Eyewitness Glimpse

with

ANN CHARTERS

Lowell, Massachusetts

March 12, 1995

[excerpted from SQUAWK Magazine, Issue #56]

"When we approached Ann Charters about this project, of doing the Kerouac Portable Reader, she was immediately enthralled with the idea. After a few discussions, we determined to publish a book of Jack's letters. It was Ann who gathered together hundreds of copies of his letters from libraries, institutions, and with various persons, assembled the copies of originals with the estate's possessions; she was able to put together a comprehensive and reliable working manuscript. Since there were so many letters, we have decided to have a second volume. Within the next year or so, it too will be in the bookstores." -- John Sampas

Jack, in his truest voice, aspired to write the way that jazz and bop musicians played. When I met him for the first time, it was at the second reading that Ginsberg gave of HOWL in Berkeley in March of 1956. I was a junior at UC-Berkeley then, only 19 yrs. old, and had a crush on my professor, Sam Charters, who was married to someone else. My roommate, who didn't want me to get involved with a married man -- and I agree with her -- said to me, "I'll fix you up with a wonderful boy who's your own age." This was Peter Orlovsky, before he was living with Allen, and who considered HOWL to be the greatest poem since Whitman's "Leaves of Grass." Peter and I rode to the theater where Allen was giving his reading; the driver was probably Neal Cassady, but I was so awe-struck that I don't remember him. It's very sad, though, because Peter obviously doesn't remember any of this, and my roommate-friend commited suicide. At any rate, that's how I first came into this orbit. Sam Charters was there with another girl; so he remembers that night. I was furious at him, though, to be there with another girl; somebody I didn't even know about!

Then ten years later, after I 'd gotten a Ph.D. from Columbia, and been a Kerouac collector for a number of years, the Phoenix Bookshop invited me to compile a bibliography they were publishing on The Beat writers. So as a gambit I wrote Jack, knowing he'd want one too. He wrote that I'd be welcome in Hyannis for two days, and that solidified it. He responded specifically for that project; it wasn't that he was going to show me his archives, it was like, "Come, and I'll help you with this project." That was it. This Phoenix series also included Gregory Corso and Michael McClure. There was also a publication of the Cassidy-Ginsberg correspondence during Jack's lifetime. One of the letters from 1968 to Andreas Brown, I believe, is Jack's refusal to allow his leffers to Neal to be used in that way. He just had nothing against Neal or Allen, although he wasn't close to either of them in 1968. So he was just going to wait for his letters; he'd had opportunities, but he didn't want to take them.

As the years went on, with Nixon and stuff, I really felt that writers could be forgotten; they could drop between the cracks. It can happen so easily, and I felt that this would be a terrible thing. Therefore, The Beat Reader came about, actually during the Gulf War. I felt that if you could have one volume, with 50,000 printed copies, and it would be real hard to stamp them all out. I had decided not to spend my life researching and writing about 19th century American authors, which was what I'd gotten my Ph.D. in; rather I wanted to spend my life and career researching and writing about contemporary authors -- especially those, because I came from a very strong 1930's proletariat, socialist background -- especially those writers who were under-represented in the American canon -- although I never thought of it was a canon --and had some ethnic, working class background, as Kerouac did; had a spiritual side to them, as Kerouac certainly does; and who captured brilliantly my sense of what the time and period was in Berkeley in 1956, or '57.

I think there have been a lot of writers at different periods, picking up on different things. In The Beat Reader, I mention Bob Dylan's link back to Kerouac -- in the sense that you could write about anything and use your own language, and it could express private sentiments as spontaneously as you could. Then Ginsberg, of course, picks up on the style of writing; with the spontaneous prose. Then in the late 70's, early 80's, Tom Wolfe is writing the same kind of true story books, journalism, that Kerouac supposedly started. Nowadays, I find that people aren't writing like Kerouac; they are more sophisticated than that. But we are finding out about Kerouac; we are appreciating him or the writer he was. This is a very exciting time.

What I believe people are responding to is his honesty. I mean Kerouac tells you that he's a drunk; he tells you that he lives off of people, that he won't work to support a wife and family. He doesn't try to snowball what he's doing; that essential honesty is what keeps you coming back to him. Also, he has an incredible gift of telling a story; everything he turns to is shaped in his telling. That's an old-fashioned thing to do, but it's essential. The word, in the household, is literature. His sense of storytelling came from his mother. She was a great storyteller too, in the French-Canadian tradition, making stories out of their lives, talking a lot, reading a lot. The word was important to the Kerouacs, and perhaps being bilingual was part of that -- the consciousness of words, and how important it was to assimilate the culture. They didn't want to stay in a French-Canadian ghetto -- although they were very comfortable with their people. But Jack went to Columbia, and played football, he did all the American things. And his dad was a printer, and had a shop upstairs in their house.

My role of editor, as a woman, is very strong. When I put The Beat Reader together, there was a great disaepancy between the work of the Beat Generation men and the few women who were encouraged, like Diane di Prima or Lenore Kendall or Joanne Keiger, for example, to be writers. I felt the only way to represent the role of women was to extend the book, so that the Memoirs became possible. It wasn't only as an advocate for women's voices, and women's interpretations of what had gone on, and women's writings about this time, but it also was about their children. I mean I wanted Jan Kerouac and Billy Burroughs, Jr. to be there; they're very talented writers. That whole section is a reflection of the wish that women had been encouraged more by the men. On the other hand, with the two Kerouac books, you can see definite selections were made to emphasize the role of women and their contributions.

In The Reader, we have the selection from The Subterraneans, which is the one that Eilene gave to Jack; she told him this, and he wrote it down. This is her word, this i her story. I don't have to make a big production out of it, because this is hearsay, but that's what I chose deliberately. I also chose that long section from Desolation Angels, when Jack is traveling with his mother. He says, "This is the most important woman in my life." I also chose the unpublished version of his explanation of the Beat Generation that had the footnote with the visions of all his friends -- which they took out of the published version -- because Eilene was the only woman whose visions he felt could stand besides Cassady, Ginsberg, Burroughs, and his own.

I think Kerouac had some great friends for a young writer; he had people to critique his style. He had people to give him books to read, like Burroughs gave him Spangler. He had people who were trying to write on his own subject, which was Holmes, and doing it badly -- not badly, but in a weak kind of conventional way. So Kerouac could just pick, go from one to the other, and see what was going on. All of it was an absolute support net for him, and that's the climate that made him happy. It was primarily Neal Cassady giving him a model; Jack loved Neal. His friends Ginsberg and Lucien Carr, who was interested in French literature; and Burroughs who encouraged him and got him going. Later Jack said it was Ginsberg's letter to him, as much as Cassady's letters; the freedom about being able to talk about anything in both writers, as well as Ginsberg's prose style.

If Jack was here, among us today, I would say, "Gee, it's really too bad, Jack, that you died before the word processor came on the market. You'd have such a good time." If he had a computer, he'd have been as happy as a clam; might have even taken the place of alcohol for him. Like when he wrote on that teletype roll, he was trying to do that instinctively with scotch tape and long rolls of paper. Now he would be in paradise.

As I said earlier, we're living in an exciting time -- because anything goes. We're sort of pushing something up a hill, and we're gefflng closer to the top. That's what I think. What will happen when there's total freedom, when you can say anything about anything, any kind of relationship, using any kind of language? Just wait until all this material is public domain. Then you can do anything with it -- and that's going to happen. Maybe we won't be here, but it'll happen. Our children and grandchildren can read these work as they're supposed to be. Then they're going to have a whole other appreciation for Kerouac. But that's something that we'll just have to imagine.

In closing, I'd like to read a letter he wrote to Stella Sampas, on October 12,1955, fror Berkeley, California, from Ginberg's cottage, Jack wrote:

Dear Stella, Thank you for writing to me. Sorry your last letter was sent back. I've been all over the map since that last letter I sent you from San Francisco ... and then, miracle of miracles, in October [1953], sadly walking across the railyards by the full sad yellow moon, I went to the library to pick up books on Oriental Philosophy and came up, idly, with the Asvhaghosha's Career of Buddha, or Buddha-Charita, which I read with heavy heart getting lighter every hour, rushing back to the library for more Buddhism, ending, with one night, complete enlightened realization that life is like a great strange dream taking place in something (that whole blue sky) as endless as endlessness...."

This passage makes me think of being at Jack's funeral in October of 1969, when Allen said, "Even though Jack is gone, I feel that he is here dreaming us." And it still seems that Allen's words are true as we're sitting here in Lowell today, on Jack's birthday, that Jack is dreaming us. It's a very uncanny feeling.