Use My Name
by Jim T. Jones

Review is written and copyrighted by Andrew Lampert.

I finished reading Jim T. Jones' new book about some of Jack Kerouac's relatives, including his three wives, nephew and daughter. The book is classified as a biography of Jack Kerouac, but the focus is primarily on his daughter Jan. The title of the book comes from the second and last time Jan saw her biological father in Lowell in November 1967. Jan, 15 and pregnant was en route with her boyfriend and future estate executor John Lash to Mexico. Jan told Jack about her desire to write and he told her she could use his by then popular name.

In 1992 Jones published A Map of Mexico City Blues--Jack Kerouac as Poet, a book I haven't read. (According to ECW's website Jones has also written another book: Jack Kerouac's Duluoz Legend: The Mythic Form of an Autobiographical Fiction. The website says the book is "forthcoming.")

He tells us that he decided to write a biography of Jan in 1994 while on a sabbatical from teaching. After contacting Jan about his plan via Jack Kerouac biographer Gerald Nicosia, Jones started a series of telephone conversations in January 1995. Then in March 1995 Jones spent a week at Jan's home in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Sometime afterwards he had a "falling out" and a parting of the ways ensued.

In Use My Name Jones reviews the estate controversy that began in 1993 when Jan filed her law suit against the Sampas family (the executors of Kerouac's Estate.) Jones provides a possible source of the forged will controversy, suggesting a Kerouac collector might have tipped off Jan and Nicosia about irregularities in the signature on Gabrielle's will.

Jones writes about Jan's tendency to "allow herself to be manipulated by men...she continually put herself in the hands of less than admirable men." And Jones leaves little doubt that he thinks that Nicosia bears some responsibility for Jan's contentiousness regarding the Sampas family. At one point Jan and the Sampas family had a "cordial" relationship. Jones tells us that Nicosia considers him a "Sampas spy" and discounting Gerry's tendency for overreaction, a photograph of Jones and John Sampas at least suggests where the author's sympathies lie with regard to the great estate controversy.

One thing I don't understand in Jones' book is some of his analysis of the estate controversy. He writes that part of the problem is "our inability to distinguish the legal, ethical and moral aspects of the case." Maybe it is just semantics. I can follow the distinction between legal and moral or ethical aspects but his distinction between the ethical and moral issues is confusing and unintelligible to me. At another point he frames the controversy as a battle of East Coast (Charters) versus West Coast (Nicosia), which also doesn't make much sense.

While the primary focus of the book is Jan Kerouac there are chapters on Kerouac's three wives: Edie Kerouac, Joan Haverty, and Stella Sampas. There is also a chapter on Paul Blake, Kerouac's nephew.

Mémêre" Digression.
(Some time ago the list had a discussion about the term "mémêre" and Jack's use of it.)

Jones sheds some light on the use of the term "mémêre" to refer to Jack's mother, Gabrielle. Apparently it was after Paul Blake's birth in 1948 that Jack (and his sister Carolyn, Paul's mother) starting using the term to refer to Gabrielle. In his letters (1940-1956) to his mother he always writes "Ma" and Gabrielle signs her letters to Jack as "Mom." I think some of the confusion over what Jack called his mother stems from the first Kerouac biography by Ann Charters published in 1973. She writes that "everyone called her mémêre." It turns out that when Charters went to visit Kerouac in 1966 at his Hyannis, Massachusetts home Paul Blake was visiting for the summer from the West coast. In the house with the grandson and grandmother it probably seemed like everyone called Gabrielle "mémêre" but her friends called her Gabrielle or "Gabe" and as mentioned, Jack addressed her as "Ma" at least in his letters. (Parenthetically, during Charters' visit Paul Blake captured Charters on Super 8mm film while filming Jack getting a haircut from Gabrielle. )

Several former and current members of the BEAT-L and SUBS list are mentioned either in the acknowledgement section or in the text, including Attila Gyennis, Marc Hemenway, Dan Barth, Rod Anstee, Diane de Rooy and Tom Christopher.

This book is hardly essential reading, unless you are a fanatical Kerouac fan. There are no footnotes and no index, but there are 16 photos, including a photo of Jack and Stella that is out of focus but very charming. Also the photograph of Stella sitting next to Lawrence Ferlinghetti at the 1988 dedication of the Kerouac Memorial in Lowell is nice.

I have another serious question about something that comes up in the strange last chapter called "Auto/Biography: War Stories or Parasitology" but I've bored you enough for one day.

The softback book is published by ECW Press in Toronto with a retail price of US$16.95. 203 pages.