Tag: Essay

‘Lampedusa’ (2020), the second novel of the Canadian poet, Steven Price, is an imagined account of the last years of the Sicilian author, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (1896-1957),  as he struggled with illness and self-doubt to complete his only work of fiction, ‘The Leopard’ (1963). That book, ‘Il gattopardo’ in Italian, won the Strega Prize, Italy’s top literary award, and became an international best seller. It was made into a Hollywood film, directed by Visconti, in 1963 (re-released in 1983), starring Claudia Cardinale, Alain Delon and Burt Lancaster. Apparently, Visconti wanted Laurence Olivier for the part, but the producers chose Lancaster.

“Keep your eyes on the road, your hand upon the wheel…”
 – The Doors

“This land is your land…” – Woody Guthrie

“Superman never made any money / savin’ the world from Solomon
Grundy / and sometimes I despair / the world will never see another
man like him.” – “Superman’s Song,” Crash Test Dummies, from

The Ghosts that Haunt Me

I used to leave in the middle of the night, solo, mostly.  

It was the 1990s. I was in my 20s. My procedure for road trips in those days was simple.

          “Honey don’t walk out – I’m too drunk to follow.” – Tom Petty

Written on October 31, 2022, and later recovered from the files:

Jack Kerouac, from his position as a marginalized, criticized, and rejected American prophet, wrote about the “big American night, redder and darker all the time.” He noted that the night was “closing in,” and concluded that “there is no home.” In his song “The Waiting,” Tom Petty sings, or screams, at least four times, “Don’t let them get to you,” and, “Don’t let it get to you.” The prophetic shout of American rock and roll came to early and lasting perfection in one of Petty’s greatest heroes, Jerry Lee Lewis, “The Killer,” the best of them all.