Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Jack Kerouac and Amy Winehouse

How long did you think it would take before someone used a Kerouac allusion in writing about Amy Winehouse? And in the case of this article, it was only a superficial hook from the most famous quote in On The Road (no need to identify that to Daily Beat readers) to saying, the "sky shines a little less brightly this week after Amy Winehouse was found dead on Saturday."

Was author Stephen King (the Stephen King?) saying that Winehouse is the sort Jack would say is an example of "the only ones for me"? I'm not familiar enough with Winehouse to offer an opinion, but that's sure where I thought the article was going . . . and it didn't.

However, I'm the first one to capitalize on famous names and quotations to spur interest in my blog (note today's title), so I sure can't take that away from King. I just expected from the opening paragraph that he'd delve into who Kerouac described and why Amy Winehouse was a shining example.

I also expected a comparison regarding drug and alcohol abuse, but that didn't happen, at least explicitly. I was pleased about that.

Overall, it's a good piece. I like the ending sentence, which does finally bring us back to Jack:
Freedom must involve the exploding spiders having the right to make the wrong choices.

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