Happy 99th birthday to my Uncle Jack!
I wanted to thank you all so very much for joining the Kerouac Society. We hope you've been enjoying what you've been seeing [or the experience] and please know we are always open to any suggestions you may have. We're working to build this up to become an inspiring place where Jack Kerouac admirers can gather and enjoy my Uncle's great work together, whether it be existing writings or lesser known materials.
We've been working on several exciting new Kerouac related endeavors that we hope will further his legacy. It is true that we have a new book of correspondence between Jack Kerouac and his dear, incredibly gifted, novelist friend John Clellon Holmes to be edited by Beat Generation scholar, and professor of English at Tufts University, Ronna Johnson. There's a collection of Kerouac's writings atop Desolation Peak being compiled by Kerouac scholar Charles Shuttleworth, there's Kerouac journals project being put together with David Stanford who edited the works of Ken Kesey, Ken Babbs, Jack Kerouac, Garry Trudeau, Charles Schulz, William S. Burroughs, Keith Haring, Robert Hunter and so very many others.
For those of you familiar with the Kerouac music and film projects I've worked on such as Big Sur, One Fast Move Or I'm Gone: Kerouac's Big Sur, or Kerouac -- kicks joy darkness, I wanted to make aware that we're also working on several new Kerouac entertainment endeavors including a new "greatest hits" of Kerouac inspired songs collection which have been re-recorded by The Boston String Ensemble and a couple other new Kerouac music related works including a second tribute to his lesser known writings. We'll be releasing new Kerouac readings and perhaps issuing for the first time some of the existing readings digitally, including on all the major streaming platforms. There's a feature film of Maggie Cassidy with a wonderful adaptation acclaimed screenwriter by Chris Sparling who wrote the screenplay for Gus Van Zant's beautiful film The Sea of Trees, along with the successful and well received films Buried, ATM, and the Atticus Institute. There's a second Ethan Hawke audiobook, followup this his brilliant Penguin Books Dharma Bums project, this time he reads Big Sur and couldn't be more pleased with both of those projects. There's even a couple Kerouac podcasts in the works, which you'll be hearing more about very soon.
I want to take a moment to also thank the Kerouac Estate's marketing and development partner, Sylvia Cunha, for her stellar work on the Facebook page, Twitter, Instagram and so many others. She's breathing new life into Kerouac's writings and helping to bring in a whole new audience with her brilliant, and incredibly engaging, work including Facebook quotes from Kerouac's works many of you I'm sure have been seeing lovingly put together with photos of Kerouac each of which she has been handpicking herself. We're blessed to have her as a part of the Kerouac Estate team. We also want to thank Penguin, Grove Press, Jeff Posternak at The Wylie Agency, and Mike Milner and the UMass Lowell team for their continued work in helping further the great work.
Again, I hope you all enjoy the Kerouac Society experience and we wish you all wonderful Jack Kerouac 99th birthday celebration.
Warmly,
Jim Sampas