In 1959, Jack Kerouac recorded a
frantic prose sketch that was later included in his novel Desolation Angels, published in 1965. In a brilliant example of his
stream-of-consciousness approach, Kerouac frenetically paints a portrait of a
Jazz session then segues into a description of poet Herbert Huncke whom Kerouac credited as introducing him to
the phrase “I’m beat,” which somehow evoked the essence of the first major
post-World War II countercultural movement. Kerouac ends his brief visit to the Beat scene with the odd juxtaposition of a 12-year-old drummer in the adult underworld. He leaves us, here in 1959 as the Beat Movement nears its peak, with a question to his audience: "What will happen?" What indeed Mr. Kerouac. What indeed.
Available on Volume One of Rhino
Record’s The Beat Generation (1992)
and posted from my personal archives to the Aeolus 13 Umbra YouTube channel:
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