by William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac
‘The Beatles spelled their band name with an “a” because of John Lennon’s affinity for the Beat Generation’
There are plenty of books sitting on my coffee table I could write about, but every time I pick one up my gut tells me it’s not quite good enough for a review. Almost, but not quite. So that’s why on a sunny weekday morning I’m malling, wading through gangs of teenagers, dodging trolleys and breathing aircon—the horror. I’m ready for the long haul, good books don’t tend to jump out at me in bookstores, it usually takes a good hour of leafing through half-baked books—mostly debut novels with great promise and little delivery. After a couple of minutes the best I’ve found is another story about a Muslim man living with prejudice in post 9/11 America. Too done. I want something different. And then, five minutes into my quest, I see it. I pick it up and pay for it, without hesitating or asking the price. It’s my ticket out of here.
It’s not every day you discover a novel like this. Written by two of the leaders of the Beat Generation a good ten years before they found fame with their respective novels (William Burroughs with Naked Lunch and Jack Kerouac with On the Road) and only published now for the very first time.
You remember the Beat Generation? It challenged mainstream American values in the 1950s, encouraged experimentation with drugs and alternate sexuality and sought meaning through Eastern spirituality. But whether you’re a fan of the Beats or not, you have to appreciate their contribution to literature and their influence on modern culture (for good or for bad). In fact, the Beatles spelled their band name with an ‘a’ because of John Lennon’s affinity for Jack Kerouac. Other musicians that cite the Beats as influences are Jim Morrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Paul Simon and Mick Jagger. More recently, William Burroughs has worked closely with pop stars Michael Stipe, Kurt Cobain and Bono. Novelists such as Tom Robbins (Even Cowgirls Get the Blues), Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) and Thomas Pynchon (V), among others, were also greatly influenced. That’s quite a CV for a small group of non-conformist writers and poets.
Long before they were famous, in 1944, William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac were arrested in connection with a murder of one of their friends, David Kammerer. He had in fact been killed by another friend of theirs, Lucien Carr. Kammerer was in love with Carr and had been stalking him from city to city, constantly making advances on the much younger man for several years. Eventually Carr could take it no longer and stabbed Kammerer in the chest with a pocketknife before dumping his body in the Hudson River—with rocks in his jacket pockets to weigh his body down. Carr, still blood-smeared, confessed the murder to Kerouac and Burroughs independently and a day later handed himself in to the police. Kerouac and Burroughs were held in custody as material witnesses to the crime and were questioned as to why they hadn’t reported the murder immediately. Burroughs was released on bail and Kerouac got out in due course. Their inconvenience however was not without reward. The murder had all the ingredients for a Beat-style drama—and so the pair wrote their fictionalised version of the events, each penning alternate chapters.
But they struggled to find a publisher—with the Second World War having just ended, publishers were in search of more uplifting works. Eventually Burroughs and Kerouac shelved the novel and continued with their writing careers. It sat unpublished for decades. All the while Kerouac remained quite fond of the novel, in a letter to a San Francisco based publisher, he referred to it as a “sensational 200-page novel”. But Burroughs felt very differently, referring to it as “not a distinguished work”. The disagreement resulted in a lawsuit over the authorship of the novel and so it remained unpublished. Only now, several years after the death of Burroughs (he died in 1997) and many years after the death of Kerouac (1969) has an agreement been reached between the estates of Burroughs and Kerouac—and the book has finally seen the light of day.
The novel follows a small group of friends and their daily lives in New York—the story doesn’t rush to the murder, but takes time to build a great depth to its characters. Most of the names have been changed—Kerouac is Mike Ryko, Burroughs is Will Dennison, Lucien Carr is Philip Tourian and David Kammerer is Ramsay Allen. Along with the names a few other facts have been altered, but most of it seems quite accurate to the time and place. It offers a fascinating glimpse into New York as it was then—vibrant and full of promise but also quaint in a way. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the styles of the two writers but it is engaging and easy to read and conveys the charming innocence of this group of Beatniks.
This novel is a truly lovely discovery—a classic unpublished for over sixty years that has suddenly sprung to life. It’s up to you to decide who was right about it, but I think I’m going to side with Jack on this one.
