If behind every good man there is a good woman, then Edie Kerouac-Parker was undoubtedly Jack Kerouac�s fitting female counterpart. Published on the 50th anniversary of On the Road, her memoir, You’ll Be Okay: My Life With Jack Kerouac, chronicles her time spent with Kerouac while he was a young student and aspiring writer, including their short-lived marriage from 1944 until 1946. Although the book provides few new details about the Beat Generation or Kerouac�s illustrious life, Kerouac-Parker�s story offers a fresh perspective and endearing voice that reveals the strong-willed devotion and girlish naivety of a young woman in love.
Edie�s story begins when she learns of Jack Kerouac�s death on October 22, 1969 �from Walter Cronkite on the evening news.� She proceeds to describe the funeral in Lowell, Massachusetts in great detail, from the floral arrangement on the casket to the folding chairs along the wall. She immediately establishes herself as an integral part of Kerouac�s life�being comforted by Allen Ginsberg and having dinner at the house of Jack�s widow, Stella Sampas, demonstrate the respect that Edie commanded within the Kerouac circle. The funeral causes Edie to reminisce about her time with Jack and the first chapter segues into her account of how they met and began dating.
The book brings to life several important characters within the life of Jack Kerouac including Lucien Carr, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs�all of whom helped to shape the Beat Generation. These men may never have met without Kerouac-Parker who introduced Jack to Lucien Carr, a fellow art-student at Columbia University. She tells amusing anecdotes about each of them� �Carr seemed to be very intent on his work and noticed nothing else. Then all of a sudden, he let out a loud whistle and said, �Not bad. Not bad!� admiring his own sketch,� �Allen was always moving, and his large Charlie Chaplin ears stuck out from his head,� �Burroughs was a combination of Sherlock Holmes, Wyatt Earp and Abraham Lincoln��which reveal the affectionate friendships she developed with these men while living in New York. In fact, Lucien Carr�s murder of David Kammerer almost exists as a sub-story in the memoir because it landed Jack in jail where he and Edie had to marry so that she could use her inheritance money to post bail.
Kerouac-Parker�s strength lies in showing these characters as ordinary men instead of �mythic� writers�which rings especially true in her descriptions of Kerouac. Rarely does the reader get a glimpse of Kerouac at his typewriter or hard at work on a story. Instead, she focuses on the memories of her and Jack out to dinner with friends or walking together in the park with their dog, Woof-it. She let�s intimate details subtlety slip into the text to let the reader experience the closeness they shared as a couple �how �his skin was salty, his body odorless� when they made love, how he read Shakespeare and The Bible in the bathroom, how he fell for her after she ate five hot dogs in a deli. She describes it all with precise feminine detail and the audience gets to see a Kerouac through the wide eyes of a woman who loved him before alcohol and drug abuse afflicted him in later years.
DisplayAds (’Middle’);Edie�s affection for Kerouac borders, at times, on desperation and denial. She explains how Kerouac and Neal Cassidy (the real-life Dean Moriarty of On the Road) would come to visit her in Detroit and ask her for money (�If possible, I was generous, knowing it would keep them coming back to Grosse Pointe to see me�). Her devotion to him would be pathetic (��I dreamed about his success. All of my wishes had been for him�) if it weren�t so real. The reader, instead of feeling sorry for Edie, understands that she was a woman with immense strength and that her relationship and love for Kerouac was a decisive personal choice.
Editors Timothy Moran and Bill Morgan pull together Keoruac-Parker�s writing nicely. Their organization and presence are felt throughout the book and Moran�s personal relationship with Edie adds depth to the work.
You’ll Be Okay is not a memoir that sets out to add new details to the continually growing myth of a man or to dish the dirt on Jack Kerouac. It is, quite simply, a story of love and loss�and one that deserved to be told.
You’ll Be Okay: My Life With Jack Kerouac, Edie Kerouac-Parker, City Lights Press, September 2007
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