A movie about Ginsberg’s “Howl” is officially underway:

“Howl” is a genre-expanding feature-length exploration of the courtroom drama of the obscenity trial over Allen Ginsberg’s poem, as well as an animated re-imagining of the poem.

James Franco stars as Ginsberg; Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman are directing; Gus Van Sant is co-executive producer.

The Ginsberg Project reports that the film’s animated version of the poem is being done by Eric Drooker, who graphically adapted “Howl” and other works from Ginzy in the book Illuminated Poems.

This is the rarest of Brautigan’s books. Four are currently listed on ABE, ranging from $395 (for an incomplete set) to $1,250.

pleaseplantthisbook.com explains:

Richard Brautigan published Please Plant This Book in the Spring of 1968. It consisted of eight packets of garden seeds, each printed with a poem, all gathered in a small folder.

A version is at pleaseplantthisbook.com. Although the cover of the folder (above) appears to be an actual scan, the packets with verses look like digital facsimiles rather than scans.

The Brautigan Bibliography and Archive has lots of info here, including what appear to be scans of the actual packets (scroll to the bottom of the page). The scans are tiny, and clicking on them won’t make them bigger, but if you right-click on any of them and choose “View Image,” you’ll see a larger version.

An Anglican priest from Canada is retracing Kerouac and Cassady’s trip from the second part of On the Road, and he’s blogging it.

In 2007, reporters from the Boston Globe and USA Today also followed Kerouac’s fumes.

{Image from On the Road 2009 blog}