You'll Be Okay: My Life With Jack Kerouac [Paperback]

Edie Kerouac-Parker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2007

“You have a unique viewpoint from which to write about Jack as no one else has or could write. I feel very deeply that this book must be written. And no one else, I repeat, can write it.”—William S. Burroughs

Edie Parker was eighteen years old when she met Jack Kerouac at Columbia University in 1940. A young socialite from Grosse Pointe, Michigan, she had come to New York to study art, and quickly found herself swept up in the excitement and new freedoms that the big city offered a sheltered young woman of that time.

Jack Kerouac was also eighteen, attending Columbia on a football scholarship, impressing his friends with his intelligence and knowledge of literature. Introduced by a mutual friend, Jack and Edie fell in love and quickly moved in together, sharing an apartment with Joan Adams (who would later marry William S. Burroughs). This is the story of their life together in New York, where they began lifetime friendships with Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and others. Edie’s memoir provides the only female voice from that nascent period, when the leading members of the Beat Generation were first meeting and becoming friends.
In the end, Jack and Edie went their separate ways, keeping in touch only on rare occasions through letters and late-night phone calls. In his last letter to Edie, written a month before his death, Kerouac ended it with the encouraging phrase: “You’ll be okay.” It was from that note that the title of this book was taken.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Kerouac's first wife, Edie Parker, played a pivotal role in his literary evolution, but her side of the story hasn't been fully known until now. A pampered and venturesome 17-year-old when she first spies handsome Jack pushing Cole Porter in a wheelchair near Columbia University, she falls madly in love. Against her family's wishes, she valiantly marries Kerouac in 1944 in order to spring him from a Bronx jail after he was arrested as an accomplice to their friend Lucien Carr's murder of the stalker David Kammerer. Fascinating in her own right, and writing with compelling lucidity and soulful sweetness, Parker vividly recalls her posh childhood, life in Queens with Kerouac and his parents, and her pride in working as a longshoreman. As she shares intimate details of her hectic wartime life, she provides a rare female perspective on the notoriously misogynistic Beat enclave. The story of how Parker's radiant memoir finally reached print 15 years after her death is yet more poignant testimony to life's mysterious ways. Seaman, Donna

Review

"A must-read about a much neglected saga of the legendary iconic Kerouac." -- Paul Maher Jr., author of Jack Kerouac's American Journey

"A quirky and poignant addition to the Beat lore." -- Anne Waldman, The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics

"An in depth retelling of the story from Edie's perspective...it will add to our knowledge of Kerouac's life." -- Brian Dalton, Beat Scene

"In these pages we meet the young genius of just before 'On the Road,' adored by all and loved by her most of all." -- Andrei Codrescu, author of Wakefield

"Sad and funny, full of pathos and the lost dreams of youth." -- Jonah Raskin, The San Francisco Chronicle

"She also had a front-row seat for the previews of the Sal-and-Dean show, which became the heart of 'On the Road.'" -- Newsweek, August 13, 2007

"We've officially entered what might as well be called Jack Kerouac Awareness Month. . . . and the commemorations include . . . a memoir, 'You'll Be Okay,' from Kerouac's first wife." -- NY Times "Papercuts" blog, August 8, 2007

"the posthumous memoir by Kerouac's first wife, joins more than a dozen memoirs and biographies about Kerouac published since his death at 47 in 1969." -- USA Today, August 21, 2007

"this book offers a fresh look at Kerouac as husband and lover as well as a new chapter on the role of women in the Beat Generation. Highly Recommended." -- Library Journal, September 15th, 2007

"Those who read only the best-known works of the Beat Generation--Ginsberg's Howl, Kerouac's On the Road, Burroughs's Naked Lunch--will be forgiven for thinking that the Beats were a misogynistic lot: women, when they appeared at all, were cast in minor roles, and it is only in recent years that we have begun to hear their side of the story. You'll Be Okay: My Life With Jack Kerouac is Edie Kerouac-Parker's account of her marriage to Jack Kerouac, and though the marriage only lasted from 1944 to 1946, it is clear that those two years came to represent a lost, golden period in her life. Written much later than the events described and published posthumously. . . the account is deeply nostalgic and rich in detail, and it gives a vivid sense of what it was like to be a headstrong young woman in love with a budding author, both of them trying to make it big in Manhattan during the 1940s." --Michael Hayward, Geist Magazine --Michael Hayward, Geist Magazine

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 286 pages
• Publisher: City Lights Books (September 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0872864642
• ISBN-13: 978-0872864641
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #794,494 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A reminiscence of excitement, hope, passion, and dreams, October 6, 2007

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: You'll Be Okay: My Life With Jack Kerouac (Paperback)

You'll Be Okay: My Life with Jack Kerouac is the true-life memoir of Edie Kerouac-Parker (1923-1992), the first wife of famous novelist Jack Kerouac. Penned long after Jack Kerouac had passed on, You'll Be Okay is a tale of girlhood love - when both Edie and Jack were only 18, and met at Columbia University. The young lovers moved in together, sharing an apartment with the future wife of William Burroughs, and began lifetime friendships with Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and others. A reminiscence of excitement, hope, passion, and dreams, illustrated with a handful of black-and-white photographs and skillfully edited by Timothy Moran and Bill Morgan.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kerouac's Detroit Connection, April 18, 2010

By 

Donald S. Handy "Mud" (Motor City, Michigan) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: You'll Be Okay: My Life With Jack Kerouac (Paperback)

Anyone who, like me, grew-up enthralled by the fact that Jack Kerouac once lived, abeit very briefly, in Detroit, will be thrilled by this book.

That said, while I remain a fan of the art of Jack Kerouac, this book adds more fire to the fuel of his caddishness. While Edie Kerouac-Parker, Jack's first wife, doesn't beat you over the head with this aspect of his character - indeed, one can't help but see that she carried a torch for him throughout her life - the manner in which he treated her, especially right after they were married, can't help but leave one feeling cold.

Edie was one of the few people who were right there as the Beat Generation was founded. Indeed, she helped in it's creation, as she introduced Kerouac to Lucien Carr, who in turn introduced Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs to Kerouac. Anyone who has ever delved into the history of this literary movement will find the information contained in this book to be invaluable.

Beyond that, while a light read, it benefits from this by not being over-pretentious. As with Kerouac's personality shortcomings, Edie Kerouac-Parker does not try and overstate her importance. This is a welcome addition to the biographical cannon of Jack Kerouac's former wives and lovers, and a bit more, as well.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Into the rabbit hole, May 26, 2008

By 

A. Oglesby (Earth) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: You'll Be Okay: My Life With Jack Kerouac (Paperback)

As the first reviewer mentioned, Edie does cover a lot of the notorious antics of a younger kerouac and if you've studied his life at all you will not be caught off guard by any startling revelations in this book. However what this book offers that others do not, is a personal and real perspective about the Man, not the myth. For instance, his habit of ringing his hands before he launched into something serious, the fact that he kept a toothbrush in his breast pocket, or even his favorite sleeping position. I enjoyed these memoirs thoroughly and came away feeling as though I personally had spent time in the 'libertines circle'.

Definitely worth a read.