When I Was Cool: My Life At The Jack Kerouac School (2005) - Plot & Excerpts
WHEN I WAS COOL: My Life at the Jack Kerouac School.A Memoir by Sam Kashner. HarperCollins 0060005661 336pps $25.95A memoir of a then skinny, naive teenage boy, from a liberal, fairly well-off Jewish family, who goes from thinking Walt Whitman had something to do with food - Maybe the Whitman Sampler box of chocolates. to being the author of 3 nonfiction books and a novel. Kashner convinces his parent to allow him to enroll in the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodies Poetics, (of which he was the very first and, at the time, only one to do so), in lieu of conventional college. Hanging out with Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Peter Orlovsky and Anne Waldman, as well as cameos by the remaining Beat and non-Beat writers and muscians of the era, Kashner interweaves Beatlore with his own innocent reflections in a frank, humorous and extremely entertaining and informative platitude. A free-spirited Kiss & Tell theme runs through the pages as openly as the heroin in Burroughs veins. Hailed as a hero with his father's Diner's Club card, Kashner is called upon repeatedly to aid and abet the shenanigans of this anti-normal group of word artists. Between editing Ginsberg & Corso's manuscripts, baby-sitting Billy Burroughs the JR., backing way too many monetary expenses, one wonders who is actually benefiting from his enrollment. Intimacies of thwarting sexual advances from Ginsberg to succumbing to di Prima, are embarrassingly shared in all their sordid, ribald and untimely bodacious glory. A he loves him but he loves her floats through this stew in chunks while Kashner ponders the directed aloofness of Walkman, while impregnating one of her troup. Marijuana fields, whores, drug houses, theft and mayhem.. all the elements of prime-time are just casual actualities of extra curriculum. Kashner also stands by, silently, as Ginsberg and his ilk follow the teachings of their oft drunk Tibetan Buddhist meditation teacher Chogyam Trungpa, Rinoche - who pounds on Ginsberg to lose your ego as he pads his own pockets and libido with admiration and servitude. Reflections from the Beats are also placed abundantly within as all give their good, bad or indifferent memories of Kerouac and Cassady an ear. One of the best Beat books I've read. Used and abused, we go from day one to graduation with his zany encounters and events, all the while hoping the school gets it's accreditation before he graduates. Reminiscent of Tom Wolfe's days of entrenchment with Ken Kesey & the Merry Pranksters, it's a fun, fast paced-read that shows us what happens when literary renegades become our teachers.
What I have to howl about this book is obviously biased, in more ways than one: 1) I'm currently in the MFA program at The Jack Kerouac School and 2) I'm what you'd call a "disciple" of The Beats. Many of the people Kashner writes about I see on a regular basis. I even told Anne Waldman I loved her after a little too much wine at a spaghetti dinner at her house last year (see upcoming poem "Drunk at Anne Waldman's House" appearing soon in Pistol Whip Magazine). She gave me a hug and we spun around laughing on the grass. Anyhow...the book is quite controversial on campus - bring up the title and you'll get more than a raised eyebrow and frown. Nevertheless, I found the book to be charming - though it does wave the flag of defamation, alluding to the school as a joke. Kashner shows the old Beats in the flesh - their human sides that live in the shadows of their legends. But Kashner shows his nakedness as well - good and bad. After alluding to Jack Kerouac being the gayest of all Beats to a condemning fault, Kashner tells the reader he swapped spit with Ginsberg multiple times, and other things... . But he's heterosexual, sir. And to prove it, he mentions getting head from Diane DiPrima. So the book is filled with good ol' honest hedonism. What else would one expect going to school with The Beats? And therein lies Kashner's problem - he must have turned a blind eye when reading the poems and prose of The Beats, because it's all there in black and white, yet he seems surprisingly disgusted when he experiences it himself. He may have been happier studying under the tutelage of Quaker Puritans. Huah.
What do You think about When I Was Cool: My Life At The Jack Kerouac School (2005)?
a young idealistic student and Beat-worshipper goes to Boulder to become the first student at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodies Poetics. what he finds instead is a chaotics world of learning from his idls while babysitting Burroughs' son, keeping Corso from doing drugs, and typing up manuscripts for Ginsburg. told in a very intimate and easy-going narrative, this is a book for those of us who have idolized these writers, lived in Boulder, or just like a rollicking-good Coming-of-Age story. i *loved* this book.
—Kelly
When I was Cool by Sam Kashner is a well-written and entertaining book about the often abusive and disappointing experiences of a young man whose higher education is in the hands of the men he most admires, the poets of the Beat Generation.The author exposes the discrepancies between his hero worship of these men and their actual lives as viewed from inside the institution they created: The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics.Though often compassionate in his expose of these men, he is not so inclined with the women who find themselves in bed, sometimes literally so, with these poets. In that regard the author's own insecurity and hostility toward such is also revealed.His description of the entire group that funds and supports the school leaves much to be desired. In fact, it is the author's parents who steal the show, as they appear the most interesting of all the people introduced in the book.The author also reveals that the most famous of these "Beat" poets was under the domination of a Buddhist master who, at one point, tells the poet he's too attached to his beard and he should shave it off. The poet, who at first stomps at this request, goes and shaves off his beard just to appear less ego driven. The funny part is/was that the Buddhist master lived in a mansion and drove a Mercedes. This is an interesting book, especially for those who have had the "Beats" lingering in their imaginations since the late 50's and early 60's, as it reveals that imagination is often more beautiful than truth revealed.
—Lee
When I was Cool by Sam Kashner is a well-written and entertaining book about the often abusive and disappointing experiences of a young man whose higher education is in the hands of the men he most admires, the poets of the Beat Generation. The author exposes the discrepancies between his hero worship of these men and their actual lives as viewed from inside the institution they created: The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. Though often compassionate in his expose of these men, he is not so inclined with the strong women who find themselves in bed, sometimes literally so, with these poets. In that regard the author's own insecurity and hostility toward such is also revealed. His description of the entire group that funds and supports the school leaves much to be desired. In fact, it is the author's parents who steal the show, as they appear the most interesting of all the people introduced in the book. The author also reveals that the most famous of these "Beat" poets was under the domination of a Buddhist master who, at one point, tells the poet he's too attached to his beard and he should shave it off. The poet, who at first stomps at this request, goes and shaves off his beard just to appear less ego driven. The funny part is/was that the Buddhist master lived in a mansion and drove a Mercedes. This is an interesting book, especially for those who have had the "Beats" lingering in their imaginations since the late 50's and early 60's, as it reveals that imagination is often more beautiful than truth revealed
—Lee
