Divorce is a beautiful thing. Maybe the only postmodern misogynist who knew this better than Kerouac was Philip Roth. Somehow, however, I missed out on my chance to write him up for SHOOSTER Arts & Literature, so, in this case, I’ll settle for Jack.
Those sad young literary men among us spent too much of our teenage years brooding about driving around and getting high in the vein of the beatnik, whether we respected them or not. And Kerouac, always more fun as a character, prioritized the romantic life the most. It’s an archetype with which kids can’t help but fall in love, then hate, then love to hate more and more.
Take, for example, his first wife, Edie Parker. They met when she was an art student at Barnard and he a Columbia dropout jock. She roomed with Joan Vollmer, who Burroughs would go on to murder. But years prior, Will and Jack were arrested as material witnesses in another homicide, before Miss Parker could even graduate. Disowned by his father, Kerouac agreed to marry Edie if her parents would bail him out. They wed in August 1944. They separated in October.
Take, for example, Joan Haverty, who became a Kerouac in 1950, and off whom the author incessantly mooched. During the twenty-day binge resulting in On the Road, she acted as nurse, keeping her groom in coffee, speed, and pea soup, until the notorious scroll churned out whole. They divorced the following year, while she was still pregnant, and Jack refused to acknowledge their daughter until a blood test proved his paternity nine years hence.
Take, for example, Stella Sampas, sister of Kerouac’s childhood best friend, and caregiver to his invalid mom. They married shortly before his death from alcoholism, though his estate was left to said mother. So why’s divorce beautiful? Because it gives license to escape such flagrantness. Maybe the only gesture more loving than matrimony. Face it, Sal Paradise was right. Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together.
-David Fishkind