leonardcohenforum.com

Is there anybody who knows some story of Cohen and Jack Kerouac except the one that is told in the book Various Positions? I just want to know why the two men never entertained somekind of relationship ?
Thanks and long live for those who read and try to answer that question, It's appreciated.

September Cohen

???

Er when you say relationship are you thinking of a xxxx nature?

It looks like the thread where all high expectation has to be deceived.

September_Cohen, I don't know about anything on line Kerouac-Cohen... I don't remember that part of Nadel's book:-) I can only tell about beatnik's influences on LC's work generally, and I see that when I read Beautiful Losers. All that stuff Ginsberg-Dylan, Gregory Corso (Leonard spoke in some interview about him and Ginsberg), etc. Too much for this moment! And I didn't read Dharma Bums, only On The Road...
Tom

Wasn't Kerouac already dead when Leonard arrived on the NYC scene in 1966? Sorry if I'm wrong:-)

Cohen arrived in the beatnick's new-yorker scene many years before 66.
1965-70 was the glory days of Dylanesque influence in The Village (greenwhich). Cohen was in Columbia, as it is said in The favourite game.


And no I wasn't talking about a xxx relation.

Jack Kerouac was born in 1922 and died in 1969. Although born in the U.S.A. (Lowell, Massachusetts), his parents came from the French-speaking part of Quebec, and he didn't learn English until he was 6.
He was educated at Lowell High School before accepting a football scholarship at Columbia University, but he turned his back on both and spent the early years of World War II working as a grease monkey in Hartford before returning to Lowell where he got a job as a sports journalist on the Lowell Sun.
His major energies, however, were spent on writing an autobiographical novel that was never published.In 1942 he went to Washington where he worked briefly on the construction of the Pentagon before joining the U.S. merchant marines, subsequently enlisting in the U.S. navy (1943).
After only a month, he was discharged and branded as an "indifferent character", having discarded his rifle in favour of Boswell's "Life of Johnson".
I guess that takes him as far as the end of one war, and it's only 1945.
I'll write more, promise.
Andrew.

I don't know about that.
But Jack Kerouac is a writer to be read in the 21st century.
And anyone reading this post can take it for read.
Andrew.