Jack Kerouac, railroad brakeman’s rule-book in pocket, couch pillows airing on fire-escape overlooking backyard clotheslines, south view three flights up, my apartment 206 East 7th Street between Ave B and Ave C, Lower East Side Manhattan. He’d completed On The Road,Visions of Cody, Dr.Sax &’d begun Book of Dreams and Pic, was in midst Subterraneans affair with “Mardou Fox”, that novel completed some year along with the romance Maggie Cassidy. Burroughs then in residence edited Yage Letters & Queer Mss. Gregory Corso visited that season. Probably September 1953 (caption and photo: Allen Ginsberg)
Jack Kerouac turns 100 today. HB Jack!
“Few 20th-century authors have shaped the American imagination as much—or inspired so many readers, writers, and musicians—as Kerouac. While Kerouac was never comfortable with being considered the “King of the Beats” (indeed, the success of On the Road pretty much ruined his life), that novel, with its classic themes of freedom, longing, and the search for authenticity, helped crystallize a rebellion against the complacency and prosperity of postwar America. It encouraged people then, and in generations afterwards, to swim against the tide, to do things that weren’t supposed to be done, to seek new experiences.” — Paul Slovak, Executive Editor, Viking Books (via lithub)
