Book Fever
By Marcia Loy
November 21, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

Book Fever takes off for Europe


To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries. —Aldous Huxley

Thanks to James Harper for pointing out that Robert Bloch wrote Psycho. My bad. And if you enjoy The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling, try The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams. The title appealed to me because I love baseball and it was great fun.

Travel is a big subject. I’d allotted a month for it, but was asked to do a special year-end column for the paper. I’ll spend the last two weeks of December listing some of the memorable books I’ve read in the past year or so, fiction one week, nonfiction the next. That gives me the first two weeks in December to cover, so I’ll continue with travel books.

Time’s Magpie: A Walk in Prague, Myla Goldberg, 2004. What a clever idea. Several well-known authors have written books about walking through cities around the world. Michael Cunningham takes a walk in Provincetown, Edwidge Danticat in Jacmel, Haiti. I couldn’t figure out why Kinky Friedman (the Texas musician, writer and gubernatorial candidate, not my cat) was writing about a walk through a European country until I looked again and saw his contribution was not about Austria, but Austin.

Myla Goldberg has written about walking through Prague, in the Czech Republic, where she lived for a time. The magpie is a bird that collects eclectic things in its nest. Goldberg suggests Prague is like a magpie, keeping buildings and pieces from past centuries and adding on new ones. She takes us to parks and squares, to a library, to cemeteries for the gravesites of Karel Čapek (who invented the word robot in his play, RUR) and Antonín Dvořák and an almost unbearable visit to the New Jewish Cemetery and the grave of Franz Kafka.

Excerpt: Prague’s magpie instincts are not strictly temporal. The mad rush toward Westernization has resulted in a spectacular street mélange of consumer culture, international tourism and incipient capitalism. In Old Town, a restaurant tout sports an oversized sombrero and a Mexican poncho on which are emblazoned the words PIZZA and FALAFEL, while a restaurant named Chicago advertises Mexican cuisine. A gaggle of schoolgirls squawks, in accented English, “We’re from Belgium, mighty might Belgium . . .” their voices echoing through the streets. A flock of Japanese tourists photographs the clock tower from the opposite side of Old Town Square, their flashes impotent against the deepening night. Kerchiefed, thick-fingered snack-stand proprietors vend—in addition to the traditional sausages and fried cheese—a frozen treat called Rentgen, a fluorescent yellow popsicle on a black skeleton-shaped stick, with a radioactive symbol on its wrapper. . . . From a loudspeaker fronting a downtown bingo hall, a voice drones each successive number in a robotic monotone that suggests imminent death from boredom.

His memory was brilliant, he had marvelous gifts of observation and description, his command of languages was instinctive and he had already developed formidable powers of historical scholarship. But he was a born individualist, an adventurer and it was as a cheerful dropout that he had, three months before, embarked upon a solitary walk across the continent of Europe, from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. —Jan Morris in the introduction to the book

Between the Woods and the Water, Patrick Leigh Fermor, 1986. Not since Richard Henry Dana left Harvard to regain his health and wrote Two Years before the Mast has travel literature been so fortunate. Fermor was asked to leave King’s College in Canterbury for holding hands with a tradesman’s daughter in town. He began his journey in 1934 and wrote A Time of Gifts in 1977, chronicling his journey through the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia. The library has this book, too. Between the Woods and the Water begins where he left off and recounts his adventures in Hungary, Slovakia and Romania. He’s a gifted writer, deft with descriptions of scenery, society and people. He’s as equally at home with shepherds and gypsies as he is with Hungarian aristocrats. It’s a wonderful book recalling a world that, five years later with the onset of World War II, ceased to exist. 

Excerpt: If the river [the Danube] before Esztergom had suggested a liquid Champs Elysées, the resemblance on this southward reach is more striking still. A wide ochre flood dwindles across Europe to infinity between symmetrical fringes of willows and poplars with nothing in sight but a heron rising from the flag-leaves or an occasional fisherman’s canoe suspended in the haze like a boat in a Chinese painting. I stayed the night in a bargeman’s tavern at Mohács in order to see the battlefield.

A narrative of exceptional poignance. An American odyssey by an émigré from his own country. —Los Angeles Times Summer Doorways, W.S. Merwin, 2005. Here’s another book that was published years after the author made a memorable trip to Europe in 1948 when the continent was still recovering from World War II. The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet visited Cap-Ferrat, Monte Carlo, Spain and Portugal.

He says, “I would have the luck to discover, to glimpse, to touch for a moment some ancient measureless way of living, of being in the world, some fabric long taken for granted, never finished yet complete, at once fixed and evanescent as a work of art, an entire age just before it was gone, like a summer.” He writes like the poet he is.

Excerpt: Not far from us [on a beach in Cannes], along the water’s edge, some fishermen were preparing to haul in the net they had laid out past the breakers at the beginning of the night. We got into conversation with them. They wanted to know where we were from. We asked whether they would like us to help them haul in the net, and after some polite demurring they accepted the offer, warning us about getting wet and fishy. Gilles and I rolled up our trousers, and we left the towels and shoes up past the high water line and all waded in with them to pick up the haul ropes, and in the sound of the small waves curing and breaking around our legs they shouted instructions to us, and when they told us to we began to pull.

It must have taken us longer to bring the net in than it seemed. The last stars faded as we hauled together. One of the fishermen began to sing and the others joined him. We pulled to the singing and to the shush of the waves crumpling and sliding out from under us. The net broke the surface, and the bright loom before sunrise glinted on the flipped silver curves caught in it as the long weight inched upward out the water. Then it was up at the waterline, out of reach of the ebbing waves, and we saw the whole struggling catch quivering and gasping as the rays of the first edge of the sun, startling us with their warmth, touched it with light.


Next week, Book Fever goes north to England. Then we’re off to Africa, Asia and Australia. Happy reading.

The Beats go on
By Harry Burrus

San Miguel Authors' Sala  A Celebration of the Beat Writers Sat, Dec 13, 5–9:30pm Hotel Real de Minas Cnr. Ancha de San Antonio & Stirling Dickinson 200 pesos by Dec 1; 250 pesos afterward

Authors' Sala beats Richard Mayes at Rio Laja baseball game, circa 1968.

On Saturday, December 13, John Cassady (son of Neal Cassady) and George “Hardly Visible” Walker (Neal Cassady’s and Ken Kesey’s friend and a co-member of the Merry Pranksters) will entertain us with stories about Neal Cassady, the Beats, and the Merry Pranksters. As part of the same Authors’ Sala event, David Mayes will talk about his father, Richard (Dick) Mayes and his early childhood experiences in San Miguel and will read from his father’s work. This first in a series of articles focuses on David Mayes, who lived in San Miguel with his family 1967–1972, overlapping Neal Cassady’s and George Walker’s time here. Articles on Neal Cassady, George Walker and why the Beats matter will appear in forthcoming issues of Atención.

Dick Mayes, a 1952 Princeton graduate with a master’s degree from NYU, was an habitué of the San Remo bar in New York City, knew Allen Ginsberg and was friends with writer Paul Goodman. He held various teaching positions and, early on, his poetry was published in literary journals. 

In September 1967, Dick headed for Mexico to take advantage of inexpensive living and to work on his Ph.D. thesis. Driving from the US with Erv Kaczmarek, he reunited with his family, who had taken the train earlier to San Miguel. During his five years here, Dick, along with Erv Kaczmarek, started the San Miguel Review, a literary magazine. He was an enthusiastic member of the local gringo baseball team “The Mob” that unsuccessfully competed with Mexican teams.

Dick Mayes gave his son a poetry manuscript in 1988, hoping that David would publish it. The Zero-Tolerance Factor was published in 2008. David will read from his father’s collection and share his memories of living with a very adventurous father.

Tickets for this event, which includes a light supper, are available at Mailboxes Etc., Relox 26, or online at www.sanmiguelauthors.com. Before December 1 tickets are 200 pesos; after that date, 250 pesos.

A Timetable of the Principal Beats and Post-Beats (aka the Merry Pranksters) in Mexico

1949–1952: William S. Burroughs is the first of the principal Beats to come to Mexico. Arrives in Mexico City in October 1949, with family.

1950: Neal Cassady drives Kerouac and Frank Jeffries to Mexico City. This journey is depicted in detail in Part Four of On the Road.

1951: Ginsberg and Lucien Carr drive to Mexico City.

1952: Kerouac visits Mexico twice. Takes bus from border in May. Cassady drives him in December. Burroughs leaves Mexico. 

1954: Ginsberg visits Yucatán and Chiapas in spring, then Oaxaca and Mexico City. Visits San Miguel for 1–3 days late May, early June.

1955: Kerouac back in Mexico City in August. Ginsberg reads Howl on October 7 at the Six Gallery in San Francisco.

1956: After his job as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak in North Cascades National Park, Washington, Kerouac returns to Mexico City and stays approximately two months. Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Peter Orlovsky and Peter’s brother Lafcadio visit in November. Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems is published November 1.

1957: Kerouac arrives Mexico City late July, stays only 10 days, returns to the US in mid-August. On the Road is published in September.

1959: Naked Lunch by William Burroughs is published in Paris.

1958–1963: Neal Cassady is in prison for two years and then on parole for three years. He is ordered not to leave the county or the state, much less the country. 

1961: Kerouac in Mexico City, June through early August.

1962: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest published.

1966: Ken Kesey comes to Mexico in early part of the year. In March, Ken Babbs drives other Pranksters to Mexico. In September, Neal Cassady and George Walker drive to Mexico and meet with Kesey and crew, staging Acid Tests in Manzanillo, Guadalajara and Mexico City.

1967: Neal Cassady and George Walker drive to Puerto Vallarta in January 1967, and stay for two months. While in PV, Cassady meets the Van Leeuwen sisters, who invite him to stay with them at their apartment in San Miguel de Allende. Cassady stays here portions of March, all of April and a few days in May. Returns to the US. Back in San Miguel for a few days in September and then goes to PV. By the end of 1967, he is back in Ken Kesey’s place in Oregon.

1968: Neal Cassady in San Miguel in late January; dies here February 4. That summer Ginsberg visits Mexico City with his brother, Eugene, and family, driving all the way from New York.

1982: Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky and Corso visit Northern Mexico and the Copper Canyon in August.

The only Beat to visit San Miguel in the fifties was Allen Ginsberg, in 1954. Neal Cassady was here in 1967 and 1968 for approximately 60 days. For more detail, go to Atención online: Forums & Letters Archives: Nov. 23, 2007: Was Jack Kerouac Ever Here? Also Dec. 21, 2007: Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg Were Never in SMA Together.

Starter Bibliography

I have been asked frequently for a list of books about the Beats. There are numerous volumes on all the Beat writers and characters and new collections appear often. This list is a solid primer for anyone interested in learning more about the Beats.

As Ever: The Collected Correspondence of Allen Ginsberg & Neal Cassady, edited by Barry Gifford;

Beat Hotel by Barry Miles;

Beat Reader (The Portable), edited by Ann Charters;

Birth of the Beat Generation: Visionaries, Rebels, and Hipsters, 1944–1960 by Steven Watson;

First Third by Neal Cassady;

Ginsberg, A Biography by Barry Miles;

I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg by Bill Morgan; Journals Early Fifties Early Sixties by Allen Ginsberg;

Jack Kerouac: An Illustrated Biography by David Sandison;

Jack Kerouac: Angel-Headed Hipster by Steve Turner;

Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters 1940–1956, edited by Ann Charters;

Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters 1957–1969, edited by Ann Charters;

Jack Kerouac: Windblown World: Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947–1954, edited by Douglas Brinkley;

Literary Outlaw: The Life and Times of William S. Burroughs by Ted Morgan;

Letters of William S. Burroughs 1945–1959, edited by Oliver Harris;

Memory Babe: A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac by Gerald Nicosia;

Naked Angels: Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs by John Tytell;


Neal Cassady: The Fast Life of a Beat Hero by David Sandison and Graham Vickers; Neal Cassady Collected Letters, 1944–1967 by Dave Moore, introduction by Carolyn Cassady;

Off the Road: Twenty years with Cassady, Kerouac, and Ginsberg by Carolyn Cassady; On the Bus: The Complete Guide to the Legendary Trip of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters and the Birth of the Counterculture by Paul Perry;

On the Road by Jack Kerouac (the 1957 published version);

On the Road: The Original Scroll by Jack Kerouac (word for word as Kerouac wrote it, using all the original names);

and William Burroughs, El Hombre Invisible by Barry Miles.