My French Mexico City Blues

Just found out that my translation into French of Mexico City Blues by Ti’ Jean (a.k.a Jack) Kerouac was republished this past summer in Points : Poésie, a prestiguous new collection by Le Seuil (their website is completely disfunctional though they were supposed to have up a “new and improved” one by the “rentrée,” i.e. last month. I had to download the picture of the cover from the French Amazon site, thus the odd “Cherchez dans le coeur” — “search the heart” bit on top of the pix).
I still wish I could locate the person who taped the 1976 publication party gig at the American Center in Paris where I read sections of the book (in the two-volume Christian Bourgois edition, a new one-volume version of which is also still in print) in both English and French with Steve Lacy on soprano sax improvising behind, beside & in front of me. It was the first time I gigged with Lacy and wow — did he blow my mind!

Meanwhile, Vernon Frazer posted information on a Kerouac radio program that sounds great, though I managed to miss the first one. I asked Vernon if the shows would be stored & he thought that eventually they would be — on on the New Focus website, though he was not sure exactly when that would happen. Here is his inital post:

Hard-hitting political reporter Mike DeRosa turns his attention to Jack Kerouac in a three-part series that discusses Kerouac’s legacy, his literary estate, and the effect of publishing or not publishing Kerouac’s unpublished work on other writers’ work.

The first episode airs Wednesday October 18 at 8:30 P.M. on www.whus.org. The second half-hour episode will air Friday, October 20 at 12:00 noon on www.whuh.org and at 5:00 P.M. on www.whus.org. It will replay the followingWednesday at 8:30 P.M. on www.wwuh.org <> .

The final installment will appear a week later in the same designated time slots.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with DeRosa’s New Focus program and its progressive challenge to the Bush administration, his radio interviews are archived at the www.newfocusradio.org site for listening and downloading.