Kerouac up; Lowell down (and out)
I always turn first to the Ideas section of the Boston Sunday Globe and, today, found Lowell featured on the front page under the dismal headline: “What Renaissance?” The same section features an article about Jack Kerouac’s ‘newly-burnished reputation.’ Yes, the author of On the Road is now ‘in’, having been recently inducted into the Library of America, joining Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck and other literary legends; while, of course, being the subject of much celebration here in town on the 50th anniversary of the publication of his major work.
Lowell, however, is apparently ‘out’. According to the article, Lowell’s heyday is over, and the ‘Lowell miracle’ is being questioned by many, including our own Bob Forrant, professor of regional economics at UML. The criticisms seem to be that Lowell’s emphasis has been on large construction projects (such as the Arena, the National park and the stadium) to the detriment of the working class, and that city officials have consistently over-emphasized the city’s gains. The really damning statistic is that Lowell’s poverty rate went up astronomically between 1980 and 2000, compared with Brockton, Fall River and Worcester. This is worrying and gives credence to the fear, expressed by city council candidate Darius Mitchell in the last election, that there are ‘two Lowells.’
It might be interesting to graph Kerouac’s reputation alongside of Lowell’s. Jack Kerouac came out of the post-industrial Lowell. He was down a long time after his initial success, especially as his reputation was conflated with a generation with which he disagreed vehemently, struggling to disavow the title ‘King of the Beats.’ His talent though was real and is now more widely recognized. I don’t dispute the points that Bob Forrant is trying to make, but I think the Globe author was stretching to make his point that Lowell is a failure: the poverty statistics from 2000 are now nearing a decade old, positive events like the opening the Brew’d Awakening Coffee Shop occurred in the last five years, even Middlesex Street (a photo of empty storefronts on Middlesex Street is in the story) is showing some signs of revitalization and the National Park was surely the saving of the city - not in the same league as stadium and arena projects. In addition, Manager Bernie Lynch had good answers to many of the criticisms raised, including the fact that ‘experimentation is part of the Lowell model.’ Lowell will no doubt continue to have ups and downs, but there is something here that is real and that persists despite the current fashions in urban renewal.