About those First Amendment rights

 

On January 7, 2021 Senator Josh Hawley tweeted:

“This could not be more Orwellian. Simon & Schuster is canceling my contract because I was representing my constituents, leading a debate on the Senate floor on voter integrity, which they have now decided to redefine as sedition. Let me be clear, this is not just a contract dispute. It's a direct assault on the First Amendment. (Yada, yada, yada) We'll see you in court.”

 Let’s take a closer look at this. Hawley mentions “Simon & Schuster,” “they” and “sedition” all in the same sentence. But, publisher Simon & Schuster has not accused Hawley of sedition. Hawley’s chief accuser is a PAC called The Lincoln Project which represents disgruntled current and former Republicans. Is his grammatical ambiguity Hawley’s attempt to write in Orwell's Newspeak? It's certainly Orwellian to contest votes for which there’s no evidence of voter fraud, but I digress.

 Anyone who occasionally glances at publishing news will know that publishers regularly cancel contracts. They do this for a variety of reasons, but the chief reason is future profits. Publishers are capitalists you see. They’re in business to make money. Perhaps we'll never know the 'true' reason S&S made its decision. Whatever the reason, it's not fair to say, “It's a direct assault on the First Amendment,” because once it passes through a publisher, speech isn’t free anymore, but sold at a profit. At various points in my career I’ve met people who say this sort of thing. Most have an inflated sense of self-entitlement. That seems to be a characteristic of the ruling class, people who like Hawley, attend expensive colleges, suffer from affluenza, and threaten to sue people. The ruling class has a name for those who stormed the Capital naively believing that taking selfies and destroying property will somehow change election results. They’re called sacrificed pawns. They're meant to be lied to, cheated, used and discarded.

The Best of 1899

 

Although a new year is upon us let us not forget some noteworthy titles from 1899. Consider these two non-fiction titles: The first is from, a relatively unknown Norwegian-Ameircan Minnesotan, Thorstein Veblen. He published a radically new theory drawing upon sociology as well as economics. He calls it, “The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions ”.

A new historical account about the Boer War of 1881 was published by popular fiction writer, H. Rider Haggard. Additionally, his popular novel written several years ago, “She: A History of Adventure” has been captured for the new visual media, cinema, thanks to the illusionist, Georges Méliès.

In addition to non-fiction, the final year of the century had its notable fiction. “To Have and to Hold” by Mary Johnston will be a best seller in the first year of the twentieth century. Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening” promises to be well received in the future as well.

Those who like Haggard’s adventurous fantasies are probably also familiar with the name H. G. Wells. He, too, published a new title in 1899, “When the Sleeper Wakes”. The novel tells of a sleepless man who finally finds slumber only to waken more than two hundred years later. Thanks to an investment on his behalf, the sleeper is now the wealthiest man in world. Without revealing any spoilers, I’d like to mention that the Wells will issue a revision in 1910. By that time Wells, will have published another 11 novels. That may matter now, but it won’t by the year 2000. In that future, Wells will largely be known for only three novels, “The Time Machine”, “The Invisible Man”, and “War of the Worlds”. All three were published prior to 1899.

Kerouac's days in Denver

 

Jack Kerouac’s writing doesn’t mention Boulder as a place he visited in Colorado, yet there’s a school named after him there. Founded in 1974 by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman it’s Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics.

Kerouac became disembodied in 1969 at the age of 47. Neal Cassady, who inspired Kerouac’s best known novel, "On the Road" did so a year earlier. Unlike his two friends who lived faster and died younger, Ginsberg almost made it into the new millennium. He died in 1997.

The movie, “Howl,” stars James Franco as Allen Ginsberg and, takes place during the Beat era — an era that owes its name to Kerouac. Who were the Beats? Where does Colorado fit in?

William S. Burroughs was mentor to the group of writers who would later be called the Beats. Burroughs, who was fascinated by life’s seamy side, learned the word “beat” from Herbert Huncke, a Chicago junkie. Hunke used the word as a synonym for poor. It was Jack Kerouac who modified its meaning, making “beat” a combination of poor and beatific, “like sleeping in the subways … and yet being illuminated and having illuminated ideas about apocalypse and all that.”

Ginsberg and Kerouac met Cassady in 1946 when brought his wife to New York from Denver to look up his friend, Hal Chase, who also knew Ginsberg and Kerouac. Handsome, exuberant and amoral, Cassady mesmerized Ginsberg and Kerouac.

Cassady’s wife, LuAnne left her negligent husband in January 1947 and returned to Denver. Some months later, Cassady returned as well. The hitchhiking Kerouac was dropped off on Larimer Street in July. Respectable today Larimer Street was Denver’s skid row in 1947. Cassady had spent much of his childhood there.

While staying in Denver, Kerouac visited Central City, where he attended a performance of Fidelio at its opera house. He bathed in the hotel room of one of its performers before repairing to a miner’s shack for an evening of revelry. Today people go to Central City to attend performances at its old opera house and gamble in its newer casinos.

Kerouac’s desire to ranch or farm in Colorado is recorded in his journal. He returned to Denver in May of 1949 after selling his first novel, “The Town and the City.”

He rented a house several days after arriving, and wrote its Westwood, Colorado address in his journal. Today that address is in Lakewood, which incorporated as a city in 1969. The house is west of Sheridan, which forms the border between Lakewood and Denver.

In his journal, Kerouac talks of walking to Morrison Road to buy a notebook. He stopped for beer at a roadhouse. That roadhouse may well have been Hart’s Corner at the intersection of Mississippi and Sheridan. Hart’s Corner began as a root beer stand in 1929 and kept its name well into this century.

He also wrote that he, “looked out on the fields of golden green and the great mountains,” from his back door. That view is gone now, but the view from Lakewood’s Belmar Park is a good approximation.

While waiting for his family to join him in Colorado, Kerouac’s money and self-esteem diminished, while his impatience and depression increased. He took a boy he befriended to Lakeside Amusement Park where they “rode around a sad little lake in a toy railroad.” The train was pulled by one of two engines which had been used during the 1904 Saint Louis World’s Fair. Lakeside acquired them prior to its opening in 1908. Those engines were still running recently.

Kerouac’s family joined him in Colorado, but none of them stayed long. Kerouac, accompanied by his sister and brother-in-law, dropped his mother off at the train station on July 4. Afterward, they attempted to lessen Kerouac’s sadness with a picnic at Berkeley Lake. This lake is to the east of Sheridan Boulevard; Lakeside Amusement Park is west of Sheridan. Both border I-70.

Kerouac traveled to Colorado a final time in 1950 using airfare money provided by his publisher. He took a bus because it was cheaper than flying.

Before Kerouac’s arrival, Cassady broke one of his thumbs jabbing his wife’s forehead. Kerouac and Cassady visited the rundown Windsor Hotel on Larimer and 18th Street where Cassady had lived with his alcoholic father. During the visit, Cassady injured his other thumb by striking the men’s room door repeatedly.