From Publishers Weekly
Haverty Kerouac (who died in 1990) has mellowed since her article "My Ex-Husband, Jack Kerouac, Is an Ingrate" ran in Confidential magazine, but her posthumous memoir struggles with how the famed writer fit into her bohemian youth. Indeed, this memoir is as much about Haverty's early grab at independence in 1950s New York and the other men in that period of her life as it is about her brief marriage to the Beat hero, which produced his only child. The 20-year-old Haverty had arrived in Manhattan after working on a fishing boat with Kerouac's friend Bill Cannastra, had found work as a seamstress and was finishing an affair with a Columbia physics graduate student when Kerouac appeared on her doorstep. His impulsive marriage proposal offered some solace for Cannastra's sudden death, as well as, the author admits, a means to motherhood. She was unprepared, however, for Kerouac's conventional ideas about a wife's place, whether in public or in bed. Her memoir ends as suddenly as their marriage, with Haverty headed home to Albany, envisioning neither her ex's later fame nor her protracted legal fight for child support. Unlike the memoirs of their daughter, Jan (Baby Driver; Trainsong), Haverty's straightforward, infrequently lyric prose isn't under the spell of the BeatsAwhich will probably count against her with Kerouac-worshipping Beat fans. (Jan. 15)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Kerouac aficionados have been salivating for this memoir since two excerpts appeared in Women of the Beat Generation (LJ 10/1/96). They will not be disappointed. Kerouac's second wife and the mother of the late novelist Jan Kerouac began the book in 1980, ten years before she died of breast cancer. Writing in clear, often graceful prose, the author recalls her struggle for self-realization in New York City in the early 1950s, recording how difficult it was for a woman to transcend the gender roles of that particular place and time. She provides an eyewitness account of Kerouac's troubled relationship with his mother and includes new material on her relationship with Bill Cannastra, a Harvard Law School graduate and Beat angel who died in a senseless subway accident. Along with Joyce Johnson's Minor Characters (LJ 1/15/83; Penguin USA, 1999. reprint) and Carolyn Cassady's Off the Road (LJ 6/15/90), Kerouac's memoir is required reading for anyone interested in the role of women in the Beat Generation. Highly recommended.DWilliam Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNY
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
