Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Group photo from the 1982 On the Road Jack Kerouac Conference in Boulder WITH UPDATED KEY 1-3-17

As The Daily Beat readers know, an epic Kerouac event occurred at the end of July in 1982. Held in Boulder, Colorado, "On the Road: The Jack Kerouac Conference" took place at the University of Colorado's Boulder campus and was sponsored by The Naropa Institute. The conference, in celebration of the 25-year anniversary of the publication of On the Road, featured almost every living Beat celebrity/scholar and Kerouac-related person of note (as evidenced by the posters below).*





But you knew all that. However, you may not have seen the following picture from the conference. It was recently sent to me by attendee Gerry Nicosia, author of Memory Babe: A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac (he's in the front row with legs crossed, two over from Burroughs).

Group photo of the speakers at the 1982 On the Road 25-year-anniversary Kerouac conference. Photo by Lance Gurwell, courtesy of Gerald Nicosia. Click here to purchase an original from the photographer.
Gerry provided the following key to the photo. If you can fill in any blanks, let us know.

Back row: from left: Paul Jarvis (son of Charles Jarvis from Lowell, who wrote Visions of Kerouac); unidentified man (with face partially obscured); Clark Coolidge (with glasses); Jack Micheline; Ann Charters; Sam Charters; Paul Krassner (standing slightly forward of Sam Charters); Timothy Leary; unidentified woman; unidentified man (tall, with glasses); Abbie Hoffman

Middle row: from left: Anne Waldman; Lawrence Ferlinghetti; Fernanda Pivano (Italian translator of Kerouac and Ginsberg); John Clellon Holmes (seated); Robert Creeley (seated); Peter Orlovsky (seated) ; Allen Ginsberg (seated); Al Aronowitz (journalist who did the first major 12-part series on the Beats in the New York Post) (seated)

Front row: Larry Fagin (seated cross-legged on floor); Fran Landesman (seated on long sofa); Carolyn Cassady (seated on lap of Fran's husband Jay); Jay Landesman (with sunglasses, holding Carolyn); Gerald Nicosia; Regina Weinreich; William S. Burroughs

Gerry plans on writing up his memories of the conference for a future post here at The Daily Beat. We can't wait.



*Attendee Brian Hassett even wrote a book about the event titled, The Hitchhiker's Guide to Jack Kerouac (available at Amazon).


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3 comments:

  1. SeanJuly 15, 2017 at 12:54 PM

    Thanks so much for posting the pic from the event...choice! #LongLiveJack&Neal

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ron SunshineJuly 8, 2018 at 11:53 AM

    I was there. I remember William Burroughs was staying in the same dorm, on the same hallway that I was. I held the door for him a couple of times as we passed. Walking by his room late at night, one heard the sound of a typewriter. I believe he was writing The Place of Dead Roads. Around the end of the conference, the Grateful Dead played at Red Rocks. A bunch of us dropped acid and went. I am not a fan of the Dead, but to be there with Kesey, Babbs, Ginsburg, et al felt like a can't-miss opportunity. The whole thing was pretty unforgettable.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Rick Dale, author of The Beat HandbookJuly 14, 2018 at 4:04 PM

    Ron, I'm jealous!

    ReplyDelete