Kerouac Jack - Jacks book: an oral biography of Jack Kerouac

PENGUIN BOOKS

JACKS BOOK

Barry Giffords fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have been published in twenty-eight languages. His novel Night People was awarded the Premio Brancati, established by Pier Paolo Pasolini and Alberto Moravia, in Italy, and he has been the recipient of awards from PEN, the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Library Association, the Writers Guild of America, and the Christopher Isherwood Foundation. His books Sailors Holiday and The Phantom Father were each named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times, and his book Wyoming was named Novel of the Year by the Los Angeles Times. He has written librettos for operas by the composers Toru Takemitsu, Ichiro Nodaira, and Olga Neuwirth. Giffords work has appeared in many publications, including the New Yorker, Punch, Esquire, La Nouvelle Revue Franaise, El Pas, La Repubblica, Rolling Stone, Brick, Film Comment, El Universal, Projections, and the New York Times. His film credits include Wild at Heart, Perdita Durango, Lost Highway, City of Ghosts, Ball Lightning, and The Phantom Father. Barry Giffords most recent books are Sailor & Lula: The Complete Novels and Sad Stories of the Death of Kings. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. For more information, visit BarryGifford.com.

Lawrence Lee, a Peabody Awardwinning journalist, worked for United Press International, Associated Press, and a number of television stations in San Francisco. He coauthored Saroyan: A Biography. Mr. Lee died in 1990.

Photo of Jack Kerouac 1950 by Arni. According to Kerouacs widow, this was the way he wanted to be remembered.

AN
ORAL
BIOGRAPHY
OF

JACK KEROUAC

BARRY GIFFORD AND LAWRENCE LEE

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017, India

Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in the United States of America by St. Martins Press 1978

Published in Penguin Books 1979

This edition published 2012

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Copyright Barry Gifford and Lawrence Lee, 1978

Introduction copyright Barry Gifford, 1994

All rights reserved

Remarks attributed to Gary Snyder are copyright 1978 by Gary Snyder

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Gifford, Barry.

Jacks book / Barry Gifford and Lawrence Lee.

p. cm.

ISBN: 978-1-101-58046-2

1. Kerouac, Jack, 19221969Biography. 2. Authors, American20th centuryBiography. 3. Beat generationBiography. I. Lee, Lawrence. II. Title.

PS3521.E735Z635 1994

813.54dc20

[B] 94-21899

Printed in the United States of America

Set in Adobe Garamond Pro

Designed by Catherine Leonardo

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the authors rights is appreciated.

ALWAYS LEARNING

PEARSON

To Marshall Clements, the book we always wanted

And to Mary Lou, as always

B.G.

To John and to the memory of Robert Goodman

L.L.

THE AUTHORS WISH to thank all of those persons who participated in this projectAn Adventurous Education as surely as was Jacks Vanity of Duluozand thank especially those who personally assisted us: Carolyn Cassady, James Grauerholz, Les Pockell, Marshall Clements, Pat and Liz Delaney, Ken and Tony Anderson, Lorna Goodman, Don Ellis, Deirdre Tabler, Dennis McNally, Duane BigEagle, Ray Neinstein, Sarah Satterlee, Bill Alexander, Paul DeAngelis, Mary Lou Nelson, the officers of KSAN-FM radio and Julie Lyon, for her indefatigable transcription of the nigh-untranscribable.

B.G. and L.L.

All your America is like a dense Balzacian hive in a jewel point.

Jack Kerouac
in Doctor Sax

INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW EDITION

by Barry Gifford

On May 30, 1936, in a letter to Arnold Zweig, Sigmund Freud wrote: To be a biographer, you must tie yourself up in lies, concealments, hypocrisies, false colorings, and even in hiding a lack of understanding, for biographical truth is not to be had, and if it were to be had, we could not use it. Truth is not feasible, mankind doesnt deserve it.

Heeding Freuds admonition, Larry Lee and I chose the rather unorthodox (for that time, 1975) method of oral history to capture on record the brief life of Jack Kerouac. Larry called it a rather more immediate form of biography; the idea being that since most of Kerouacs cronies and family members were still alive (he having died of alcoholism at the early age of forty-seven), if we could find and then persuade them to talk candidly about the subject, it would be left to usand the readerto sort through the revisionism and decide whose versions most closely approximated the ineluctable truth. It was Jacks longtime cohort, the poet Allen Ginsberg, who pronounced, upon completion of his reading of the uncorrected galleys of the book: My god, its just like Rashomoneverybody lies and the truth comes out! Allens words are branded in my memory; I am not paraphrasing.

It was Allens well-meaning desire to see Kerouac presented in the best light, owing, no doubt, to the disrespect and disservice that Jackand Allen, among other contemporarieshad received from critics and the news media during the heyday of the Beat Generation. Though Jacks Book surely presents Kerouac warts and all, it was Larry Lees and my intention to get people busy reading JKs eleven mostly ignored novels and other works. When we began our research for this biography, only three of Kerouacs books were in print: On the Road, The Dharma Bums, and Book of Dreams. By 1980, two years after the publication of Jacks Book, at least eight titles were available. In 2012, virtually all of Kerouacs work can be found in new editions, films of his novels