When I Was Cool : My Life at the Jack Kerouac School

Booklist

[Kashner’s] memoir is about enlightenment, the kind that comes from looking back with compassion but with eyes wide open

Time Out New York

"[This] headlong, infectious tales honors the author’s youthful idols by remembering them with tenderness and affection"

Entertainment Weekly

"A memoir worth some howling."

Rocky Mountain News

"Consistently funny … moving and always sharply observed."

Newsday

"Hilarious and touching."

San Francisco Chronicle

"Engaging [and] illuminating."

Village Voice

"Fond, funny and finally heartbreaking."

Booklist

[Kashner’s] memoir is about enlightenment, the kind that comes from looking back with compassion but with eyes wide open

San Francisco Chronicle

“Engaging [and] illuminating.”

Newsday

“Hilarious and touching.”

Rocky Mountain News

“Consistently funny … moving and always sharply observed.”

Time Out New York

“[This] headlong, infectious tales honors the author’s youthful idols by remembering them with tenderness and affection”

Entertainment Weekly

“A memoir worth some howling.”

Village Voice

“Fond, funny and finally heartbreaking.”

The New York Times

… When I Was Cool is much more captivating than the standard tales-told-out-of-school reminiscence. And if it does not fully establish Mr. Kashner as the eloquent writer that he wanted to be, it makes up in self-knowledge what it lacks in flair. Mr. Kashner now freely acknowledges trading on the kinds of unrequited crushes that made the Kerouac School go round. — Janet Maslin

The Washington Post

… poets don't count for much in the larger picture of the real world. Nobody cares much what they do at all. At some point Kashner must learn to live in that real world. How all that transpires is a lovely, affectionate, touching story. — Carolyn See

Publishers Weekly

With characteristic modesty, writer Kashner opens his memoir with a caveat to readers: this isn't an encyclopedic history of the beat generation. Rather, it's his own story of how it felt to leave home and learn to be a poet by hanging out with the great beat poets, albeit in their more gentled phase (past their road-tripping days, but still full of "crazy wisdom"). It was 1976 when Kashner, a fresh college dropout, decided to follow his dream and apply to the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, a yet-to-be-accredited division of the Buddhist Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colo. As their first (and for a while only) student, Kashner's assignments included finishing and typing Allen Ginsberg's poems; preventing Gregory Corso from scoring heroin; cleaning the home of their guru, Rinpoche; and mediating between William Burroughs Sr. and Jr., not to mention attending the odd lecture. Kashner undertook all this weirdness with fretful earnestness-e.g., forever worrying that Ginsberg would attempt to seduce him, that Corso would shoot up and he'd be branded a failure, that the school wouldn't get accredited and his parents would regret letting him go there, and that his lack of poetry expertise would be discovered by his teachers. Were this just the saga of an innocent in beat bohemia, Kashner's chronicle would be merely amusing, but his genuine love for his crazy-wise mentors makes this a curiously affecting coming-of-age story. 8-page b&w photo insert not seen by PW. Agent, Nat Sobel. (Dec.) Forecast: A word-of-mouth campaign could help Kashner's book get momentum, fueled by a three-city author tour. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

This memoir by the first student at the Naropa Institute's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics is the story of a young Long Islander who fled to Boulder, CO, in 1976 not just to study the Beats but to become one. The book includes irreverent portraits of the unorthodox faculty, which included Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, William Burroughs, Anne Waldman, and Gregory Corso. Surprisingly, Corso emerges as one of the school's most positive figures in spite of his heroin abuse and disruptive antics. The late Allen Ginsberg, always fiercely loyal to his friends, would have been upset by Kashner's descriptions of Burroughs, Waldman, Diane di Prima, and the poet Antler. To be fair, however, Kashner (The Bad and the Beautiful: Hollyood in the Fifties) also mocks himself, and his reflections display affection as well as malice. Ironically, his education at Naropa seems to have been effective, as it shattered his illusions and taught him to think for himself. Highly recommended.-William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNY Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Coming-of-age narrative from the first alumnus of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute, the original Buddhist college in America. (It was not the Ivy League.) A generation ago, young Kashner (The Bad and the Beautiful, 2002, etc.) left home in Merrick, Long Island, to sit at the feet of the Beat masters in Boulder, Colorado. Allen Ginsberg was his mentor, and the core faculty contributing to Sam's expanding education included Gregory Corso, William Burroughs, Peter Orlovsky, and beautiful poet Anne Waldman. Most of the Rat Pack of Poesy were approaching their geriatric phase, but they were infected still with some things rich and strange. Like Byron before them, they were all mad, bad, and dangerous to know-also, in their way, great teachers. Deconstructing jerrybuilt poetry at the Kerouac School and working with its special faculty was no trust-fund, Buddhist-style caper like the rest of Naropa's classes. The Beats, brightest of their generation, required close acolyte attention. Enticing vinegary Burroughs out his orgone box to care for his son, keeping rowdy Corso as straight as possible, completing and typing moody Ginsberg's poems while calculating the sexual permutations would tax the abilities of any apprentice bard, especially one carrying a fond father's credit card. It was scary, certainly, attending those mythic Olympians, bohemian heroes passing into hipsters or junkies. And it was clearly wonderful. It all started to unravel at a Parents Weekend, during which visiting elders had to post bail for their kids, and after a romp overseen by the Tibetan meditation master of Naropa, it was over. Kashner, who learned to write quite nicely indeed,whether or not at the Kerouac School, blows a kiss to yesteryear. Witty and warm grace notes to the cool history of the Beats. (8 pp. b&w photos, not seen)