<TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText>You'll Be Okay</TitleText> <Subtitle>My Life with Jack Kerouac</Subtitle>

City Lights Books onix@onixsuite.com 20130217 eng

GCDS-9780872864641 03 01 City Lights Books 01 GCOI 87286100882060 02 0872864642 03 9780872864641 15 9780872864641 BC <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText>You'll Be Okay</TitleText> <Subtitle>My Life with Jack Kerouac</Subtitle> 1 A01 Kerouac-Parker, Edie Edie Kerouac-Parker Edie Parker (1922-1993) was an author from the Beat Generation and the first wife of Jack Kerouac. She and Joan Vollmer shared an apartment on 118th Street in New York City, frequented by many Beats, among them Vollmer's eventual husband William S. Burroughs. Edie also represented "Judie Smith" in Kerouac's novel, <a href="http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100698400">The Town and the City</a>. Although Edie Parker was only part of the Beat movement for a short time, her role in the community was crucial to the development of the early Beat generation. Not only did Edie introduce Jack Kerouac to the infamous Lucian Carr, which got Jack involved in the Beat movement, but she formed a close relationship with Joan Vollmer Adams, who, like Edie, was no typical housewife. Edie grew up wealthy, living in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. She was part of the upper class there, attending parties and charming those around her with her good looks. In 1941, she attended Columbia University. Her parents wanted her to find a husband and settle down, but she had other ideas in mind. Edie quickly got involved with Jack Kerouac, who appealed to her because of his spontaneous personality and charming looks. Their zany personalities were very suiting, and they maintained a lasting love affair while Jack was off at sea. Edie found Jack both appealing and trying, as he was “…exhausting her patience by continually deserting her, for his mother’s hearth or for the sea.” When Edie and Joan met, they became immediate friends, and they moved into an apartment together soon after. Their apartment provided them with freedom from the restrictive bonds that their families had over them and it became a popular gathering place that brought together the first major characters of the Beats. Sources include: www.wikipedia.org, and www.womenofthebeat.org 01 eng 200 01 "Sad and funny, full of pathos and the lost dreams of youth, 'You'll Be Okay' will find it's way to the short list of exceptional books by women of the Beat Generation that includes Carolyn Cassady's 'Off the Road' and Joyce Johnson's 'Minor Characters.' This year, on the 50th anniversary of the publication of 'On the Road,' readers may well want to turn to Edie's long-overdue memoir for one woman's soulful view of Kerouac, Carr, Ginsberg and Burroughs, whom she knew intimately and describes in her own inimitable style." – Jonah Raskin, The San Francisco Chronicle "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. BurroughsEdie 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. Praise for You'll Be Okay: "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. . . . 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 . . . she provides a rare female perspective on the notoriously misogynistic Beat enclave. " – Booklist, Starred Review "A quirky and poignant addition to the Beat lore and 'memory' by a woman who lived it." – Anne Waldman, The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics "This is a wonderful memoir of a girl in love. When she wrote it, Edie Frankie Parker was no longer a girl, and her love, Jack Kerouac, was long gone. But Edie, or Frankie as her intimates called her, remembered everything about her brief marriage to Jack, as if a bubble of resilient sunshine had encapsulated those few years during World War 2, and kept intact every detail. She remembers what they ate, what they wore, what movies they saw. Her Jack Kerouac was young, handsome, a lover of fun, and a would-be writer. He stayed so in her memory and though she alludes occasionally to the alcoholic monster that emerged in later years, that creature doesn't live here. In these pages we meet the young genius of just before On the Road, adored by all and loved by her most of all. The flavor of the war years with all their privations and mad hopes wafts from these pages freshly, like an Atlantic breeze, and makes one wonder, finally, what might have happened if Jack had settled down with Frankie, instead of following the turbulent destiny that changed America." – Andrei Codrescu, author of Wakefield "Edie Kerouac-Parker's long-delayed post-humous memoir clears up much of the myth-making and 'made-up facts' about this tumultuous, but seminal relationship between herself and ex-husband Jack Kerouac. She was there at the first meeting between the Beats, she knew Jack Kerouac as an ambitious, reckless driven writer searching to make a name for himself in the big city. Honest, poignant, humorous, this book is a must-read about a much-neglected saga of the legendary iconic Kerouac." – Paul Maher Jr., author of Jack Kerouac's American Journey: The Real-Life Odyssey of On the Road <a href="http://www.ediekerouacparker.com/">Read more!</a> 02 "We've officially entered what might as well be called Jack Kerouac Awareness Month. It's the 50th anniversary of the publication of 'On the Road,' and the commemorations include . . . a memoir, 'You'll Be Okay,' from Kerouac's first wife." - NY Times 08 "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. 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. You'll Be Okay is not a memoir that sets out to add new details to the continually growing myth of a man or dish the dirt on Jack Kerouac. It is, quite simply, a story of love and loss—and one that deserved to be told."—Deidre Wengen PhillyBurbs.com 08 "[You'll Be Okay] is an in depth retelling of the story from Edie's perspective and it will add to our knowledge of Kerouac's life...It has been a long time coming..." —Brian Dalton Beat Scene 08 "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 08 "Sad and funny, full of pathos and the lost dreams of youth, 'You'll Be Okay' will find it's way to the short list of exceptional books by women of the Beat Generation that includes Carolyn Cassady's 'Off the Road' and Joyce Johnson's 'Minor Characters.'  This year, on the 50th anniversary of the publication of 'On the Road,' readers may well want to turn to Edie's long-overdue memoir for one woman's soulful view of Kerouac, Carr, Ginsberg and Burroughs, whom she knew intimately and describes in her own inimitable style." -- Jonah Raskin The San Francisco Chronicle 08 An insider's account of the birth of the Beat Generation in New York City, this posthumously published memoir by Kerouac's first wife describes their meeting and courtship around Columbia University during World War II. A young socialite from Grosse Point, MI, with a keen interest in art and fashion, Edie at first seemed badly matched with the working-class football hero and tyro writer from Lowell, MA. Before long, however, she was devouring hot dogs, driving a forklift on the Brooklyn docks, and living with her beau. After his arrest as a material witness in a murder investigation, Kerouac wed Edie, who drew on her trust fund to make his bail. Although the marriage was short-lived, the couple remained in touch, exchanging occasional letters and phone calls until a month before Kerouac's death, in October 1969. Joining earlier memoirs by Kerouac's former wives and lovers, including Joan Haverty Kerouac's Nobody's Wife, Carolyn Cassady's Off the Road, and Joyce Johnson's Minor Characters, 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. – William Gargan Library Journal 08 "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." – Donna Seaman Booklist 08 "Kerouac's first wife recounts her years with Jack, whom she met when they were students at Columbia, and their friendships with such Beat writers as William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg." —Rafer Guzmán Newsday 08 "Neither scholarly tome nor critical analysis, Edie Kerouac-Parker’s new memoir is a warm, intimate, and colorful portrait of the embryonic journey of Jack Kerouac. . . Edie’s prose in You’ll Be Okay is rich with detail and laced with humor, and her vivid memory of everything from what they ate and drank to what films and musicals they saw make even the well-trod portions of this tale newly engaging. . . Above all, however, it’s the unique female voice and point of view that gives this memoir its strength and importance in the otherwise male-dominated canon of Beat Literature." —Mark Terrill Rain Taxi 04 02 72 01 http://www.citylights.com/resources/titles/87286100882060/images/87286100882060L.gif 07 02 72 01 http://www.citylights.com/resources/titles/87286100882060/images/87286100882060S.gif http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100882060 City Lights Publishers 01 City Lights Publishers 20070901 08 24 oz City Lights Books 01 WORLD 20 20070901 01 02 14.95 USD