Jack Kerouac: Then and Now

This event is fully booked. However, it is likely that some places will become available on the night.

Jack Kerouac had come to New York on a football scholarship to Columbia and took courses at the New School on the GI Bill. But what shaped him was not so much academia as the writers, artists and musicians he met at places such as the San Remo and the Cedar Tavern, the Eighth Street Bookshop, the Record Changer Store on Greenwich Avenue, the Village Vanguard, and the poetry readings in the East Village – all places that his old friend David Amram – with whom Kerouac brought jazz+poetry to New York City – describes as being part of the great “university of hangoutology.”

A distinguished panel, including Amram and Joyce Johnson--both of whom knew Kerouac well and have written about him extensively--and poet, performer and professor Anne Waldman, plus award-winning biographer Holly George-Warren, who is currently at work on a new study of Kerouac, will offer their recollections and insights into this seminal figure of American literature. There will also be time for questions.

• David Amram
• Holly George-Warren
• Joyce Johnson
• Anne Waldman

More about the photograph
John Cohen took this classic photo in 1959 in New York City at a diner on 4th Avenue during a break in the filming of Robert Frank's silent documentary film "Pull My Daisy" Jack Kerouac narrated the film spontaneously and David Amram wrote the score, co-wrote the title song, with lyrics by Kerouac, Neal Cassady and Allen Ginsberg, and appeared in the film as Mezz McGillicuddy, the deranged french hornist (at the request of Kerouac).

This event is free to attend, but we suggest a $10 donation to The Village Trip.