NEWS: Kerouac Biographer Cries "Blacklisted!"

CULTURE: Kerouac Biographer Cries "Blacklisted!"

Jack Kerouac died in 1969, the first of the major Beat writers to go by a long shot. Not that it's stopped people from trying to make a name for themselves in his shadow. When I saw the title of this New York Sun article, referring to a "A Jack Kerouac Controversy," I was excited that something new and fascinating about his life might have been brought to light, but sadly it's not really about Kerouac himself at all so much as everyone left in his orbit, primarily one Mr. Gerald Nicosia, biographer by trade and author of Memory Babe: A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac. Whether emboldened by paranoia or just finally having angered the wrong people once too often, he is coming forth and speaking out about a very important subject: he is allegedly being systematically cut out of Kerouac's legacy.

Nicosia claims to have press packets, featuring "mountains of evidence," to be doled out at his press conference, but no word yet on what actually materialized. He told the NY Sun, however, that he was being blacklisted and subjected to censorship, likely on account of his having supported Jan Kerouac, Jack's daughter, in the lawsuit she brought against her stepmother Stella Sampas, executor of the Jack Kerouac Estate.

Or, she was the executor, rather. It's an extremely complicated and drawn-out legal battle, the gist of it being that, upon his alcohol-soaked demise, Jack Kerouac willed his estate (all of $91 at the time of his death) to his mother; when his mother died just five years later, she entrusted the estate to Sampas. Jan Kerouac called shenanigans on this move, accusing Sampas of will forgery and taking the whole shebang to court. It's a battle that both women would take to their graves: Sampas willed the estate to her brother, John Sampas, upon her death in 1990, and Ms. Kerouac left Nicosia as her "literary executor" upon her own death in 1996. As it stands now, Kerouac's third wife's brother goes to court against Kerouac's daughter's biographer confidante, and the degrees of separation from himself and his estate grow steadily wider.

So Nicosia is crying that his own name is being cut from about the Beat Generation, and no one is very amused, least of all those facing his accusations. Sampas (the brother) says Nicosia is just trying to drum up publicity for himself, and calls him a "stalker of the Kerouac estate," pointing to the fact that this is hardly the first dispute that the two have ever had. Meanwhile, Paul Slovak, a publisher with Viking, pretty much just straight-up calls him a liar.

Personally, I think it's just a sad situation all around. Perhaps Sampas is cutting Nicosia a raw deal, which would be pretty rotten, but ultimately bizarre. Perhaps Nicosia is trumping up charges for attention, which would be rotten, but would ultimately reflect pretty badly on him. It's impossible to pick a winner, and the thing of it is that Kerouac wasn't exactly the kind of guy who reveled in media attention, and it's probably safe to say that the last thing he would have wanted was his family members (and, eventually, their friends) going to war very publicly for decades, the war outliving the wagers themselves, all over his material and possessions. Still, at any rate, there's this: Kerouac's original typed On the Road scroll, celebrating fifty years of existence, is going to be on display at the New York Public Library this coming winter. If nothing else, if Nicosia's accusations at least help redirect a little publicity to that attraction, then at least it's not completely without merit.

Speaking of attractions, let's put a little bit of spotlight back on the man who really matters in all of this. Here's a wonderful clip to end the story: Jack himself, chatting a bit on The Steve Allen Show and reading the last passage of On the Road, surreally accompanied by Allen on piano. It's one of my favorite single run-on sentences in all of literature, and it's even better out loud.

[[cheap_segue]]In the immortally sequined words of Michael Jackson, "just Beat it."[[/cheap_segue]]

Incidentally, Carolyn Cassidy, one wife of the beat, Neal Cassidy -- who was a close acquaintance to Kerouac -- she wrote a biography after Neal, titled Off the Road. It discussed some of Neal, and mentioned some more of the lives of the beats -- e.g Neal Cassidy, Jack Kerouac, Alan Ginsberg, Burroughs (?), and even Ken Kesey (IIRC). It was definitely not a flattering account of Neal Cassidy. Neither was it all flattering of all of "the beats" (and definitely not of "the beatniks", at least those coming in, smoking out, and tearing up the house of Carolyn and Neal, under Neal's supervision). Neither was it villainizing. In short, She keeps it real. I'd recommend that book, Off the Road, to anyone interested about (and at least passingly familiar about names of) the real persons behind "the beats" and before "the beatniks".

adios, and danke, DG

-- Nadir

Who is this Kerouac you speak of?

Oh, I'm sorry Dean! I meant to say Sal Paradise.

I got the joke. I get jokes.

Or maybe even Ray Smith?

I think I'll give those outside perspectives a shot. I always got the feeling Jack was glossing over one or two things.

<snap snap>

Thanks for that vid! They showed it during assembly in my high school once and I've wanted to see it again ever since.

That reallly flashed me.

Allen Ginsberg videos on youtube are great too.

But, of course, everyone forgot about Chinaski.

Bastards

Evidence? It's simple. Is his name in the older editions of the books, and if so, has his name been deleted from more recent editions?

Or am I oversimplifying this?

I love Kerouc

And I'm sure he'd speak fondly ofyou as well

I have to try to find the CD I think I have around somewhere with him reading "On The Road."