IN THE light of the recent news about top rock journalist Holly George-Warren’s new Kerouac biography, by way of a follow-up, can I share that another interesting title, Kerouac & Jazz, is currently in preparation, the first full-length study of the writer’s relationship with the music he loved best.
The book is by that insightful commentator Marian Jago, the publisher is Bloomsbury and the title will appear as soon as 2023.
Jago contributed a superb essay on the legendary Lee Konitz, a close associate and occasional collaborator, to the collection Kerouac on Record: A Literary Soundtrack in 2018. The sax soloing of Konitz, who died last year aged 92, is thought to have been a crucial influence on the novelist’s own spontaneous prose style.