Word: bumming
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...forbidden to live it. The main part of the book is concerned with details of prison existence-often, perhaps, most interesting to students of penology and the strength-through-pain principle behind it. There is the round of workshops, prison libraries, bouts in "solitary," a pet bird named Bum, a kindly chaplain...
Next day one of the Culver staff saw a news story about a "hospital bum" who could bring up blood at will. The story was based on an article in the A.M.A. Journal by Iowa City's Dr. John S. Chapman describing a galloping case of the "Munchausen syndrome"* (TIME, March 5, 1951) and warning hospitals against this itinerant who, strangely, always used the same name. Hospital Superintendent Ralph Haas phoned Iowa City to ask Dr. Chapman the man's name. "Leo Lamphere," was the reply. Soon, into Lamphere's room marched two deputy sheriffs with...
...visions of hell. The difference is that Jack Kerouac, ex-merchant seaman, ex-railroad brakeman, is not Rimbaud but a kind of latrine laureate of Hobohemia. The story line of The Subterraneans is simple and stark: it concerns a short, manic-depressive love affair between a "big paranoic bum" and occasional writer named Leo Percepied and a near-insane Negro girl named Mardou Fox. Says Kerouac: "I wrote this book in three full-moon nights," and it reads that way. The details of the Leo-Mardou relationship are explicit and near pornographic. But The Subterraneans is not really about...
...tough (Henri Vidal) who is dashingly good-looking but sort of dumb. He takes it on the lam to Paris in a stolen car, falls asleep at the wheel, cracks up, and hides out in a shack on the outskirts of Paris. There he is discovered by the neighborhood bum (Pierre Brasseur), a charming, aging lunk who drinks all night, sleeps till noon, lives off his ancient, hardworking mother, and sulks because nobody loves...
...once everybody notices an amazing change in the bum's behavior. He gives up drinking, rises betimes, bustles about on mysterious errands. The quartier is delighted. The tavernkeeper's pretty daughter (Dany Carrel) invites the reconstructed wreck to a dance, and he begins to daydream about romance, riches, monograms on his shirts. And what is responsible for the change? A small thing, says Director Clair. The good-for-nothing has discovered that he is good for something-if only to hide a criminal from the police. As he happily explains to his reluctant accomplice (Georges Brassens): "At last...