"It's inspiring, is what it is" I'm telling a fella sat half-asleep 'front a re-run of The Good Life. "Inspiring."
"Oh aye, is that right?"
"It is right, an' all. Inspiring."
For as much as it hollers wild about Kerouac, for as much as it has the man's name in the title and his words running rings around the celluloid, for as much as all of that, Beat Angel is nonetheless a flick less concerned with Kerouac than it is with Inspiration.
At risk of soiling my Review Card beyond any measure of hope however faltering, I'll go ahead and relate that immediately before and after viewing Beat Angel I myself was sat six chapters deep in the scribbling of a grand novel that's been frying my fuck right useless for much of the past seven months. Battering at one sentence in particular, I was, and with the smoke stinging my eyes and the nausea stringing a terrible chorus o'er the stave of my caffeine-scourged gut.
In need of a kick to the stimulation glands, and with none coffee left to my Mother's maiden name, I watched Beat Angel and found myself, far side of it all, with at least five words I'd been lacking hitherto, and if those five words weren't the finest I'd utilized all week then by God they were right close.
It's impossible to watch Beat Angel and not be inspired, is the truth of a case. Play it front a drunk and you'll find he's concocted seven brand new hangovers first thing in the morning. It's like yonder Dream Machine William Burroughs sat staring at for hours of a winter's morn, it sets light the crud all hanging about the thought-chutes and melds the resultant pus into something not a skip and a twirl north of Thoughts Worth Thinking.
And, praise Jandek, Thoughts Worth Writing where I was concerned.
The ashen-chinned crowd, it cries Conclude, and so aye, In Conclusion;
Even here and now in this year of 2024 or whatever the fuck it is, even now when a man can't fart twice in succession without a youngster sniffin' about the arse for to upload the texture of the gas onto YouTube, even now when no one remembers what it was like to see something that didn't clip and stop and start every so often and with the sound running four minutes and 14 seconds ahead of the visuals, even now, says I, Beat Angel could quite possibly appear jarringly lo-fi to some folks.
"The lower the fi the better!" cries a lad wearing a Bonnie Prince Billy armband, and I raise a hand, I say "You'll get no argument from me. But for some of us here it could rightly put us off proceeding much further than the opening two and a half minutes."
Article comments
1 - Jon Sobel
Cerebral panty-weep indeed. Holy garbanzo beans! You've out-diddly-diddled yourself with this essay, my man.
2 - El Bicho
[with both hands snap out a rhythm of your chosing]
Duke, pay no attention to those faux elitst bastards, I say. They show how dim and phony they truly are because any true literary snob would know that instead of "you've never heard it read 'till you've heard it read on acid," they should be saying, "you've never heard 'On The Road' read 'till you've heard it read on Benzedrine," or "you've never heard 'Naked Lunch' read 'till you've heard it read on junk with a naked young man in your bed."
Regards,
A former reader of "On The Road" and "Howl" and I don't care who knows it.
3 - Duke De Mondo
Ha! Damn right, El Bicho. I dare say my bitterness was heightened somewhat on account of knowing full well the joy of hearing, say, ol' Will reading Junky through that fugg of a cracklin', slurrin' throat. But a man can hardly let anyone hear tell of it in public anymore.
by god, maybe it's time to reclaim the beats? and whilst we're at it, we'll reclaim Dylan and Revolver by The Beatles (the record most sorely put upon by those fiends) and maybe even some of Timothy Leary's scribbles. Certainly it's high time The Doors Of Perception by Aldous Huxley was plucked back out the hands of the Morrison Heads.
i smell a revoloution... A revolverlution. Isn't that a Public Enemy song? i dare say Chuck D's heard many's a man tell him about reading Heaven And Hell on Peyote.
And Jon! I'm altogether very glad you dug it, man! thank you!
4 - Howard Dratch
Your Review Card is safe, is surely good for a time more. It is, I think, a special edition of Review Cards honored for entertaining and finding something lost.
The Ms. Gillian knows her stuff, too, and makes me wish I was young and somewhere near Ireland, she does.
"I think you should watch it" she says. "You love Jack Kerouac. You dig the purple parpin' of a bop-fried trumpet of an evening. You're pretentious and self-obsessed. Go for it."
This story of the writer-poet of the Fifties sounds interesting and I will put it on my list of "bop-fried trumpet(s)" (a special, Irish dish, I presume), but I fear I might like the review better than the reviewed.
It is the reviewing of the reviewed that charms and "by God it has a right savage way with the words".
5 - Duke De Mondo
Mr Dratch, i am very pleased you found this screed to be pleasing to your eyes and ears. now, i must say, i think you might well enjoy yourself a right giddy while if you give that particular motion picture a go, and i can reccomend with no fear of comeuppance that you put it on one of thoes netflix lists or whatever folks do nowadays instead of heading down the VHS Dive of an evening.
And as to Beautiful Ms Gillian, it took manys a month and year of wandering to uncover the like, and so for this reason i will say nowt to her of the sophisticated lad by the name of Howard who sung her praises just this afternoon.
ach, i will indeed say, but i'll have a fine witticism waiting far-side of it so as she doesn't go bounding off for Mr Dratch!
thank you again, sir
6 - ms gillian
wonderful! as always! :)
7 - Fearon
I have read Howl thrice or more over and am amidst on the road and have naked lunch ordered as I intend to read everything that generation has to offer myself