He's all yours, I'll take pretty boy Lucien Carr, even if he was a murderer!

I am both fascinated and repulsed by that bunch. Fascinated by the romantic aspects of it (which is, of course, easy to do 50-60 years later) and repulsed because what I really suspect is that they were just a bunch of self-absorbed and self-indulgent assholes who would be a real pain in the ass to be around for any extended length of time.

I really suspect is that they were just a bunch of self-absorbed and self-indulgent assholes who would be a real pain in the ass to be around for any extended length of time.

Oh, absolutely. Trouble. Nothing but Trouble. Part of the attraction, I'm sure.

See, I didn't have that gut-level attraction with The Beats on account of first getting into this guy's stuff:

No sex appeal at all. No siree. Bukowski = the opposite of teh sexy.

(Though I agree, Kerouac was definitely nice to look at in his prime.)

I think most of the Beats would have been lucky to have died in a head-on collison in their prime so they could have left behind a James Dean-like legacy, rather than their liver-spotted and rotted carcasses!

But I still maintain that Jack would have been good for a 2-week fling. Just long enough to get really tired of him...

"We turned at a dozen paces, for love is a duel, and looked up at each other for the last time."

—Jack Kerouac

You can have John Kerouac... My favorite of the beats is Lawrence Ferlinghetti. I don't care that he's 87 years old, I would go out on a date with him tonight if I had the opportunity.

"A Coney Island of the Mind" is my favorite book of poetry, in large part because he seemed to have more of a sense of humor than the other beats. And City Lights bookstore is one of the coolest places on the face of the planet, and anyone who loves books so much that he could create a place like that is a hot date in my book.

That is a flattering photo of Kerouac, to be sure. Every year I reread "On the Road" and wish I could have been a part of that generation -- when everything was so fresh and new, when there seemed to be so much promise and potential in the whole counterculture movement.

FWIW, my crush was on Neal Cassady