Jack Kerouac in Italy, 1966

Fernanda Pivano, the translator of Jack Kerouac's books into Italian, introduces footage of her encounter with Kerouac in Milan, Italy, in September 1966. Jack had visited Italy to promote the publication of the Italian translation of his novel Big Sur.

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• Jack
• Kerouac
• Fernanda
• Pivano
• Italy

[ericineffible]

Great! Thank you Jack! Jack wrote some great things on Buddhism. The book 'Some of the Dharma' has some amazing insights. Alcoholism is a disease. It's cunning baffling and powerful. Here he is teaching the dangers of alcoholism.  Thank you Jack. R.I.P. brother.

[skanemermaid]

I love Kerouac's writing and I consider him one of the purest stylists in a literary world full of technicians and engineers. But his life in the late sixties breaks my heart: he looks so much the parody of the buffoonish lumberjack.

[monsieureynaldo]

when fernanda shows the booklet, she says kerouac's eyes were that kind of blue. not light blue, but that kind of deep blue. she says that that colour didn't even look real... she also says they put water in the glass they gave him, so they managed to have him saying a few comprehensible words for a little while!

[fedorwand]

some can't stand life without booze

[luckyswine]

Lots of evidence for Kerouac as unacknowledged bisexual. For a bisexual, he lived in tough times and grew up in the wrong religion in the wrong neighborhood with the wrong mother.

[luckyswine]

Compared to Scott Fitz, Kerouac is stone cold sober here. Self conscious about his lack of Italian clearly. And evasive. Looks like he wishes he were away from the camera's eating eye.

[cesarion29]

chingon....¡¡¡¡¡¡ kerouac

[lucychinn149]

Maybe he had an untreated bipolar disorder. Sure looks like a possibility. And I didn't realize he was becoming bald. Just never think of him this way.

[bailinnumberguy]

Kerouac probably wasn't sober for more than 15 minutes from about his 14th birthday until his premature death. He did write the bible for an entire generation of the disaffected though.

[EdMahoney19]

That whole generation drank like fish. The only difference between his generation and the hippies, is that the hippies indulged in drugs instead of booze. Now, with alcohol energy drinks, we have a generation that combines booze and drugs. That is the pattern professional psychologists are noting about 20th to 21st century America.