, could it be that what it is that would exist has anything to do with the likelyhood of it's actually existing?
Paul
Posted by: Paul | Friday, October 15, 2010 at 02:27 PM
Nathan,
You got it, except for Rheinhold Cacoethes.
Posted by: Bill Vallicella | Friday, October 15, 2010 at 06:47 PM
Paul,
If something's nature involved a logical contradiction, then the probability of it existing would be zero.
Posted by: Bill Vallicella | Friday, October 15, 2010 at 06:51 PM
Reinhold Cacoethes has got to be Kenneth Rexroth.
Posted by: PatrickH | Monday, October 18, 2010 at 06:37 AM
Patrick,
Yep. 'Cacoethes' means itch or compulsion as in 'cacoethes scribendi' the compulsion to write. Kerouac and Rexroth didn't like each other.
Posted by: Bill Vallicella | Monday, October 18, 2010 at 12:44 PM