TRIO #23

Friday December 19 2025

When I started Jan Kerouac’s autofictional novel Baby Driver, originally published in 1981 and recently reissued by NYRB, I assumed it would be a salacious indictment of her famously deadbeat dad, but Jack appears in the novel only twice, both times drunk, cruel, and totally beside the point. What matters here instead are Jan’s misadventures, starting with her pregnancy in Mexico at age 15 and moving backward and forward in time through the slums of the Lower East Side, the suburbs of Washington, the drug dens of New Mexico, and the Peruvian jungle. Delivered with candour and grace, Baby Driver feels refreshingly alive in the same way many people might describe On the Road, only Jan’s version is riskier, more interesting, and better.

Because my job is on my feet, I wear orthotic sneakers. I work between two locations of the same business, and when winter forces me into boots, I have no choice but to schlep these orthotic sneakers across town, changing into them when I arrive wherever I happen to be scheduled that day. It’s busy season for retail workers, hordes of holiday shoppers anxiously avoiding Amazon, so if I’m slow to respond to a text or an email, or if I seem flakier or more high-strung than usual, I apologize and promise it’s only temporary.

Soon I’ll have a week off, starting on the solstice. I plan to celebrate the shortest day of the year alongside my newfound freedom by attending a virtual intention-setting workshop hosted by friend and holistic nutritionist Madelyne Beckles, then marching through the Festival of Lights, the annual Kensington Market solstice parade, which every year culminates with the burning of a large effigy in Alexandra Park. Maybe I’ll see you there.

Til next time,

Cason