Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Lit & Lectures / Books Gerald Nicosia on the road
Posted by Jerome Ludwig on 11.16.11 at 11:30 AM
Best known as the author of Memory Babe: A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac, Nicosia also wrote Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans' Movement. (Patrick Z. McGavin profiled Nicosia about that in a 2001 Reader story, "Writing Is Hell.")
Nicosia, who lives in the Bay Area, writes to the Reader about One and Only:
"One and Only (which just came out from Viva Editions in Berkeley) is filled with a huge amount of new information about Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady. It grew out of my work on the movie of On the Road, which concluded filming here in SF last December, and my lifelong connection with the Beats.
"The book is based on two long interviews I had done in 1978 with Lu Anne Henderson (the model for the character “Marylou” of On the Road). I discovered them in my archive when I was coaching Kristen Stewart, who plays Marylou/Lu Anne, and working as an advisor to the film last summer in Montreal. The movie itself was supposed to have been out in December but now appears to have been moved to 2012.
"I discovered that these interviews, over ten hours in total, contained the whole inside, untold story of what really happened on the trips that Kerouac turned into his famous novel. So I worked with Lu Anne’s daughter Anne Santos (the real Lu Anne died a few years ago) to get the full story of her life, and also interviewed some other people who were involved in the story. The book is a bio of Lu Anne, but it also contains the full 35,000 words of edited interviews, revealing things about Neal and Jack no one else ever told, and that few people knew. It shows how the Beat Generation really began (the key was this woman, linking Kerouac and Cassady)—and also how Kerouac was able to shape and change the real facts of the story to make the novel that changed history. The book also deals in part with the making of the movie, especially the way that Kristen Stewart came to understand her part as Lu Anne/Marylou.
"Anne Santos, Lu Anne’s daughter, by the way, will be with me at all the readings in Chicago."
Comments (6)
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Unfortunately, Nicosia is the most vile little man I ever had the misfortune of meeting. No matter what he is peddling, I would not spend my money on it. He really has no love for Kerouac at all. He just wants to make money on him.
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dislikeSounds like Terry is a clueless hater -Gerry has spent more money than he ever made on Jack Kerouac!
Absolutely not clueless. I spent time with the man and he is a horrible, self promoting person, who made all around him feel uncomfortable. He talks a lot of smack about Kerouac. He should just write for the Enquirer. That is his M.O.
Forget all the vitriol about the man. The new book about Lu Anne Henderson is great and the first time the woman so central to the drama has had her say. Read ONE AND ONLY and you'll see, most is Lu Anne's own words.
