Coolidge, Clark (Kerouac, Jack)

Jack Kerouac and the Sounds of Old Angel Midnight

Coventry, England: Beat Scene Press, 2021. Limited First Edition. Stapled Wrappers. A transcript of remarks delivered by Clark Coolidge (b. 1939), the acclaimed & prolific New York School-&-Beyond American poet & musician, as a participant in the major conference that was held in Boulder, Colorado at the Naropa Institute during 1982 to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first publication of On the Road, the breakthrough novel by Jack Kerouac, Founding Father of the Beat Generation. Coolidge was on a panel of distinguished Kerouac colleagues, contemporaries & authorities, each of whom were asked to discuss a particular Kerouac work. Coolidge chose Old Angel Midnight (see our item No.s 2654 & esp. 4311), a quintessentially Kerouacian group of prose-poems with a checquered & mostly posthumous publishing history, the details of which are noted following the transcript. With a fellow poet's appreciation & understanding, Coolidge parses Kerouac's spontaneous, evocative masterpiece, which had impressed him since he encountered an excerpt in the famous first issue of Big Table (see our item No.s 1803, 3338), & correctly felt had not theretofore been critically analyzed with sufficient depth. As noted at colophon, this transcript was posted on a website in 1995, & this we presume is its first appearance in print. A handsome chapbook production in stapled wrappers with flaps, published as the seventy-first number in the Pocket Books series of Kevin Ring's indispensable Beat Scene Press imprint in the UK (see our many other volumes in this series & Beat Scene magazine issues). One of 200 hand-numbered copies produced in April 2021 per colophon, this is copy No. 33/200. A rewarding & important Coolidge/ Kerouac collectible; an instant rarity in this beautiful series. In very fine as-new condition, substantially mint inside & out. Very Fine. [Item #5222]

Price: $35.00