Libraryland

republicrider:

Kerouac appears in almost all U.S. history texts for high schools, and is to cover the post-World War II poetry mentioned in the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS).

Poet and author Jack Kerouac was the “King of the Beats.” The Beats were a group of poets and authors who gave rise and verse to the “Beat Generation.” The word “beat” is short for “beatitude.” Not only do most high school kids struggle with this character from U.S. history —
in what should be a very fun section — many high school teachers have only vague understanding of the whole Beat movement.

Kerouac wrote On the Road, considered the key book out of the Beats.
Wholly apart from its literary merits, which are many, the book is famous for other things. It was written in stream-of-consciousness style, with Kerouac simply sitting down to create the thing in a relatively short creative fury, without the common author conventions of outlines and serious editing. In fact, the entire book was written on one scroll of paper,
similar to the old style of paper that used to dominate newspaper newsrooms across America (and which was still used at the Daily Utah Chronicle prior to 1980 — with manual typewriters, mostly Underwoods).

In addition, the San Francisco Public Library opened a display of the original manuscript of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road.”  Kerouac’s manuscript beats all: It is a scroll 120 feet long that Kerouac used to produce his book on a typewriter in an amazing 20-day writing frenzy back in 1951.

Kerouac was not just a genius and a guru to a whole generation. He could type like the wind — 120 words a minute, according to legend.  Though only 36 feet of the original scroll will be on display, it comes complete with strikeovers, pencil marks, and scrawls in a style he called “spontaneous prose.” One end of the manuscript is tattered, chewed by a friend’s dog.

If students don’t remember a book written on one page, 120 feet long, chewed by a dog, which scroll sold at auction for $2.43 million, they are brain dead. One should not need mnemonic devices to remember such startling bits of history — this is the stuff good history classes are made of.

I try to read nonfiction or biography fairly often, but don’t know how I ended up reading two books in a row about former child stars who abused drugs and alcohol and might or might not be bipolar and think that they actually have something interesting to say. (Fisher is at least funny and pokes fun at herself along with others; Gilbert is more earnestly boring.)

I much prefer books written by ordinary people who have done interesting things rather than books written by famous people who have written books because they’re famous. I’m always disappointed by these books and end up liking the authors less…kind of Wizard of Oz-like; they are best left behind the curtain because they are so much less interesting in front of it.

cradletograve:

don’t judge a book by its cover …

livedeliberate:

If you haven’t read this book, I recommend it RIGHT NOW. Seriously. FIND IT. READ IT. You will love it. I picked this up yesterday at the school library and finished it off about a half hour ago. I brought it to dinner with us and actually started bawling at a couple parts during dinner. This is just one of those books that hit me in all the right ways and tore my heart apart and pieced it back together by the end. I mean…seriously. I’m actually going to shoot Steve an e-mail and tell him how much the book meant to me. Definitely in the top ten books EVER, and not many books crack that list these days.

x-snapshots:

It’s a book.

(I just find the cover cool.)

theansweris42x:  library run!

indybobindy:

bilbo:

Although an introduction to a physical exhibit, the eight available images are nicely done and the zoom feature works well. The Bayerische Staatsbbliothek has an unusually extensive collection of incunabula.