Remembering Natalie Jackson

 

Natalie Jackson

24-year-old Natalie Jackson died on this date -- November 30 -- in 1955. She was Rosie Buchanan in Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums and Rosemarie in Desolation Angels, Big Sur, and Book of Dreams.

Jackson, who was a model of Robert LaVigne's, gained Beat notoriety from having an affair with Kerouac's 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 Neal get money from the bank for a race track betting scheme. Kerouac describes Jackson's death in The Dharma Bums Chapter 15 thus:

The musicians and I drank up all the wine and talked, till about midnight, and Rosie seemed to be all right now, lying on the couch, talking, even laughing a bit, eating her sand­wiches and drinking some tea I'd brewed her. The musi­cians left and I slept on the kitchen floor in my new sleeping bag. But when Cody came home that night and I was gone she went up on the roof while he was asleep and broke the skylight to get jagged bits of glass to cut her wrists, and was sitting there bleeding at dawn when a neighbor saw her and sent for the cops and when the cops ran out on the roof to help her that was it: she saw the great cops who were going to arrest us all and made a run for the roof edge. The young Irish cop made a flying tackle and just got a hold of her bathrobe but she fell out of it and fell naked to the sidewalk six flights below. (Penguin Books, 1976, p. 112)

Note that I reported she cut her throat but Kerouac said wrists. I depended on Gerald Nicosia's Memory Babe: A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac for the throat detail (University of California Press, 1994, p. 499). And it seems Natalie didn't necessarily throw herself off the roof, but may have accidentally fallen off while backing away from the police officer who attempted to grab her. It's hard to say if she would have survived cutting herself had the police been successful in preventing her fall.

Jack wrote about Natalie in Some of the Dharma:

(About this time Natalie Jackson committed suicide----I tried to tell her everything was empty, including her paranoiac idea that the cops were after her & all of us---she said O YOU DON'T KNOW! then the next day she was found dazed on the roof and when a cop tried to catch her she jumped, off Neal's tenement roof) (Penguin Books, 1999, p. 346)

Regardless of specifics, Natalie died tragically and too young, one of several Beat figures to do so (e.g., Bill Cannastra and David Kammerer).

RIP, Ms. Jackson.

Kerouac post #1,900 since July 15, 2008

 

Like the Energizer bunny, this blog just keeps going and going and going.... We published a test post on July 15, 2008 (click HERE), and since then we have posted 1,899 times. That makes 1,900 posts about Jack Kerouac for your reading pleasure. That's 4,519 days (helped out there by a Days Calculator at https://www.timeanddate.com/date/duration.html). According to my limited math skills, that's .42 posts per day, or about one post every 2 days (1,900/4519 = .420447).

1,900 posts with something to do with Jack Kerouac! Not bad for someone who doesn't have a clue what he is doing most of the time (me, not Jack).

Serendipitously, today I received an e-mail request out of the blue for a signed copy of my book. I don't sell many books that way, but if you're interested, e-mail me at thebeathandbook@gmail.com with your request and I'll send you a PayPal link for payment. It's $15.00 including postage in the U.S. -- foreign orders are more, depending on where you live.

Happy 1,900 posts and cheers to many more. We'll have to do something special when we hit 2,000. Maybe we'll give away a book?

Kerouac favorite book survey update #5

 

                                                                      

We initiated a survey back in 2018 where participants chose their favorite Kerouac book from a list. It's time to again revisit the results as we have 66 responses (for the last update, on December 15, 2018, we had only 44).

The results shown above break down as follows:

The Dharma Bums           28.8%   (19 responses)

On The Road                    16.7%   (11)

Desolation Angels            15.2%   (10)

Big Sur                             15.2%   (10)

The Subterraneans             9.1%   (6)

Visions of Cody                  4.5%   (3)

Tristessa                             3.0%   (2)

Dr. Sax                               1.5%   (1)

Maggie Cassidy                 1.5%   (1)

The Town and the City       1.5%   (1)

Visions of Gerard               1.5%   (1)

Other                                  1.5%   (1)

This was a non-scientific survey with no attention paid to sampling. Plus, Google Forms allows individuals to vote more than once. Still, it does yield some insights. I wonder what book the single response to Other refers to -- Vanity of Duluoz? As in past updates, The Dharma Bums retains first place, a result with which I personally agree (as regular readers know).

If you didn't already respond, click HERE for the survey link (within the original post). Please only respond once.

Happy Thanksgiving!

 I'm not going to  belabor the point with a long post (it's time for potato peeling), so Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who reads this. And remember to take note of what you're thankful for at some point in the day.

Here's a bonus for stopping by today: Charles Laughton reading from The Dharma Bums: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ct6WJlimDsg

A Kerouac-related birthday: Joanne Kyger

                                                             

On this date -- November 19 -- poet Joanne Kyger was born in 1934. She was an acclaimed poet in her own right who was associated with the Beat movement but never considered herself part of any particular poetry movement, having borrowed from many. She moved to San Francisco in 1957 and became part of the literary scene anchored by Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Michael McClure et al. To my knowledge, Kyger did not appear in any of Kerouac's works. She married Gary Snyder (Japhy Ryder in The Dharma Bums) in Kyoto, Japan on February 23, 1960.

Kerouac mentioned Kyger in several published letters (Jack Kerouac Selected Letters 1957-1969). In a December 6, 1959 letter to Gary Snyder, Kerouac wrote:

We missed [Philip] Whalen by a day. At that thumping mad 1713 Buchanan house where Joanne K. clobbered Jay Blaise with a half-gallon jug of port which decided us not to wait for Thanksgiving turkey there but take off. However I must say in very honesty with absolutely no bullshit that Joanne is the most sensitive woman I've met since Joan Adams (Bill Burroughs' dead wife). But Joanne needs a good man to put her in her place, in the sack. (Ibid, p. 259)

I'm only reporting what Kerouac wrote, not endorsing misogyny.

Read more about Kyger and some of her poems by clicking here.

Happy Birthday in Heaven, Ms. Kyger.

I provide a Jack Kerouac quote and you figure out the book (9th in a series)

This is the 9th in a series of posts where I provide a quote from one of Jack Kerouac's books and you figure out which one. Post your answer as a comment. Here's the passage:

Yessir, boy, the earth is an Indian thing but the waves are Chinese. Know what that means? Ask the guys who drew those old scrolls, or ask the old Fishermen of Cathay, and what Indian ever dared to sail to Europe or Hawaii from the salmon-tumbling streams of North America? When I say Indian, I mean Ogallag,

Good luck! But don't be fooled -- part of this language appears in at least two of Kerouac's books (he was a great recycler of language).

Oh, and remember our policy on comments (over there on the right).

Happy 90th Birthday to David Amram

 

Trading books with David in Lowell in 2011

Musician and Jack Kerouac close friend David Amram turns 90 years old today. David (I call him that having met him and talked with him a number of times at Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! and having traded books with him there -- click HERE) wrote a book titled Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac (curated HERE) and was an intimate acquaintance of Jack Kerouac's, yet I don't think he appears in any of Kerouac's works, under pseudonym or otherwise. He did appear in and write the music for the Beat film narrated by Kerouac, Pull My Daisy, which you can watch HERE and read David's thoughts about in an Evergreen Review piece HERE.

There is an official David Amram website with a ton of information -- click HERE. 

If you know David or know about him, you know that he is an amazing force of nature, consummate musician, and all-around nice guy. It's good that such a fine human being has enjoyed such a long life and I wish him many more years.

Happy 90th, David!