Title: Cool? No. Warm-hearted? Yes.
Review: There are a lot of things to like about Sam Kashner's coming-of-age memoir, "When I Was Cool." First: Mr. Kashner wasn't cool and probably knows it. Second: he doesn't go through detox or recovery. Halleluia! A memoir without a recovery center or AA meeting. Third: his affection for these old lions, of whom only Peter Orlovsky is still with us. Fourth: the look at their everyday lives, from hemorrhoids to the keystone cops comedy of The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. Fifth: Mr. Kashner's long suffering, very cool, and funny parents. And Sixth: Mr. Kashner's teenaged, wide-eyed, intimidated, growing-up self.Its not the last book that will be written about Naropa or any of the characters, but it's the only book written by the first (and for a long time only) student of the Kerouac school, and is sometimes lovely, often funny, and very easy - it's "a report of an intimate nature," i.e., gossip.
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