Taking Names: George Michael sidelined by pneumonia, cancels tour

George Michael sidelined by pneumonia, cancels tour

George Michael’s management said the singer has canceled all his remaining 2011 tour dates as he recovers from pneumonia.

According to the Associated Press, a statement said the 48-year-old former Wham! frontman “is responding to treatment and slowly improving.”

The statement issued Friday said Mr. Michael “is ill with pneumonia and any other speculation regarding his illness is unfounded and untrue.”

Mr. Michael was hospitalized in Vienna last week, and canceled shows in Vienna, Strasbourg, France, and Cardiff, Wales.

The Austrian doctors treating Mr. Michael said he has “severe community-acquired pneumonia” but “his condition has stabilized and he is responding to treatment.”

The singer has canceled dates in Liverpool, Sheffield, Newcastle, Birmingham, Manchester and London in England and Glasgow, Scotland.

‘Lost’ first novel from Jack Kerouac published

The first book from iconic American writer Jack Kerouac, which went unpublished and was considered “lost” in his lifetime, finally was published Thursday, according to Agence France-Presse.

The original 158-page handwritten manuscript was Kerouac’s first novel, begun when the writer - most famous for his freewheeling trip across America captured in “On The Road” - kept a journal of life at sea as a merchant marine, in 1942, when he was just 20 years old.

“The Sea is My Brother: The Lost Novel,” published by Penguin Classics, showcases a young Kerouac’s gritty talent, which would bloom during the late 1950s “beat” movement.

He died in 1969 at age 47 from an internal hemorrhage caused after many years of heavy drinking.

The newly published novel follows the character of Wesley Martin, a man Kerouac said “loved the sea with a strange, lonely love; the sea is his brother and sentences. He goes down,” according to Penguin.

In notes found for the book, Kerouac envisioned the characters as “the vanishing American, the big free by, the American Indian, the last of the pioneers, the last of the hoboes,” Penguin said.

The book is, in Kerouac’s words, about a “man’s simple revolt from society as it is, with the inequalities, frustration, and self-inflicted agonies.”

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