Customer Reviews

When I Was Cool: My Life at the Jack Kerouac School (P.S.)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I vote this FUNNIEST BOOK OF 2004. Besides Kashner thrilling us with his fly-on-the-wall memories of hanging with the Beats, it's also a window into that screwy, throw-all-the-rules-out era known as the 1970's. There's a deadpan, screamingly hilarious observation of the young and naive Sam Kashner, a Candide of the Rockies, on every single page. Beyond the laughs are incisive observations about our most famous Beatniks, their neuroses, their addictions, and the price they've paid for fame. It's the perfect book for anyone who was once a tortured high school poet who thought life could be perfect, if only they could hang out with real Beatniks. Buy this book!

When I first heard of "When I Was Cool", I thought, Great, yet another person cashing in on the Beats. But I finally picked it up for some of the same reasons Kashner went to Naropa -- I'm still interested in the Beats, if (like Kashner) no longer quite entranced.

"When I Was Cool" is funny, full of heart and candor and (somehow) not at all pretentious (no one who admits Corso scared him enough in a backwoods cabin to make him cry and run fleeing back down to Boulder could be too concerned with trying to make himself look good -- not even ironically).

Other reviewers have complained among other things about "obscure literary references." There are none. The closest we come is when Kashner himself admits to dropping one to impress Burroughs and Ginsberg -- and the point of his story seemed to have been precisely how sort of pathetic it was that he'd do such a thing. Another reviewer, complaining of inaccuracies, wrote "*Jim Carroll's "People Who Died" isn't about his friends who died of heroin overdoses, it's about friends who died in a variety of ways", which is pretty much exactly what Kashner had written in the first place: ". . . 'People Who Died,' a necrology of all the friends Carroll had lost, SOME to heroin" (my emphasis) [pg. 138]. And to the reviewer who suspiciously wondered how Kashner could've possibly remembered whole conversations from so long ago: he was an aspiring writer living among his gods, which is to say you know he wrote EVERYTHING down.

One thing that Kashner did get wrong, however, was referring to Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche as "the leader of the Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism" (pg. 53). Trungpa wasn't the head of Kagyu, and it's kind of a big deal to say so.

There are a lot of things to like about Sam Kashner's coming-of-age memoir, "When I Was Cool." First: Mr. Kashner wasn't cool and probably knows it. Second: he doesn't go through detox or recovery. Halleluia! A memoir without a recovery center or AA meeting. Third: his affection for these old lions, of whom only Peter Orlovsky is still with us. Fourth: the look at their everyday lives, from hemorrhoids to the keystone cops comedy of The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. Fifth: Mr. Kashner's long suffering, very cool, and funny parents. And Sixth: Mr. Kashner's teenaged, wide-eyed, intimidated, growing-up self.

Its not the last book that will be written about Naropa or any of the characters, but it's the only book written by the first (and for a long time only) student of the Kerouac school, and is sometimes lovely, often funny, and very easy - it's "a report of an intimate nature," i.e., gossip.

When I Was Cool by Sam Kashner is one of the best books ever written about the so-called Beat poets, or as they were more commonly called, the beatniks. This is in large part due to the fact that he was in an ideal place to witness several of the leading writers in this movement do their thing for a prolonged period of time.

Kashner was the first ever, and for a time the one and only, student at the Jack Kerouac School for aspiring writers at Boulder, Colorado. This was an attempt at an alternative school that went unaccredited throughout its existence.

The Jack Kerouac School was both founded and lead by Allen Ginsberg. Among its alumni were such luminaries as William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Ann Waldman as well as Ginsberg himself.

Kashner kept copious notes and a diary in which he recorded the various goings on at the school. That being the case, When I Was Cool offers readers a portrait of a time and place and people that has since gone by the wayside. It is well worth the reading time of anyone with an interest in the 1970's scene.

Many of us enjoy the poetry and literary works of the Beats. Probably more admire the Beats for their willingness to take on the cultural establishment and conformist society of the Fifties. But, what were Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, William Burroughs, and Peter Orlovsky like as people? This, Sam Kashner tells us in this gentle and humorous rendering of these Beats, which is set in 1976, when they were famous middle-aged (or older) men and on the faculty of The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics (don't ask) in Boulder, Colorado.

So, what exactly were these men like? For a quick answer, read the chapter in which Ginsberg, Burroughs, Corso, and Orlovsky take Billy Borroughs, the son, to the doctor. Anyone who has run a pointless errand with eccentric relatives will recognize the dynamic. They don't, by the way, get treatment for Billy but they respond to his wishes and leave him, feverish and alone, at a bar. Who says the Beats were self-absorbed?

I also give Kashner high marks for style, particularly for his skilled use of images from popular culture. These, especially his movie references, clarify and amuse, which is certainly Kashner's goal for this sweet and funny book.

How many of us felt a cosmic bond to the "beats" and their rebellion, their mysterious charm and their jaded lives!?
This is a very real and sincere look into some moments beneath the radar of fame and gossip of a few of big names of the 50's & 60's....
Lots of revealing moments re Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Diane Di Prima.
A fun read.

Sam Kashner is a writer of flawless virtue but noticible simplicity. He did an audacious deed by creating a book that helps merely a bit to understanding the complex beauty of the idols of our nation; the beats. Sam Kashner gave life to the literal meaning of America's swelled and drunken past that wove itself into a fine threaded combination of poetry and writing. He did a wonderful job and showed merciless compassion for the people that mattered most to him. The book is a true wonder and was made to be read to unravel some truth to the loved era of the beatnik generation.

As the first poetry student at the Jack Kerouac School for Disembodied Poetics, Sam Kashner had an opportunity to write about some wonderfully unique experiences. Unfortunately, the book just isn't very well written.

There were three main things that bothered me about the writing.

1) The chronology was inconsistent. I had a very hard time keeping track of when things were happening, and often in the space of a few pages the description of events was out of order.
2) There are quite a few obscure (for me at least) movie and literary references. Because I hadn't seen the movie or read the book, I couldn't relate to the reference.
3) The author had a tendency to go off on tangents in the middle of telling a specific story, and then resume the original story. It was hard to follow what was going on.

One other issue I struggled with is how the author was able to remember very specific things that occurred almost 30 years ago. The book contains lengthy word-for-word conversations with the Beats, and I was often left wondering how the author could have remembered so much of these conversations. He didn't offer any clues as to how he remembered so much, which left me wondering how accurate it all is.

And I do mean glimpse...
There are flashes here of great insights into the personas of Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, and Gregory Corso
You see the psycho-sexual strands of Ginsberg/Orlovsky partnership played out in their gaudy technicolor glory (this is also a weakness...more on that later) and you get a real sense of G. Corso's suspicions and insecurities but to me the real value of this book is the insight it sheds on William Burroughs and his life during this period (tearfully reading Jack London) and in particluar his tempestous relationship with his son Bill Jr.
These insights were valuable to me as a huge Burroughs fan and were the main things I took away from this book...especially because most accounts of WSB's life and work in the 70's focus exclusively on the NYC Bunker period...
some negative aspects of this book are:
as R.Rhodes mentions in the review further down the page there is somewhat of a high school note-passing he has a crush on him style narrative that is tiresome
Anne Waldman and the whole who did or didn't sleep with Bob Dylan angle is irritating as is the narrator (unfortunately)
he seems like a genuinely decent guy but his tone is fairly off-putting most of the time and he and his observations are ultimately not that interesting.
I would recommend for diehard Beat collectors and/or Burroughs fans only

WHEN I WAS COOL: My Life at the Jack Kerouac School. A Memoir by Sam Kashner.
A 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. In the spring of 1976, Kashner's life has just begun. 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 ultimately 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.