Mack
Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Jack Kerouac
in Houston
In
Houston I saw a man in a shiny metal helmet featuring two antennae (the helmet,
not the man) blocking traffic and waving his arms madly while screaming. Perhaps he was trying to hitch a ride to his
home planet. If he continues that sort
of thing in the street he will soon find his way to another world under the
wheels of a Mercedes-Benz with a tastefully discreet University of Texas
Alumnus sticker.
Before
an excellent lunch at Kenny & Ziggy’s New York (it’s really in Houston,
but, well, you know) Delicatessen, 2327 Post Oak Boulevard, 77056, www.kennyandziggys.com), the
daughter-person took me to Brazos Bookstore, 2421 Bissonnet Street, 77005, www.brazosbookstore.com.
Located
in a retro-1960s building in a charming neighborhood, Brazos Bookstore is a
Texas cultural treasure. Associated with
the University of Houston Creative Writing Program, the Academy of American
Poets, the American Institute of Architects, Rice University, the Baker
Institute, the Houston Public Library, the Houston Museum of Natural Science,
and a number of local publishers and literary magazines, Brazos Bookstore is an
independent agora for readers and writers, and swears no obedience to polls, fashions,
top-ten lists, marketing gnomes, or the alligator-shoe boys.
The
store is well-lit and features comfortable chairs and a large table for
spreading out a folio, a map, a picture, a newspaper, a manifesto, or a
magazine. The various genres are
categorized clearly, and the staff are helpful and cheerful. Alas that there is no coffee machine or cat,
but towards the back an orange stripe on the floor leads you on an
Alice-in-Wonderland journey through a workroom to the minimalist but clean and
wheelchair-accessible euphemism with framed art and a neat length of iron
I-beam angling from the floor to the ceiling.
Brazos
Bookstore nurtures young Tejano, Texian, and Texan writers, yes, but you will also
find John Keats and Evelyn Waugh. As
with any good book store, the staff will order “many a quaint and curious
volume of forgotten lore” for you, which keeps your credit card information off
the snooping and thieving magic electric box of wondrous misinformation and
obedience.
A
panel of announcements keeps one current with literary, artistic, and musical
events, and perhaps it all sounds a little self-consciously artsy, but we must ask
ourselves if we as workers and builders and waiters and cowboys are going to
celebrate the First Nations, Spanish, Mexican, German, African, Czech, English,
Lebanese, Jewish, Swedish, Danish, French, Chinese, and other cultures that
Hegelize into our look-out-world-here-we-are Texas culture/s, or are we going
to slump into isolated corners passively obeying the mother-ship lights and
noises from magic electric boxes of wondrous misinformation and obedience?
As
the country-and-western song says, if you’re going to play in Texas, ya gotta
have a fiddle in the band. A flute will
do too. Or your book or poem, your
painting, your sculpture, your backyard fence that is your sculpture, or that
functional and aesthetically-pleasing iron I-beam that keeps the building from
falling down on the night-shift welder and the aging adjunct faculty dude
considering the nature of iambs and their relevance in contemporary poetry.
So
what’s your fiddle, eh?
But
back to the announcements: Orange Show
Monument (I don’t know what that is) at 2401 Munger Street in Houston is
hosting a Kerouac Fest on the 9th of March from three to ten. For most of us, three to ten means three in
the afternoon until ten at night, but with Kerouac-istas one can never be quite
sure.
You
can order a ticket in advance for $10 at orangeshow.org, or you can buy one at
the door / gateway / portal to an alternative universe for $15.
I
left Houston without seeing Helmet-Guy again.
I wish him happiness. I hope he
drops the helmet of endless and self-destructive introspection, reads a little
Kerouac, and learns to play a fiddle of some sort.
-30-
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