Ann Charters at Gloucester Writers Center, August 25

Many of my readers know how much I like Cape Ann, & that I go there throughout the year. I haven’t been there, except for an overnight in April. I was able to book 2 nights at the Good Harbor Beach Inn, then found out that Ann Charters, the 1st biographer of Jack Kerouac, would be giving a lecture for the Gloucester Writers Center on my 2nd night of my stay. The talk was held at the North Shore Arts Association just down the road from the renovated GWC, where Charters was staying as writer-in-residence. 

I was an avid reader & collector of the works of Jack Kerouac from the time I read about him & other writers, such as Allen Ginsberg, in a Look magazine article about 1960, & found a copy of On the Road in the Delmar (NY) Public Library. I remember where I was (in my girlfriend’s dorm) when I heard he had died in 1969. So when Kerouac: A Biography by Ann Charters was published in 1973 I immediately bought a copy, $7.95, hardbound, could not wait for the paperback. I brought my copy with me this night to have it signed by Ann Charters.

Henry Ferrini, Executive Director of the GWC set the stage by reading Allen Ginsberg’s early description of Kerouac’s work, then a passage from Charles Boer’s memoir of the last months of poet Charles Olson, & Olson’s own poem from Maximus III, “I live underneath the light of day…”

Charters said she was testing out a paper she was about to present at an academic conference, the paper titled “Kerouac’s Concept of the Duluoz Legend” & read excerpts. She included a handout which arranges Kerouac’s books by the Duluoz legend (see attached illustration). This is similar to my shelf's chronological arrangement (following Kerouac’s biography) of his books, not by publication date, but where they fit in his life events, i.e., “the Duluoz Legend.” He had hoped to publish his books with the real names of his friends & players & characters in “one long novel.”

This raises a question I have always wondered about, that if Kerouac was writing his books today, with the market being flooded with Memoir, would they be marketed as Memoir, rather than Novels as they were when first published?

Once again I am grateful to the Gloucester Writers Center for having this event, for the lively discussion it opened up, & for the opportunity to meet Ann Charters.