Tomorrow, October 21, is the 41st anniversary of Jack Kerouac's death. I remember the day well, having noted Jack's passing on a piece of looseleaf I still have in a huge file full of juvenilia from that period.
The NYT obituary features a perceptive quotation from Allen Ginsberg: "A very unique cat -- a French Canadian Hinayana Buddhist Beat Catholic savant." For pith and accuracy, that's hard to beat. The obituary concludes by noting that Kerouac "had no use for the radical politics that came to preoccupy many of his friends and readers."
"I'm not a beatnik. I'm a Catholic," he said last month. He showed the interviewer a painting of Pope Paul VI and said, "Do you know who painted that? Me."
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