McNally, Dennis; Kerouac, Jack; Glover, Albert; Warsh, lewis

Desolate Angel: Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation, and America with: Ephemera

ISBN: 0394500113
New York, NY, USA: Random House, 1979. First Edition. Hardcover. With ephemera including autograph postcard from Lewis Warsh to Albert Glover. "History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time - and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened." (Hunter S. Thompson, preface). Desolate Angel: Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation, and America by American author, historian & music publicist Dennis McNally (b. 1949) was the first scholary biography of Beat Generation Founding Father Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), his cohorts & their milieu, written from McNally's UMass-Amherst history dissertation. Ann Charters' 1973 book Kerouac: A Biography came earlier but is a slighter entry, and Gerald Nicosia's Memory Babe was still four years off. McNally went on to be the Grateful Dead's publicist & house historian, which tells you something about the sensibility he brought to it. The title comes from Kerouac's Desolation Angels, and the subtitle is the thesis. McNally is a cultural historian before he's a biographer: Kerouac's life is narrated straight through, from Lowell & Columbia, his time as a merchant marine, his Times Square circle, Neal Cassady and the road, the Buddhist turn and the Six Gallery, the detonation of On the Road in 1957, then the twelve-year alcoholic decline to St. Petersburg. Each phase is read against what post-war America was doing at the time: Bop, Cold War conformity, the paperback revolution & the media machinery that converted a literary coterie into a Beat Generation phenomenon. McNally takes "beat as beatific" seriously rather than as a pun Kerouac invented after the fact. He argues the immigrant working-class Catholic never left the room, and that most misreadings of Kerouac start by ignoring him. McNally paints Kerouac as a shy, mother-bound, temperamentally conservative man who had been handed the "King of the Beats" costume and drank himself to death inside it. McNally doesn't soften the drinking or make it picturesque. With two sections of pictures. Third Mind Books has found & retained a cut-out & laminated Hill News review of the title from December 6, 1979 by Albert Glover, affixed to front endpaper with packaging tape; a cut-out article (folded twice vertically) written by Walter Goodman about the Kerouac documentary What Happened to Kerouac? from the New York Times dated April 16, 1986; a cut-out opinon article (folded once vertically) written by Alan S. Cohen about a recent park dedication to Kerouac, with "Wash. Post | 1/14" handwritten in blue ink at top right recto; a sheet of paper (folded once horizontally) torn from an 8" x 11" pad with McNally's handwritten contact information & a postcard with a night-time photograph of Beverly Hills, CA on recto with a handwritten letter in blue ink on verso from poet Lewis Warsh to Albert Glover wherein Warsh discusses his recent activities & his future plans with poet Anne Waldman, and a postage mark dated "1980," all in varying degrees of fine-to-very fine condition. From the collection of the aforementioned Albert Glover (1942-2026), the esteemed American poet, editor, bibliographer, publisher & academician who was the foremost remaining authority on Charles Olson (1910-1970). Glover was a student of & anointed by the Maximus Master himself at SUNY Buffalo during the 1960s, & had ever since served outstandingly to bear the Olsonian Torch. Third Mind Books is deeply saddened by the recent passing of our friend & mentor. Hardcover in unclipped first-issue Dust Jacket (with $15 price printed at front flap, "8/79" at rear flap): First Edition per copyright page, second printing as stated by number sequence thereon. A most collectible early Beat Generation Biography entry in one of its rarest contemporary forms, with relevant association & very distinguished provenance, greatly enriched with the surplus of ephemera included. Book in relatively fine condition with mild-to-moderate age-toning & rubbing mostly to fine edges of front, back covers & spine; moderate staining to same, mostly where spine meets front & back covers; mild-to-moderate wear mostly to bottom corners of front & back covers; mild-to-moderate age-toning & spot-staining to text block. Interior fine with mild-to-moderate age-toning mostly to blank margins & fine edges of page leaves; Glover's regal bookplate affixed to front pastedown. Dust Jacket fine with mild age-toning, rubbing & scratching to front, back covers, spine & flaps; moderate wear/chipping to fine edges of same, mostly at spine. Fine / Fine. [Item #9406]

Price: $150.00 save 10% $135.00