September 6: A macabre date in the Kerouac saga

Natalie Jackson (L) and Joan Vollmer (R)

Two woman associated with Jack Kerouac died young in tragic ways and they share today's date, one because it's her birthday and the other because it's the day she died.

Natalie Jackson was born on this date -- September 6 -- in 1931. She was Rosie Buchanan in The Dharma Bums and Rosemarie in Desolation Angels, Big Sur, and Book of Dreams. She died from suicide at age 24 in 1955.

Joan Vollmer died on this date in 1951 at the age of 28 when she was killed by her common-law husband, William S. Burroughs, who was allegedly trying to shoot a water glass off her head in William Tell style using a pistol. Vollmer was Jane Lee in On The Road; Jane in The Subterraneans; June Evans in Book of Dreams, Desolation Angels, and Vanity of Duluoz; June Hubbard in Visions of Cody; Joan in The Haunted Life and Other Writings; Mary Dennison in The Town and the City; and, "my old lady" in And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks.

It's no wonder Vollmer shows up prominently in Kerouac's works, given that she was a central figure in the early days of the Beats. The New York City apartment she shared with Edie Parker (who later married Kerouac) became the unofficial hangout for Beat figures between 1943-1944. Vollmer was an active participant in the famous marathon discussions that took place in apartment No. 62 at 421 W. 118th Street. According to Bill Morgan in The Beat Generation in New York, "Kerouac often said that the happiest days of his life were spent" there (p. 11).

Jackson, who was a model of Robert LaVigne's, gained Beat notoriety from having an affair with Kerouac muse Neal Cassady. She killed herself by slitting her throat and throwing herself off the roof of 1051 Franklin Street (reached from her apartment's roof at 1041) in San Francisco, supposedly over her fear of the consequences from having impersonated Neal's wife, Carolyn, to help him get money from the bank for a race track betting scheme. Kerouac describes Jackson's death in The Dharma Bums Chapter 15.

In summary, what links Natalie Jackson and Joan Vollmer is that they were Beat figures who died tragically and young and they share this important date, for one a beginning and for the other an ending. As the Oracle says in The Matrix, "Everything that has a beginning . . . has an end."

Here's to remembering Natalie's beginning and Joan's ending on this macabre date in the Kerouac saga.

Happy 62nd Anniversary to On The Road!

My well-loved copy of On The Road (the tabs are
from when I taught a yearly Kerouac class at the University of Maine at Farmington from 2013-2017)
which I curated here

Jack Kerouac's On The Road was published 62 years ago today on September 5, 1957. It garnered a rave review from the New York Times (the regular reviewer didn't like the book but was on vacation -- a stroke of luck for Jack) -- click here to read the review -- and the rest, as they say, is history.

I don't know what can be said about the importance of this book -- and therefore this date in history -- that hasn't already been said better by smarter folks than yours truly. Suffice to say that on today's date in 1957, Jack Kerouac started on the path of fame we all know so well, with its ups and downs, strikes and gutters (Jack would appreciate that movie reference).

It's not my favorite book of Jack's -- that honor goes to The Dharma Bums -- but it's certainly his most well-known work and, as I found when teaching it at the college level, it stands the test of time fairly well. Many students were into it (and some were not, but you could say that about pretty much any book you require a group of young people to read).

In honor of today's significance, it would be appropriate to read some of On The Road.* Just grab your dog-eared copy and open to a random section and read. If that's not possible, below is the last paragraph (which Jack read aloud in 1959 on the Steve Allen TV show mashed up with a section from Visions of Cody -- here's a link so you can read along).

So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.

With that, we wish On The Road a happy anniversary. Yair!




*Or read the whole book, which is do-able in several hours.

A significant Kerouac-related birthday of note

Justin W. Brierly

On this date -- September 3 -- Justin W. Brierly was born in 1905. Brierly appeared in several Kerouac books: as Denver D. Doll in On The Road, Justin G. Mannerly in Visions of Cody, and Manley G. Mannerly in Book of Dreams.

Brierly is particularly noteworthy in the Kerouac saga as he was instrumental in grooming a young Neal Cassady during his Denver years. Brierly was a Columbia University graduate, and it is no stretch to say that he was responsible, at least in part, for Cassady and Kerouac connecting at Columbia (where Jack also attended). Another Columbia student, Hal Chase, was a Brierly protégé and he (Chase) introduced Cassady to Kerouac.

No Cassady-Kerouac connection, no On The Road, and so . . . no Brierly, no Kerouac. At least as we know him.

Today's Kerouac-related birthday of note

David Kammerer

For those of you steeped in Beat lore, the name David Kammerer needs no explanation. For those of you new to the subject or with only passing Kerouacian knowledge, Kammerer was the man killed by Lucien Carr (stabbed to death with a Boy Scout knife) and Kerouac -- in trying to help him cover up the crime -- was arrested as an accessory after-the-fact and ended up in jail (which resulted in Jack marrying Edie Parker to get bail money from her parents when his own father, Leo, wouldn't spring him, but that is another story).

Kerouac recounted this story in several works, and Kammerer appeared in Visions of Cody as Dave Stroheim, Vanity of Duluoz as Franz (Swinburne) Mueller, The Town and the City as Waldo Meister, Ramsey Allen in And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, and Alfred in The Haunted Life (Source: Character Key to Kerouac's Duluoz Legend).

My point? Kammerer was born this date -- September 2 -- in 1911. So even though he (allegedly) stalked Carr around the country and was murdered as a result, we remember him on his birthday as playing a significant role in the Kerouac saga.



P.S. As I was on the road for the last 5 days, I missed pointing out that Chandler Brossard died on August 29, 1993. We wished him a happy birthday on July 18 so you can read the Kerouac connection in that post (click here).

Our comment policy: A reminder

Given that I just deleted 357 comments as spam, I wanted to take this opportunity to remind readers of our comment policy (posted over there on the right hand side for all to read).

1. Anonymous comments will not be published.

2. Comments unrelated to the target post will not be published.

3. Snark and ad hominem comments will not be published.

I am not going to read hundreds of comments to distinguish one that might be legit from spam, so the rule about no anonymous posts is for my convenience. If I scan down the list of comments and don't see a name (as opposed to anonymous), I can mass delete 100 attempted posts with two clicks.

To be clear, you may well try to post something relevant and non-snarky/non-ad hominem and it will likely get deep-sixed because it was posted by "anonymous."

Sorry about that, but logistics are logistics. And I don't want to reinforce anonymous postings on the Internet.

Happy Birthday to Gerard Kerouac

Jack Kerouac's brother, Gerard, was born on this date -- August 23 -- in 1916. As regular readers know, Gerard was Jack's inspiration for Visions of Gerard, a holy book in the Kerouac canon, and he (Gerard) appeared in several other Kerouac works. We blogged about Gerard's death date on June 2 (click here).

In honor of Gerard Kerouac's birthday, you may want to read some (or all) of Visions of Gerard sometime today.

Catching up with Kerouac-related August dates

Given our travels (that's Crystal and me in front of our new Winnebago part-way through our recent 11-day trip), I have been neglectful of posting Kerouac-related birth and death dates for August, so below are some in bulk in order to catch up.


August 1     Ramblin' Jack Elliott born 1931 (Jack Elliott in Book of Dreams)
August 2     William S. Burroughs died 1997 (Old Bull Lee in On The Road, etc.)
August 5     Leo Kerouac born 1889 (Emil Alcide Duluoz in Visions of Gerard, etc.)
August 6     Diane di Prima born 1934 (not sure she appeared in a Kerouac work)
August 8     Herbert Huncke died 1996 (Elmer Hassel in On The Road, etc.)
August 14   David Kammerer died 1944 (Dave Stoheim in Visions of Cody, etc.)
August 15   Bea Franco died 2013 (Terry "the Mexican Girl" in On The Road)
August 23   Gerard Kerouac born 1916 (Gerard Duluoz in Visions of Gerard, etc.)