Sunday, March 17, 2013

Jack Kerouac in Houston


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.

 The occasion features a film screening, a poetry showcase (I don’t know if that’s a metaphor or if cabinetry is part of the evening), poetry buskers (one fears that this might involve English Morris Dancers leaping about with copies of Shelley and Byron strapped to their legs with cords hand woven by Huguenot descendants in The Fens), a panel discussion (be still, my heart), a twitter by Exquisite Corpse (or not), readings, live jazz (as opposed to dead jazz), something about Domy Books, and a chance to exchange Kerouacan bon mots with Oscar Pena, Salvador Macias, Chris Wise, The Free Radicals, DJ Black Slacks, Michael Hoerman, Dr. Chuck Taylor, Dr. Chris Carmona, Kelly Ann Ellis, and Josh Hayes.

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.


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