Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac

by David Amram

From painters' lofts and bohemian haunts in the Greenwich Village of the 1950s to funky clubs and Bowery bars like the Five Spot, jazz musician David Amram retraces in this engaging memoir the creative paths he followed through restless days and long, exhilarating nights with his collaborator and friend Jack Kerouac. With candor and humor, Amram re-creates the moments that shaped a mutually stimulating relationship—like the jazz-poetry reading, the first ever in New York, he performed with Kerouac, whose On the Road had recently made him an overnight literary success; or like the 1959 film, Pull My Daisy, they hilariously made with fellow Beats Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Peter Orlovsky, and Larry Rivers. Amram illuminates the private side of Kerouac, too, his extraordinary intellect and his ardent pursuit of music and literature long after the critics had turned on him and many of his old friends had abandoned him. Among the last of a generation that altered the style and substance of the arts in its time, Amram also celebrates in this at once wise and affecting book the renascence of interest in Kerouac's work three decades after his death. For the beat indeed goes on. And so does the collaboration.

Genres: Nonfiction

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 17, 2002

Reviews

[Joshua DeHaan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was frustrating. I enjoyed the first half but the second half felt almost entirely like self promotion and bragging, with a lot of repetition. I wanted to like it more.

[Sean Sanford · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book a lot, it provides a sort of behind-the-scenes feel to a culture of writers who mostly wrote about themselves, but on a more spiritual and emotional sense. It’s also told by a jazz musician who had a more musical take on the poetry and lifestyle of the time.
Side note: I went to Amoeba and found one of Dave Amram’s records. It’s really good, and employs an original and beautiful style of jazz.

[Jeffrey Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

entertaining first hand account of working life with Kerouac.

[Damon Marbut]

David Amram writes of his relationship with Kerouac from the perspective of a lifelong, devoted friend. Perhaps it was his intended writing style, or just his natural voice, but Amram maintains a neutrality of tone that allows his actions, even those after Kerouac's death, to speak for the tenderness and affection that existed between these two artists/friends/colleagues before, during and after the beginning of On the Road's success. After reading a variety of essays on the Beat Generation writers, as well as several of their works, this book (about which I'd never heard) became what I'd been unknowingly looking for all along, in terms of rounding off my perception of these artists from that powerful, creative moment of the 50s and 60s that changed American literature indefinitely. An important read for fans of this fondly remembered era.

[Allan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book. Of the many books out there that discuss the Beat generation, and Jack Kerouac in particular, this volume feels the most honest and heartfelt. Mr Amrans's personal recollections give the book an overall homespun feeling, that most of these Kerouac memoirs sometimes lack. Would recommend it to anyone with an interest in Jack Kerouac and the time period.

[Katrinka · Rating 3 out of 5]

The information and anecdotes were great-- but Amram is a much more compelling composer and musician than he is a writer.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful book about friendship, love, and art.