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Kerouac: The last quarter century
"Gerald Nicosia has cut many, many pages into the Kerouac tree. Kerouac: The Last Quarter Century lays out a chronology of the tragic final years of Jan Kerouac, the implications arising from the forged will of Jack's mother, the selling off of Kerouac's archive, and interesting final analyses of Kerouac's writing practices, worthiness, demons, and life-decisions." - Ed Sanders
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2019
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January 1, 2020
"Quarrels unjust against the good and loyal,
destroying them for wealth" (Macbeth)
Gerald Nicosia's latest book, Kerouac: The last quarter century, is an important book for many reasons. First of all, this incredibly brave man, a man of incredible integrity and sincerity (virtues not so easily found in today's world), has decided that the time has come to take a firm stand, and present his own 'testimony' of what has been happening behind the scenes of academia and more specifically to the Kerouac Estate since Kerouac's death, and more importantly what has conspired since the death of Stella Sampas Kerouac. The most thunderous and mind-blowing conclusion from Nicosia comes on page 121, "it can now be put in the history books that the Kerouac Estate, arguably the most valuable literary estate in recent history, was stolen."
For those of you who do not know, Gerald Nicosia is the author of a massive, incredibly comprehensive biography on Jack Kerouac called Memory Babe. If you wander into any decently sized bookstore, and if they happen to have a 'beat literature' section or corner, you will probably notice a fair number of biographies on the beat writers, the main beats of course being Burroughs, Ginsberg and Kerouac. There are, in fact, quite a large number of biographies in print now on Kerouac, (although nowhere near as many as those on Bob Dylan) but as someone who has read at least half a dozen different biographies on the 'King of the Beats' so far, I can say with great certainty and conviction that Nicosia's book, Memory Babe is by far the most detailed and most extensively researched, to the point where you almost feel like you know what Kerouac was doing on a daily basis.
Without going into too much detail here about all the deception, greed and back-stabbing that has gone on since Kerouac's death, let me just provide a few of the highlights or "lowlights" as Nicosia himself might say. First of all, Kerouac left his estate to his mother Gabrielle Kerouac upon his death and then to his nephew, Paul Blake Jr. So why did the estate end up going to Stella Sampas Kerouac? A certain will was left leaving the estate to Stella but as it was finally determined by a Florida law court, the will was a forgery. However, due to a Florida state law called a "non-claim statute" the Blake family (Kerouac's nephew and his family), who should be the rightful heirs may never receive what is rightfully theirs. This statute is essentially a statue of limitations law, in which claimants have to make a claim challenging the current estate within a certain number of years, failing that they will be ineligible. So the Sampas' (headed by the crafty John Sampas) stole the Kerouac Estate, while Jan Kerouac (Jack's only daughter) dies in surgery and his nephew dies in poverty after sleeping in the back of a truck for several years. Life is often unfair and as Jack Micheline once famously said, "the shit that people will do to each other is unbelievable."
This is just part of the story. Since usurping the throne of the Kerouac Estate, John Sampas and his cronies have attempted to stall and stop Nicosia at almost every step along the way. Nicosia's superb biography, Memory Babe, (and I repeat that it is THE most invaluable resource on Kerouac outside of Kerouac's own works) has even been removed from Viking's recommended beat reading list due to Mr. Sampas' meddling. Strike one for Kerouac scholars (and I mean serious scholars who are truly devoted to the aims and principles of scholarship and who do not answer to the 'syren's call' of money - after reading this book you will know which scholars I am referring to here) around the world.
The plot thickens and something is rotten, not only in the state of Denmark but also in the state of Massachusetts. Nicosia relates in detail how the Sampas family then began to sell off Kerouac's own notebooks, manuscripts (including the great On the Road roll manuscript for $2.43 million), paintings, letters and even his raincoat (sold to Johnny Depp for a ludicrous sum). This means that the chances of recovering the "goldmine" of information, the treasure trove that Kerouac himself had been planning and carefully filing himself towards the end of his life, for the benefit of future scholars, are basically nil. Strike two for Kerouac scholars. This was also one of the main causes that Jan Kerouac had been fighting for - finding a single institution in which to house her father's papers.
Reading this section truly broke my heart both for Jack and Jan.
Finally, one of the closing chapters talks about a more recent 'beat escapade', involving more greed and bickering - the discovery of the legendary Joan Anderson Letter. I am talking about THE letter that Neal Cassady wrote one night in a high state of exuberant inspiration to his pal Jack, and THE letter that changed post-WWII American literature forever. This letter so inspired M. Kerouac that upon reading it a seed began to sprout in his mind. It would not be exaggerating to call that 'seed', growing within Kerouac's beautiful mind, the birth of a new form of prose, or 'spontaneous bop prosody' as Ginsberg once famously coined it, or perhaps more simply 'spontaneous prose composition.' Now that the letter had been found, the next questions to arise were: 1) so who does it belong to? 2) who gets to publish it? 3) who is the rightful person or party to receive the royalties from the (I hope) forthcoming publication of the legendary letter? etc.
Well, another legal battle ensued, an incredibly complicated one at that, and one which I will not go into in depth here (read the book for a detailed account) but let us just say that the Sampas family once again wanted a piece of the lucrative pie. Let's hope for the sake of Kerouac, Cassady and beat scholars that the letter will one day, eventually, be published so that scholars can read it and assess, as Nicosia does with great precision, just how much of Cassady's letter and style of writing influenced Jack's. The repercussions of this could be enormous. Depending on the judgment of scholars, a future possible publication of the Joan Anderson Letter could make many of us either completely reassess our perceptions of Kerouac and how 'original' he was as a writer of spontaneous composition. At the same time, if it is favorably evaluated, it could also elevate Cassady's position within the realm of beat scholarship, from one of just 'friend' or 'inspiration' to a 'writer of great potential'.
All of this can be found in Kerouac: The Last Quarter Century and more. If you are a fan of Jack Kerouac's writing or Jan Kerouac's writing, and can relate to any of the values or principles for which they stood - integrity, sincerity, honesty, frugality, art for art's sake and not art to be chained to the oppressive yoke of money and, on a larger scale, some of the more disturbing trends of our capitalist system, then you owe it to yourself to read this book. The more people who read this book, the more the word will spread. The record needs to be put right. This is part of Nicosia's mission in this book and I am with him 100%. Readers and scholars of beat literature need to know the truths in this book.
The truth may not set Jack or Jan free because they have passed from this world, but it may help preserve their papers and archives (what is left of them) so that future generations will be able to read and find out as much as they can about one of the greatest writers of the second-half of the twentieth century, Jack Kerouac. Kerouac may have died in poverty, with only $91 in his bank account, but he left behind a treasure of beautiful words, sentences and books waiting to be read, explored and celebrated.
destroying them for wealth" (Macbeth)
Gerald Nicosia's latest book, Kerouac: The last quarter century, is an important book for many reasons. First of all, this incredibly brave man, a man of incredible integrity and sincerity (virtues not so easily found in today's world), has decided that the time has come to take a firm stand, and present his own 'testimony' of what has been happening behind the scenes of academia and more specifically to the Kerouac Estate since Kerouac's death, and more importantly what has conspired since the death of Stella Sampas Kerouac. The most thunderous and mind-blowing conclusion from Nicosia comes on page 121, "it can now be put in the history books that the Kerouac Estate, arguably the most valuable literary estate in recent history, was stolen."
For those of you who do not know, Gerald Nicosia is the author of a massive, incredibly comprehensive biography on Jack Kerouac called Memory Babe. If you wander into any decently sized bookstore, and if they happen to have a 'beat literature' section or corner, you will probably notice a fair number of biographies on the beat writers, the main beats of course being Burroughs, Ginsberg and Kerouac. There are, in fact, quite a large number of biographies in print now on Kerouac, (although nowhere near as many as those on Bob Dylan) but as someone who has read at least half a dozen different biographies on the 'King of the Beats' so far, I can say with great certainty and conviction that Nicosia's book, Memory Babe is by far the most detailed and most extensively researched, to the point where you almost feel like you know what Kerouac was doing on a daily basis.
Without going into too much detail here about all the deception, greed and back-stabbing that has gone on since Kerouac's death, let me just provide a few of the highlights or "lowlights" as Nicosia himself might say. First of all, Kerouac left his estate to his mother Gabrielle Kerouac upon his death and then to his nephew, Paul Blake Jr. So why did the estate end up going to Stella Sampas Kerouac? A certain will was left leaving the estate to Stella but as it was finally determined by a Florida law court, the will was a forgery. However, due to a Florida state law called a "non-claim statute" the Blake family (Kerouac's nephew and his family), who should be the rightful heirs may never receive what is rightfully theirs. This statute is essentially a statue of limitations law, in which claimants have to make a claim challenging the current estate within a certain number of years, failing that they will be ineligible. So the Sampas' (headed by the crafty John Sampas) stole the Kerouac Estate, while Jan Kerouac (Jack's only daughter) dies in surgery and his nephew dies in poverty after sleeping in the back of a truck for several years. Life is often unfair and as Jack Micheline once famously said, "the shit that people will do to each other is unbelievable."
This is just part of the story. Since usurping the throne of the Kerouac Estate, John Sampas and his cronies have attempted to stall and stop Nicosia at almost every step along the way. Nicosia's superb biography, Memory Babe, (and I repeat that it is THE most invaluable resource on Kerouac outside of Kerouac's own works) has even been removed from Viking's recommended beat reading list due to Mr. Sampas' meddling. Strike one for Kerouac scholars (and I mean serious scholars who are truly devoted to the aims and principles of scholarship and who do not answer to the 'syren's call' of money - after reading this book you will know which scholars I am referring to here) around the world.
The plot thickens and something is rotten, not only in the state of Denmark but also in the state of Massachusetts. Nicosia relates in detail how the Sampas family then began to sell off Kerouac's own notebooks, manuscripts (including the great On the Road roll manuscript for $2.43 million), paintings, letters and even his raincoat (sold to Johnny Depp for a ludicrous sum). This means that the chances of recovering the "goldmine" of information, the treasure trove that Kerouac himself had been planning and carefully filing himself towards the end of his life, for the benefit of future scholars, are basically nil. Strike two for Kerouac scholars. This was also one of the main causes that Jan Kerouac had been fighting for - finding a single institution in which to house her father's papers.
Reading this section truly broke my heart both for Jack and Jan.
Finally, one of the closing chapters talks about a more recent 'beat escapade', involving more greed and bickering - the discovery of the legendary Joan Anderson Letter. I am talking about THE letter that Neal Cassady wrote one night in a high state of exuberant inspiration to his pal Jack, and THE letter that changed post-WWII American literature forever. This letter so inspired M. Kerouac that upon reading it a seed began to sprout in his mind. It would not be exaggerating to call that 'seed', growing within Kerouac's beautiful mind, the birth of a new form of prose, or 'spontaneous bop prosody' as Ginsberg once famously coined it, or perhaps more simply 'spontaneous prose composition.' Now that the letter had been found, the next questions to arise were: 1) so who does it belong to? 2) who gets to publish it? 3) who is the rightful person or party to receive the royalties from the (I hope) forthcoming publication of the legendary letter? etc.
Well, another legal battle ensued, an incredibly complicated one at that, and one which I will not go into in depth here (read the book for a detailed account) but let us just say that the Sampas family once again wanted a piece of the lucrative pie. Let's hope for the sake of Kerouac, Cassady and beat scholars that the letter will one day, eventually, be published so that scholars can read it and assess, as Nicosia does with great precision, just how much of Cassady's letter and style of writing influenced Jack's. The repercussions of this could be enormous. Depending on the judgment of scholars, a future possible publication of the Joan Anderson Letter could make many of us either completely reassess our perceptions of Kerouac and how 'original' he was as a writer of spontaneous composition. At the same time, if it is favorably evaluated, it could also elevate Cassady's position within the realm of beat scholarship, from one of just 'friend' or 'inspiration' to a 'writer of great potential'.
All of this can be found in Kerouac: The Last Quarter Century and more. If you are a fan of Jack Kerouac's writing or Jan Kerouac's writing, and can relate to any of the values or principles for which they stood - integrity, sincerity, honesty, frugality, art for art's sake and not art to be chained to the oppressive yoke of money and, on a larger scale, some of the more disturbing trends of our capitalist system, then you owe it to yourself to read this book. The more people who read this book, the more the word will spread. The record needs to be put right. This is part of Nicosia's mission in this book and I am with him 100%. Readers and scholars of beat literature need to know the truths in this book.
The truth may not set Jack or Jan free because they have passed from this world, but it may help preserve their papers and archives (what is left of them) so that future generations will be able to read and find out as much as they can about one of the greatest writers of the second-half of the twentieth century, Jack Kerouac. Kerouac may have died in poverty, with only $91 in his bank account, but he left behind a treasure of beautiful words, sentences and books waiting to be read, explored and celebrated.
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