Night Lights Classic Jazz

Back in Black: Jack Kerouac Makes the LOA

Keroauc bookThe Library of America to publish The Road Novels. First Philip K. Dick, now JK… can Burroughs be far behind? I’ve always had mixed feelings about Kerouac (though The Subterraneans held up pretty well a couple years back when I reread it for a Night Lights show I was working on); perhaps more to the point here, he’s the kind of guy I generally want to read via a beat-to-hell paperback. I love the LOA & have a slew of their volumes, but with a writer like JK I want to smell a little bit of railroad earth around the edges. Could just be a stubborn undergraduate romanticist streak in me… in the meantime, there’s a Night Lights show about Mr. Kerouac in the works.

UPDATE: A friend hipped me to an “original scroll” edition of On the Road, due out Aug. 16.

David Brent Johnson

Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, David Brent Johnson moved to Bloomington in 1991. He is an alumnus of Indiana University, and began working with WFIU in 2002. Currently, David serves as jazz producer and systems coordinator at the station. His interests include literature, history, music, writing, and movies.

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