The Obscure, Forgotten, and Undiscovered

The Obscure, Forgotten, and Undiscovered

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August 2026

in Kerouac’s Pittsburgh footsteps
I took a little walk this morning in Pittsburgh, two miles, tracing the steps Jack Kerouac took about three-quarters of a century ago.
 • James K. Hanna
Gregory Corso, ‘gangster’ godfather
I never met “The Fourth Daddy” of the Beat literary movement, Gregory Corso (1930-2001), but by most accounts the often-inebriated mercurial poet was at…
 • James K. Hanna
Thomas Merton, typewriters, bongos, a trapeze, and peaches
In the summer of 1939, Thomas Merton, then 24, and Robert Lax spent a few weeks in an Olean, NY cottage.
 • James K. Hanna
Gregory Corso, campus squatter
I’ve written on Gregory Corso a number of times, including his time in prison and how he benefited from the experience.
 • James K. Hanna
The Saint of Auschwitz
Maximilian Kolbe
 • James K. Hanna
journal dedicated to sacred architecture
and a renewal of beauty
 • James K. Hanna
hobo pilgrims on the road
Was Jack Kerouac simply a hobo, traipsing around the country in the late 1940s?
 • James K. Hanna
how Kerouac's spontaneous prose ends
It started with his buddy Neal Cassady telling him in letters that writing should be read as “a continuous chain of undisciplined thought.”
 • James K. Hanna
Dr. Hook's "Sylvia's Mother"
story well told
 • James K. Hanna
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