CHARACTER KEY TO KEROUAC'S DULUOZ LEGEND

WILLIAM AALTO (1915-1958)

Born in the Bronx, New York, to Finnish parents. In 1937 fought in the Spanish Civil War, one of two Americans chosen to lead guerrilla warfare behind Franco's lines. During World War II he trained as an OSS member in Washington, but lost a hand in a grenade accident while instructing new recruits. Later studied poetry at Columbia University. Became friends with W.H. Auden, Chester Kallman and Alan Ansen in New York, 1950s. Several of his pieces of writing published in the New Masses. Toward the end of his life he was poet James Schuyler's lover, and features in the latter's poem "Dining Out with Doug and Frank" as "A dark Finn who looked not unlike a butch version of Valentino." Died of leukemia and is buried in Long Island National Cemetery.

MARY ACKERMAN (1926-2012)

Born Jacksonville, Florida, to fruit-picker parents. Grew up in the Bronx, New York, trained as nurse but became secretary/ bookkeeper. Hung around Greenwich Village early 1950s and was friend of painter Iris Brody. Travelled to Mexico (Cuernavaca) and back, 1952. Was the "junkey girl" with whom Kerouac had brief affair in New York, as mentioned in his letter to Ginsberg, dated early May 1954 in Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters, Vol.1. In 1955 Mary married jazz drummer Art Mardigan, who played with Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon, Stan Getz and others. Mary had a daughter, Marcie, with Art. She kicked her drug habit late 1960s and married painter Kurt Witt, with whom she lived in New Hampshire. [Thanks to Marcie for the photo of herself with Mary and Art Mardigan.]

AMANDA "MANDA" DUBÉ ADAMAKIS (1882-1956)

Maria Georgina Amanda Dubé, born at St Denis de la Bouteillerie, Quebec. Gabrielle Kerouac's stepmother, marrying her father Louis L'Évesque in Nashua, 1904, and having two children by him; Loretta (1905) and Robert (1907). After Louis' death in 1911, she remarried to Peter Adamakis in 1917 and moved to Brooklyn, New York, where Jack lived with her while attending Horace Mann School, 1939-40.

PETER ADAMAKIS (ADAMS) (1887-?)

Born in Greece, the second husband of Amanda, whom she met and married in Nashua, New Hampshire. They settled in Brooklyn, New York, where Peter worked in a shoe factory.

BOB ADAMS

Friend of Neal Cassady's in Denver, early 1940s.

JOAN VOLLMER ADAMS (1924-1951)

A Barnard graduate from Albany, NY, where her father managed the Gevaert film plant. Married Paul Adams in 1942. Journalism student at Columbia University and roommate of Edie Parker in New York, from 1943. In 1945 became common-law wife of William Burroughs who accidentally shot her in the head in Mexico City, September 1951.

JULIE ADAMS (1944- )

Daughter of Joan Vollmer Adams by a Columbia student while married to Paul Adams.

PAUL ADAMS

Law student and first husband of Joan Vollmer (later the common-law wife of William Burroughs) in 1942.

WALTER ADAMS

A friend of Kerouac and Ginsberg at Columbia University, 1940s.

VIC ALBERTS

Boyhood friend of Kerouac's in Lowell.

HARRY A. ALLISON

From Fort Lee, New Jersey. Football colleague of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40. Also baseball star. Went on to Columbia University.

CLIFF ANDERSON (1942- )

Born in New York City. Studied psychology, literature and philosophy at the University of South Florida. Met Kerouac when Jack moved from Northport to St Petersburg in September 1964. Became Kerouac's "southern pool partner," travelling companion and good friend around Florida in the later 1960s. Author of Free Beer: Kicks & Truth with Jack Kerouac & Other Strong Drinks (2006). Now lives in the Catskill Mountains, New York State.

ALAN ANSEN (1922-2006)

Born Brooklyn, New York and raised there and at Woodmere, Long Island. Studied Classics at Harvard and attended W.H. Auden's lectures on Shakespeare at the New School, 1946, becoming his secretary the following year. Through Auden's friend Chester Kallman, Ansen met Cannastra and hence Kerouac, Ginsberg and Holmes. Author of novel fragment The Vigilantes (1952), and many poetic works, collected in Contact High (1989).

GEORGE J. APOSTOLOS (G.J.) ("Fouch") (1922-2010)

Boyhood friend of Kerouac's in Lowell. Later ran an insurance agency in Lowell.

PETER APOSTOLOS (1909- )

Sickly elder brother of George J. Apostolos, born in Greece. Purchaser of Kerouac's boyhood newspapers in Lowell.

ATHENA APOSTOLOS (1914- )

Eldest sister of George J. Apostolos, born in Lowell.

ANDY "ARDEN"

Football colleague of Kerouac's at Columbia University, 1940.

PRISCILLA ARMINGER

(See Vickie Russell)

MARILYN ARNOLD ("NEURI")

Friend of Gary Snyder's working in the San Francisco theatre world. Lighting director for the March 1956 Berkeley poetry reading where Ginsberg first read the entire version of "Howl."

DONALD ARTHUR

From Bergenfield, New Jersey. Football colleague of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40, and assistant baseball manager. Went on to Rutgers University.

WYSTAN HUGH AUDEN (1907-1973)

Son of a doctor, brought up in Birmingham, England. Educated at Oxford, and became leading figure in left-wing literary movement of 1930s. Leading English poet, essayist and dramatist. Moved to USA in 1939. Met Kerouac and friends through his secretary, Alan Ansen, in 1940s.

AUSTICE (1875-19??)

An aunt of Beverly and Bob Burford, whom Kerouac met in Denver, 1950, before travelling to Mexico with Neal and Frank Jeffries.

ARAM ALBERT AVAKIAN (1926-1987)

Younger brother of jazz record producer George Avakian and colleague of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40, where they jointly reviewed jazz records for the school magazine. Went on to study at Yale University, and the Sorbonne in Paris. Later became famous film editor and director, credited with inventing the freeze frame and jump cut, as employed in "Girl of the Night" (1960). Edited the commended documentary of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival "Jazz on a Summer's Day" (1959). His work as director included "11 Harrowhouse" (1974), and "End of the Road" (1970), which he scripted from John Barth's 1958 novel.

ALFRED JULES "FREDDIE" AYER (1910-1989)

Educated at Eton and Christ College, Oxford. English philosopher, noted for his work on logical positivism, his book Language, Truth and Logic (1936) being the first exposition of the subject in the English language. During a stay in New York in late 1948 he met W.H. Auden and mixed with his circle of friends there. Kerouac's journal shows that he was present at a party with Ayer and others at John Clellon Holmes' apartment, November 1948.

GINGER BAILEY

Girlfriend of Hal Chase, 1940s. Folksinger in Greenwich Village.

RAYMOND BAILLET

Cab-driver who gave Kerouac a Satori in Paris, 1965.

BALLSTEAD

Football colleague of Kerouac's at Columbia University, 1940.

BART

Junkie friend of William Garver's and customer of William Burroughs in New York, 1940s.

ROBERT V. BARTZ

From Texas. Classmate of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40. Radio ham and tennis devotee. Later studied at M.I.T., Boston.

CLIFF BATTLES (1910-1981)

Football player and Columbia coach, 1940s.

HENRY L. "HANK" BEAUDUY, JR.

From Englewood, New Jersey. Football colleague of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40, he also excelled in athletics, baseball and basketball. Went on to Columbia University.

JOSEPH HENRY "HANK" "SCOTTY" BEAULIEU (1922-1975)

Boyhood friend of Kerouac's in Lowell. Later worked as a printer.

JACQUES BECKWITH (1920-2000)

Carpenter and artist, born in Connecticut, whom Kerouac knew in New York, early 1960s. Married Kerouac's girfriend Lois Sorrells in 1964. They divorced 1982.

PAULINE BELAND

One of the Lowell sisters mentioned by Kerouac in letter to Neal Cassady of September 9, 1954, in a section edited out of Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters, Vol.1

MARTIN LEONARD BELLER

From New York. Classmate of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40, where he edited the Mannikin magazine.

MALCOLM BERSOHN

From New York. With his twin brother Richard, classmate of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40. Malcolm participated in debating, dramatics and chess, and went on to Harvard.

RICHARD BERSOHN

From New York. With his twin brother, Malcolm, classmate of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40. Richard was a member of the Debating and Dramatic Clubs, and later studied at M.I.T., Boston.

AGNES BERTRAND (1925- )

Sister of Freddy Bertrand.

FREDDY BERTRAND (1923- )

Wilfred Jr., boyhood friend of Kerouac's in Lowell.

HAPPY BERTRAND (1904- )

Wilfred Bertrand, father of Freddy Bertrand, born in Connecticut. Coal truck driver. One time rollercoaster worker, and bouncer at the Laurier Club, Lowell.

LEONA "LAYO" BERTRAND (1906- )

Leontine, mother of Freddy Bertrand.

MICKEY BERTRAND

Brother of Freddy Bertrand.

RAY BERTRAND (1928- )

Brother of Freddy Bertrand.

JAY BLAISE

French-Canadian painter from Vermont whom Kerouac met in San Francisco, 1960.

CAROLINE "NIN" KEROUAC BLAKE (1918-1964)

Jack Kerouac's sister. Twice married: to Charles Morisette, 1937, and Paul Blake, 1945. Enlisted in Women's Army Corps, 1942. Lived in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and Orlando, Florida with her second husband and son, where Jack and his mother frequently visited. Separated from her husband Paul in 1964, and a few months later died of a heart attack.

PAUL BLAKE (1922-1972)

Paul Edward Blake was the second husband of Kerouac's sister Caroline. Born and raised in Henderson, North Carolina, and educated at Duke University. Joined the Army Air Corps in World War II (1943) and became a pilot. Later a Government missile technician and owner of a television shop in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Moved to Orlando, Florida in 1958. Separated from Caroline in 1964 and, in 1965, married a woman he had met in southern California.

PAUL BLAKE, JR. (1948- )

Kerouac's nephew, the son of Caroline and Paul Blake. Grew up in North Carolina and Florida. After his mother's death Paul went with his father to live in San Pedro, California, and later in Anchorage, Alaska. Drafted into the Air Force, early 1970s, then transferred to the army and served in Vietnam. After his discharge he lived and worked in Alaska, fathered a child, and developed a drinking problem. Eventually, broke and homeless, he drifted to California.

WILLIAM H. BLAKE

Graduated from Clark University (BA, 1915), Columbia (MA, 1921; PhD, 1931). Joined Horace Mann School in 1919, and became Head of English Department and director of the Glee Club.

BLAZON

Store owner in Lowell, 1920s-'30s.

RICHARD BLUM

From New York. Classmate of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40, and member of chess team and Speakers' Forum. Went on to Yale University.

SHELDON M. BLUMENKRANTZ

From New York. Classmate of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40. Previously at Valley Forge Military Academy. Horseback rider and polo player. Later studied at Yale.

MAXWELL BODENHEIM (1893-1954)

Bohemian poet and novelist in Chicago and New York, 1920s-1950s. Author of My Life and Loves in Greenwich Village (1954), and others.

LOUISE BOGAN (1897-1970)

Born in Livermore Falls, Maine, and educated at Boston University. A lyrical poet, her first book of poetry, Body of This Death, was published in 1923, followed by Dark Summer in 1929, by which time she was poetry critic for The New Yorker.

PAUL BOWLES (1910-1999)

Composer and novelist. Born in Queens, New York, the son of a dentist. Moved to Tangier, Morocco in 1947, meeting Burroughs, Ginsberg and others there in the 1950s. Author of the novels The Sheltering Sky (1949), Let it Come Down (1952), and The Spider's House (1955), all set in North Africa. Also famous as a composer, writing music for productions by William Saroyan, Tennessee Williams, and others.

BOZO

"Ex-show queen," and owner of Henry Street, New York apartment he shared with Herbert Huncke and Bob Brandenberg, 1944-45.

BOB BRANDENBERG

Small-time crook operating around New York, 1940s-'50s. Worked as a short-order cook at the West End Bar, where Kerouac first met him, and introduced him to William Burroughs, fall 1944.

BONNIE BREMSER (1939- )

Born Brenda Frazer in Washington, D.C., the daughter of a State Department official. Attended Sweet Briar College and met Ray Bremser on New York Beat poetry circuit, marrying him in 1959. Fled with Ray and baby Rachel to Mexico in 1960 in order to avoid another conviction of her husband for robbery. Her book about their Mexican adventures was completed in 1964: Troia: Mexican Memoirs (aka For Love of Ray) (1969).

RAY BREMSER (1934-1998)

Born and grew up in Jersey City, New Jersey. Adolescence in Manhattan before joining U.S. Air Force in 1951 but went AWOL after four days. Spent six years in Bordentown Reformatory for armed robbery, during which time he studied literature and corresponded with Ginsberg and Corso, as well as Ezra Pound and Robert Graves. Emerging in 1958 he was published in Leroi Jones's Yugen magazine and gave readings with Kerouac and Ginsberg around New York. 1961 to 1965 saw him imprisoned in Trenton on a drugs charge. During this time his volume of jazz-influenced poetry, Poems of Madness (1965) was published to much acclaim. Angel followed in 1967, and Blowing Mouth/ The Jazz Poems, 1958-1970 in 1978.

JIM BRIDGER (1804-1881)

Born in Richmond, Virginia, he was among the foremost mountain men, trappers, scouts and guides who explored and trapped in the Western United States during the decades of 1820-1850, as well as mediating between native tribes and encroaching whites. He was of English ancestry, and his family had been in North America since the early colonial period. Died near Kansas City, Missouri.

JUSTIN W. BRIERLY (1905-1984)

A Denver lawyer, high-school teacher and Columbia alumnus who was attracted by Neal Cassady and befriended him after their first meeting, when Neal was fifteen, in 1941. Brierly was impressed by Neal's high IQ of 132 and arranged for him to be admitted into high-school in Denver. Neal remained friends with Brierly over the years, and introduced him to Kerouac and Ginsberg. After attending Columbia University, Brierly helped form a talent agency in New York. He returned to Denver to practice law and played a major role in establishing the Central City, Colorado opera festival, for which he was executive manager from 1937 to 1948. During World War II, Brierly went to England at the invitation of Winston Churchill as a consultant on the evacuation of children from urban to rural areas. His work was developed into a movie, "Britain's Youth at War."

IRIS BRODY (1928-1961)

A Kline-like painter whom Kerouac knew in New York, mid-1950s. She committed suicide by jumping off a roof.

ROY BROOKS

Conductor on Southern Pacific Railroad, with whom Kerouac worked in California, October 1952.

CHANDLER BROSSARD (1922-1993)

Born in Idaho Falls, Idaho, and grew up in Washington DC. Moving to New York he worked for Time, the New Yorker, and was executive editor of the American Mercury. Lived in same building (48 Morton St.) as David Kammerer (1944). His first book, Who Walk In Darkness (1952) was claimed by many to have been the first Beat novel, and associated him with the Beat writers, despite his protestations. His other works include The Bold Saboteurs (1953) and The Double View (1960). Taught at Birmingham University, England, in the 1970s.

ANATOLE PAUL BROYARD (1920-1990)

Born in New Orleans and grew up in Brooklyn. Became essayist and short story writer. His essay "A Portrait of the Hipster" was published in Partisan Review (1948) and the short story "Sunday Dinner In Brooklyn" was included in the anthology Protest: The Beat Generation and the Angry Young Men (1958). Worked as book reviewer on New York Times for many years. Later works include Kafka Was the Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir (1993). He was the subject of the book One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life -- A Story of Race and Family Secrets by Bliss Broyard.

CLAIRE BUCKLEY (1894-1979)

Kerouac's great aunt, the sister of his maternal grandfather, Louis L'Évesque, living in Nashua, New Hampshire. Mother of Jack's first cousins, once removed, Richard and Henry. (Also mentioned in letter to Neal Cassady, January 3, 1951.) [Many thanks to Raymond Harpin for providing the photographs of the Buckley family.]

HENRY BUCKLEY (1914-1972)

Jack's first cousin, once removed. (Henry is seen here holding his younger brother Robert.)

RICHARD BUCKLEY (1916-2004)

Jack's first cousin, once removed.

WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR. (1925-2008)

Acquaintance of Kerouac's in New York, 1940. Later to become the intellectual voice of American conservatism by his writing. Host of TV interview programme, "Firing Line," on which Kerouac appeared in October 1968.

BEVERLY BURFORD (1925-1994)

Sister of Bob Burford who knew Kerouac in Denver and San Francisco, 1940s-1950s. Married Fay DeBerard, Republican State Senator of Kremmling, Colorado.

BOB BURFORD (1924-2004)

Robert Franklin Burford attended Denver's East High School with Ed White and Frank Jeffries. Kerouac met him in Denver, 1947. Went to Paris, France with White and Jeffries, 1949, and stayed for 13 years, working on New Story magazine there with Eric Protter, Robert Lax, and Jean-François Bergery. He married in Paris to Eleanore Puterbaugh, also from Denver. Later returned to Denver, continued writing, then eventually remarried and became a businessman. Moved to Paradise Valley, Arizona, then Delaware (Wilmington) where he died. [Thanks to Jennifer Lou Burford for providing further information about her father.]

DAVID BURNETT

Poet friend of Kerouac's in New York, 1950s. Editor of New American Reader, where Kerouac tried, unsuccessfully, to place his science fiction short story, "cityCityCITY" in 1955.

WHITNEY EWING BURNETT (1899-1973)

Father of David Burnett. Professor at Columbia University, correspondent and short story writer who co-founded and co-edited Story magazine with his wife Martha Foley in 1931, continuing until 1964. Publisher of four early stories by J.D. Salinger.

BLACKIE BURNS (1896-1974)

Chief Ranger at Marblemount Ranger Station, Washington State, whom Kerouac met during his stay on Desolation Peak in 1956. Born in Bow Hill, Samish Bay, Washington.

JOAN BURROUGHS

(See Joan Vollmer Adams.)

WILLIAM SEWARD BURROUGHS (1914-1997)

Born in St. Louis, MO, educated at Harvard, began writing with Kerouac (And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks) in 1945. Author of Junkie (1953), The Naked Lunch (1959), The Soft Machine (1961), and many others.

WILLIAM SEWARD BURROUGHS, JR. (1947-1981)

Son of William Burroughs and Joan Vollmer Adams. Lived with his grandparents in Missouri and Florida after the death of his mother when he was four. Visited his father in Tangier, 1961. Became addicted to methedrine. Married Karen Parry, 1968. Liver collapse led to a transplant in 1976, and he lived with John Allen Cassady while convalescing. Died when his body rejected the transplanted organ. His autobiographical books are Speed (1970) and Kentucky Ham (1973).

MARDEAN BUTLER (1928-2000)

Born in Indiana and named after her parents, Marjory and Dean. The family moved to Oregon where father Dean worked in mining. His job took the family around the country, to San Francisco, Sacramento and Georgia, before settling in Wyoming. Mardean attended Lusk High School, Wyoming, from 1946, and later studied Liberal Arts and Psychology at the University of Wyoming. Moved with her friend Dusty Moreland to New York in 1950, staying in Greenwich Village. As a writer and poet she met up with Ginsberg and Kerouac, becoming Allen's girlfriend for a while.

GASTON CAMPBELL

Friend of Leo Kerouac's in Lowell, 1920s.

WILLIAM CANNASTRA (1921-1950)

Raised in Schenectady, NY, by his wealthy, aristocratic mother and Italian machinist father. Educated at Harvard Law School before moving to New York. A lover of Tennessee Williams in the 1940s, he threw wild parties in his Manhattan loft on West 21st Street, attended by Alan Ansen, W.H. Auden, and friends, as well as Kerouac, Cassady, Holmes and others. Killed in a freak subway accident, October 1950. Joan Haverty, who was living with Cannastra at the time, married Kerouac five weeks later, the couple settling down together in the loft, where Kerouac was to type his scroll version of On the Road in April 1951. As well as being referred to in Ginsberg's poem "Howl" (1955), other tributes to Cannastra include Alan Ansen's poem "Dead Drunk: In Memoriam William Cannastra" (1959) and Robert Creeley's "N. Truro Light - 1946" (1984).

CHARLES E. CANNON

Graduated from University of Georgia (BA, 1920), University of Paris (1926), and Columbia (MA, 1929). French teacher at Horace Mann School, 1930s until February 1940, when he left due to illness.

ALBERT CARNEY (1890-1967)

Father of Mary Carney, born in Tewksbury, Massachusetts. Worked as brakeman and conductor on the Boston & Maine Railroad.

JEANNINE CARNEY (1928- )

Sister of Mary Carney.

MARY D. CARNEY (1921-1993)

Girlfriend of Kerouac's in Lowell, 1939-'43. During World War II, worked at Remington munitions factory. In 1944 Mary married airman Raymond Baxter who left to serve in England, returning to Lowell in 1946. Her daughter Judy was born September 1945. Mary told Judy that Jack Kerouac was her father. Daughter Cheryl born 1947, but Mary and Raymond divorced in 1948. Mary married Robert Benedetto in New Hampshire, 1962, and worked at the Raytheon Company. Suffered poor health for many years from toxic waste dumped near her home in the 1950s.

RUSSELL CARNEY (1918- )

Brother of Mary Carney.

SUSAN SHERIDAN CARNEY (1892-1974)

Mother of Mary Carney and eleven other children. Born in Wigan, England.

CALEB CARR (1955- )

Son of Lucien and Francesca Carr. Educated at St. Luke's Episcopal School, Greenwich Village, and Philips Andover Academy, Mass. Now a successful writer, with novels including The Alienist (1994), The Angel of Darkness (1998), and The Italian Secretary (2005).

ETHAN CARR (1958- )

Younger brother of Simon and Caleb Carr. Educated at St. Luke's Episcopal School, Greenwich Village, and Philips Andover Academy, Mass., where he was expelled for excessive behaviour. Went on to Columbia University and Harvard, where he graduated with a degree in Landscape Architecture. Currently working for the U.S. National Parks Service and has published a book on the history of that department.

FRANCESCA "CESSA" VON HARTZ CARR (1929- )

Grew up in Baltimore and Chicago. Her father an important editor at the New York Times. Graduated from Barnard College, NY. Worked for United Press International where she met and eventually married Lucien Carr in 1952.

LUCIEN CARR (1925-2005)

Born in St. Louis, educated at Philips Andover Academy, Mass., from where he was expelled, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, and the Universities of Chicago and Columbia. Met Edie Parker in New York, fall 1943, and through her, Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs. Stabbed his erstwhile friend and pursuer, David Kammerer, to death in Riverside Park, August 1944. Married Francesca Von Hartz in 1952 and had three sons with her. In the 1960s lived with Kerouac's ex-girlfriend Alene Lee in New York. Later became Washington Bureau Chief of the UPI news agency, until his retirement in 1993. Lived in Washington, D.C. until his death.

SIMON CARR (1953- )

Son of Lucien and Francesca Carr. Educated at St. Luke's Episcopal School, Greenwich Village, and Philips Andover Academy, Mass. Now a successful abstract painter in New York.

CARRUFEL (1918- )

Member of Rosemont Tigers football team, Massachusetts, 1935.

CAROLYN CASSADY (1923- )

Born Carolyn Elizabeth Robinson in Lansing, Michigan. Grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, where her father was a professor of biochemistry at Vanderbilt University. Educated at Bennington College, Vermont and Mills College, Oakland. Obtained MA at University of Denver. Writer, painter, and theatrical designer. Became Neal Cassady's second wife in 1948, and mother of three of his children. Close friend and sometime lover of Jack Kerouac. Author of Off the Road: My Twenty Years With Cassady, Kerouac and Ginsberg (1990). Living in England since 1983.

CATHLEEN JOANNE "CATHY" CASSADY (1948- )

Eldest daughter of Neal and Carolyn Cassady. Worked as fitness instructor. Now Activites Administrator for retirement community.

JOHN ALLEN CASSADY (1951- )

Son of Neal and Carolyn Cassady. Named after Kerouac and Ginsberg. Once made dulcimers, then worked for a computer company which manufactures optical scanners in San Jose, California.

MELANY JANE "JAMI" CASSADY (1950- )

Daughter of Neal and Carolyn Cassady. Studied ballet with Dimitri Romanov, Regisseur for the American Ballet Theater. Took classes with Nureyev and Barishnakov in New York. Now office manager for a dentist.

NEAL LEON CASSADY (1926-1968)

Born in Salt Lake City, Utah. His mother died when he was ten, and Neal spent much of his youth living on the streets of skid row Denver with his father, or spending time in reform school. Married LuAnne Henderson in 1946. They travelled to New York where they met Kerouac, Ginsberg, and friends. Marriage annulled in 1948, and Neal married Carolyn Robinson in Denver. Worked as railroad brakeman for Southern Pacific. Obtained Mexican divorce from Carolyn (which later proved to be invalid) and married Diana Hansen in New York, 1950. Became a great friend and travelling companion of Kerouac's. Neal's letters to Jack during the latter part of 1950 were a major influence on the new style Kerouac adopted for his 1951 scroll version of On the Road. Met the writer Ken Kesey in 1962 and became a regular member of the Merry Pranksters, driving their bus on trips across the USA and into Mexico. Died near San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, four days before his 42nd birthday, in February 1968. Neal was the author of the autobiographical The First Third (1971) and Neal Cassady: Collected Letters, 1944-1967 was published in 2004.

NEAL MARSHALL CASSADY, SR. (1893-1963)

Neal's father. Worked as a barber in Salt Lake City and Denver. Married Maud Webb Scheuer in Denver, 1925. Maud had previously been the wife of James Daly, by whom she had seven children between 1909 and 1921. Neal Sr. had also been married, to a Des Moines girl, Ethel, in 1914, but divorced by 1924 with no children. Father of one more child with Maud, Shirley Jean Cassady, Neal Jr.'s true sister, born in Denver, 1930.

BILLY CHANDLER (1920-1942)

Boyhood friend of Kerouac's in Lowell. President of high school dramatic society and talented cartoonist. Killed at Bataan, Philippines, during World War II. According to Kerouac, in Doctor Sax, the Chandler family were English.

HARRY CHANDLER

Younger brother of Billy Chandler.

JACK CHANDLER

Older brother of Billy Chandler.

CHARLES "SHABBY" CHARBONNEAU

Lived on Riverside, Lowell, in 1920s. A truck driver, attracted to Kerouac's cousin Beatrice.

RAY CHARLES (1930-2004)

Born Albany, Georgia. Blind black soul singer/pianist who mixed blues with gospel. Formed first trio in 1947. Big record sales with "What'd I Say?" (1959) and "Hit the Road Jack" (1961).

CHARLIE

Prostitute whom Kerouac met in Paris, 1965.

HALDON "HAL" CHASE (1923- )

Friend of Neal Cassady from Denver. When he attended Columbia University, studying anthropology in the early 1940s, he shared apartments with Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Burroughs. Chase brought them early word of Neal and introduced them to each other when Neal visited New York in late 1946. Kerouac stayed with Hal and his family during his first visit to Denver in July 1947. Chase conducted important archaeological research at Trinidad, Colorado, in 1949. He met up again with William Burroughs in Mexico, 1951, while studying the Zapotecan language at Mexico City College. Chase drifted apart from the other Beats. He returned to the United States in 1956 to work at the University of Southern California, and eventually retired to live near Paso Robles, California.

CHRISTIAN CHENOWETH

Friend of Alan Ansen's whom he met at a course at the New School, New York.

MENELAEUS CHIUNGOS (1920-2008)

Older brother of Odysseus Chiungos.

ODYSSEUS "DUKE" CHIUNGOS (1922-2007)

Childhood friend of Kerouac's in Lowell. With his brother Menelaeus, a member of North Common Panthers football team, then playing in same Lowell High School team as Kerouac. Later ran dairy firm in Lowell with his brothers.

BUDDY CLARK

Ex-seaman, union organizer and painter friend of Alan Ansen's.

MARGARET "PEGGY" COFFEY (1922- )

Margaret Jeanette Coffey was a girlfriend of Kerouac's in Lowell, 1938-42. Sang at local events around Lowell, 1938 through 1942. An admirer of Cole Porter's songs, she performed with Vic Roy's Orchestra in Fitchburg, Mass., November 1942. Peggy became vocalist for Bobby Byrne's Band in February 1946 and sang on two of the band's record releases on the Cosmo label - "Whatta Ya Gonna Do" and "Hey Bobby!" in May 1946, performing at New York's Roseland Ballroom later that month. In June 1946 Peggy left the Byrne Band and by December 1946 was appearing regularly again with the Vic Roy Orchestra in and around Nashua. Returned to live in Lowell after the failure of her marriage.

COMPANARO (1925- )

A "redhead Spanish beauty" whom Kerouac met in Paris, June 1965.

CHARLEY CONNORS

Editor of small political weekly in Lowell, 1930s, printed by Leo Kerouac.

CONRAD

A Chinese poet on the New York scene, late 1940s.

GREGORY CORSO (1930-2001)

Born Nunzio Corso at St. Vincent's hospital, New York, he later selected "Gregory" as a confirmation name. Abandoned by his mother one month after birth, he spent the next eleven years in foster care in at least five different homes. Became a child of the streets in Little Italy and spent several periods in The Tombs, New York's infamous jail, and later three years at Clinton Prison, Dannemora, New York, where he developed a crude and fragmented mastery of Shelley, Marlowe, and Chatterton. Met Ginsberg in 1951 and soon became part of the Beat circle, spending time with them in Mexico, North Africa and Paris, France in the later 1950s. Noted for his poetry collections and individual poems The Vestal Lady and Other Poems (1955), Gasoline (1958), Bomb (1958), The Happy Birthday of Death (1960), Herald of the Autochthonic Spirit (1981), and Mind Field (1989). His only novel The American Express was published in Paris by Maurice Girodias in 1961.

TOM COSTELLO

Owner of the Lowell Sun newspaper who hired Kerouac as sports reporter, January-February 1942.

ART COUGHLIN

Football colleague of Kerouac's in Lowell High School team.

ELISE COWEN (1933-1962)

Born in Washington Heights, New York, Elise wrote poetry from a young age, influenced by the works of Emily Dickinson, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Dylan Thomas. Attended Barnard College in the early 1950s, where she became friends with Joyce Glassman. Met Allen Ginsberg and became romantically involved with him in 1953. Moved to San Francisco in the later 1950s but returned to her parents' home in New York, where she committed suicide. Her poems have been published posthumously.

BRUCE CRABTREE (1918-1993)

James Bruce Crabtree was born in Wichita, Kansas where his father was a geologist. Brother of Mary Crabtree Pippin. Attended University of Kansas and studied mathematics, making contributions in the fields of algebra and topology. Mainstay of the William Cannastra circle in New York. Died in Cranford, New Jersey.

STEPHEN CRANE (1871-1900)

Born in New Jersey. Worked as journalist before writing novels, including The Red Badge of Courage (1895), and short stories. Visited England in 1897, making friends with Joseph Conrad and H.G. Wells.

JOAN CRAWFORD (1904-1977)

(Real name Lucille Fay Le Sueur.) Movie actress whom Kerouac witnessed performing a scene from the movie "Sudden Fear" outside the Tamalpais Apartments on Greenwich Street, San Francisco, in 1952, inspiring his "Joan Rawshanks in the Fog." She was born in San Antonio, Texas, and began appearing in films in 1925. Her memorable appearances include those in "Mildred Pierce" (1945), "Humoresque" (1946), "Possessed" (1947), and "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?" (1962). Her role in "Sudden Fear" (1952) earned her an Oscar nomination.

JIM CRAYON

A friend of Lucien Carr's, an assistant editor at UPI whom Kerouac met in the 1950s.

ROBERT CREELEY (1926-2005)

Born in Arlington, Massachusetts and educated at Harvard, but left to serve in the American Field Service in Burma and India, 1944-1945. He returned to Harvard in 1946, but eventually took his BA from Black Mountain College in 1955. Lived with his wife and three children on the Spanish island of Mallorca, 1951-55. A poet and author of more than sixty books, he received early fame for his poetry collection For Love (1962). Wrote an elegy for William Cannastra, "N. Truro Light - 1946." Creeley held the position of the New York Poet Laureate from 1989 until 1991.

JACK CRONIN

Friend of Kerouac and James Cudworth from the Highlands region of Lowell. Attended Kerouac's surprise 17th birthday party.

HENRI CRU (1921-1992)

Born Williamstown, Massachusetts, the son of Albert Louis Cru, who taught at Williamstown College and later at Middlebury College, Vermont. The family moved to New York when Albert took up the position of professor of French at Columbia University. Henri met Kerouac when they were pupils at Horace Mann School in 1939 and became lifelong friends. Enlisted in the Merchant Marine in 1942. On return to New York, Henri met Edie Parker, who became Kerouac's first wife in August 1944.

JAMES CUDWORTH

Football colleague of Kerouac's in Lowell High School team, and fellow suitor of Mary Carney, 1938-39. Attended Kerouac's surprise 17th birthday party.

EDWARD DAHLBERG (1900-1977)

Born in Boston, Mass., Dahlberg was an American novelist, essayist and autobiographer. In the late 1920s he became part of the expatriate group of American writers living in Paris. Dahlberg returned to America in the 1930s, living in New York's Greenwich Village. He taught briefly at the Black Mountain College in 1948, and moved back to Europe in the 1950s. His work includes Bottom Dogs (1929), The Flea of Sodom (1950), The Sorrows of Priapus (1957), and the autobiographical Because I Was Flesh (1964).

CLAUDE DALENBERG (1927-2008)

Ananda Claude Dalenberg was born in South Holland, Illinois, and grew up in a Dutch truck-farming community. After serving in the Navy during World War II, he studied physics, mathematics, engineering and philosophy at Northwestern University, and later Zen under Alan Watts in San Francisco, becoming a priest. Friendly with Kerouac and Snyder in Berkeley, mid-1950s, when he was working as janitor at the San Francisco Zen Center.

JOHN "JACK" DALY (1912- )

Neal Cassady's half-brother, born in Denver, from his mother's first marriage to James Daly. Neal lived with Jack after their mother's death in 1936, until 1939.

LEON DANIELIAN (1920-1997)

Born in New York City, Danelian became a leading American ballet dancer, choreographer and teacher. He was a versatile dancer, performing in traditional roles as well as comic parts and was known for his showmanship and flair. He danced the lead in ballets by Massine, Balanchine and Bronislava Nijinska and served as director of the American Ballet School.

GEORGE DASTOU

A good friend of Leo Kerouac's in Lowell, 1920s. A barber who had once operated a successful theatre business.

GUIOMAR DE ANGULO

Photographer and artist whom Kerouac met in San Francisco, 1956. Daughter of anthropologist Jaime de Angulo.

EMILE DE ANTONIO (1919-1989)

Born Scranton, Pennsylvania, the son of brigadier general attached to Italian embassy. Thrown out of Harvard for setting fire to his room. Later, made documentary films including "Rush to Judgement" (1967) about J.F. Kennedy assassination, "Millhouse, A White Comedy" (1971) about Richard Nixon, and "Mr. Hoover and I" (1989) about his own monitoring by the FBI.

JAMES J. DE NOIA

From the Bronx, New York. Football colleague of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40, who also performed on the track. Later studied at Manhattan College.

DAVID DIAMOND (1915-2005)

David Leo Diamond was a composer of classical music, born in Rochester, New York. His most popular piece is Rounds (1944) for string orchestra. Among Diamond's other works are many symphonies and concertos, as well as chamber music. He also composed musical themes for TV, and was a long time member of the Juilliard School faculty.

EMILY ELIZABETH DICKINSON (1830-1886)

Born in Amherst, Massachusetts. Educated at Amherst Academy and Mount Holyoke, she became a reclusive poet, only recognized after her death as a writer of important dramatic, if hyperbolic works.

GEORGES DIDIER (1930- )

Owner of a bar in Brest, Brittany, whom Kerouac met during his visit there in 1965.

MISS ALICE K. DINNEEN (1896-1977)

Kerouac's eighth grade homeroom and English teacher at Bartlett Junior High School, Lowell, who grew up on Oliver Street, Lowell, with her parents and nine siblings. Later became Sister Mary of St. James in New Mexico. Died in Kansas City, Missouri.

BOB DONLIN (1924-1996)

A native of Boston, Mass., based in San Francisco in the 1950s, where he met Kerouac, Ginsberg, Corso, and others. Later returned to Boston to establish the music club Passim, where folk and rock musicians as well as Beat celebrities were to perform.

PAT DONOVAN

A disc-jockey friend of Neal Cassady's whom he introduced to Carolyn when he moved to San Franciso to live with Natalie Jackson in 1955. Helped with domestic chores while Neal was in San Quentin, 1958.

JIM DOWLING

Football colleague of Kerouac's in Lowell High School team.

DUBY

African-American guitarist/pianist who was at a party with Kerouac, Jack Fitzgerald and Dusty Moreland in Poughkeepsie, NY, according to Kerouac's letter to Neal of October 1951.

ROBERT DUNCAN (1919-1988)

Robert Edward Duncan was born in Oakland, California. He attended university at Berkeley, and briefly Black Mountain College. Began writing poems based on his left wing politics. His major works are considered to be The Opening of the Field (1960), Roots and Branches (1964), and Bending the Bow (1968).

PETER DU PERU

An eccentric friend of Allen Ginsberg's in San Francisco, 1950s. A "north beach remittance man wanderer," according to Ginsberg in the annotated Howl (1986).

RUSSELL DURGIN (1924-1985)

Born in China of American parents, and grew up in Massachusetts. Tubercular friend of Allen Ginsberg's at Columbia University, where he studied theology. They shared an apartment together in East Harlem, 1948. Later a teacher in the English department of St. Louis Country Day School.

ED DUTTON

Pentagon construction worker with whom Kerouac shared a room in Washington DC, spring 1942.

CHUMMY DUVAL

Jitterbug dancing friend of Red St. Louis in Lowell, 1930s.

ALLEN EAGER (1927-2003)

From New York. Tenor and alto sax playing jazz musician. Worked with Tommy Dorsey, also with Buddy Rich and Tadd Dameron, 1940s. A disciple of Lester Young.

GEORGE EDDY

The husband of script writer Mona Kent Eddy. The Eddys lived in the house that Kerouac purchased on Gilbert Street, Northport, Long Island, in March 1958. Kerouac bought it from them for $14,000.

MONA KENT EDDY (1909-1990)

Born in Iowa, as Ramona Hunt, she married several times, finally to George Eddy. Mona was a script writer for both radio and television, having written hundreds of scripts for the radio serial "Portia Faces Life" and contributed scripts to TV's "Captain Video" series. She was also the author of a novel and other published and unpublished works. Died in Florida.

IRWIN EDMAN (1896-1954)

Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, 1940s.

EDUARDO

Portuguese junkie friend of William Burroughs in Tangier, 1950s.

GERHART EISLER (1897-1968)

(Real name Gerbert Eisler) Born Leipzig, Germany. Fought in Austrian army in World War I. Trained as Comintern agent in Moscow, and worked as journalist in Europe 1922-27. Moved to USA 1933, and to Spain during Civil War, 1936. Escaped into France and then back to USA 1941 where he operated as activist and spy for Russia, under cover of being a merchant. He was caught in 1947 but, on bail, escaped on Polish ship and became chief of the Information Office in East Germany. Well read, and interested in the arts, he wrote plays in 1920s. Brother of Hanns Eisler, the composer who worked with Bertolt Brecht.

T.S. ELIOT (1888-1965)

Thomas Stearns Eliot, born in St. Louis, Missouri, studied at Harvard, the Sorbonne, Paris and Oxford, England. Became British subject at age of 39. Worked as school-teacher, then in Lloyds Bank, before joining publishers Faber & Faber, eventually becoming a director. Best known for his poems The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1917), The Waste Land (1922), and Four Quartets (1945).

HELEN ELLIOTT (1925-1990)

Born in Omaha, Nebraska, educated at Barnard College, worked at MCA talent agency. Shared an apartment with Helen Weaver in New York, where Kerouac met them both in November 1956. Girlfriend of Lucien Carr's.

"RAMBLING" JACK ELLIOTT (1931- )

(Real name Elliott Charles Adnopoz) Born in Brooklyn, New York. Played guitar from age of twelve. Met Woody Guthrie in 1951 and went on the road with him for several years. Met Kerouac at Helen Parker's, Bleecker Street, New York in summer 1953, when Kerouac read him the entire On the Road over three nights, in exchange for Elliott singing him Woody Guthrie songs. They met again in June 1954, when they dated two black sisters in New York. Big influence on Bob Dylan, Elliott continues to perform, and his 1980 recording "Kerouac's Last Dream" (a reference to his mention in Book of Dreams) contained a tribute to Kerouac.

CHARLEY ELLISOR

Neighbour of William Burroughs in New Waverly, Texas, 1947.

KELLS ELVINS (1913-1961)

Kelly Elvins, born in St. Louis, was a boyhood friend of William Burroughs. They attended Harvard together, and Elvins went on to become an accountant, a psychologist and a marine before moving to the Rio Grande Valley, Texas, where he had inherited a citrus farm from his father. Burroughs and Joan visited him there in 1946. Burroughs purchased a 99-acre farm further north, in New Waverly, Texas, but in 1949 moved back to live near Elvins in the Rio Grande Valley, establishing his own cotton farm there. Elvins saw Burroughs in Mexico City and Tangier in the 1950s. He later married the Danish actress Mimi Heinrich and lived in Rome for a while, before settling in Copenhagen where Burroughs visited him in 1957. Elvins died in New York of a heart attack and was buried in Texas.

ARTHUR LOUIS ENO

Son of a local judge and friend of Kerouac's at St. Joseph's School, 1932. Later a lawyer in Lowell, and author of some books on French-Canadian history.

RAE EVERITT

Literary agent of John Clellon Holmes, and later Kerouac, at MCA Management, until 1952.

DR. FAGAN

Allen Ginsberg's psychoanalyst, New York, 1948.

DOROTHY J. FARNAN (1919-2003)

Met Chester Kallman at University of Michigan, and later married his father, Eddie. Author of book Auden In Love (1984).

LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI (1919- )

Born in Yonkers, New York, of Italian and Portuguese Sephardic Jewish parentage. Brought up by his French aunt Emily, living in Strasbourg, France, for his first five years. Served in the US Navy during World War II, then studied at Columbia University, New York, and the Sorbonne, Paris. Settled in San Francisco in 1953, and founded the City Lights Bookstore there. Later launched the publishing wing of City Lights with his own volume of poetry Pictures of the Gone World (1955), followed by poetry collections by many others. His major works include the poetry collections A Coney Island of the Mind (1958), Starting from San Francisco (1961), The Secret Meaning of Things (1970), and the novels Her (1960) and Love in the Days of Rage (1988).

TOM FIELD (1930-1995)

Born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Tom Field attended art school in Fort Wayne before working as an army surgery assistant in Korea. He attended Black Mountain College and was influenced by Willem DeKooning and Franz Kline. Joseph Fiore in New York was his primary teacher. Field settled in San Francisco in 1956 and alternated intense times of painting with shipping out as a merchant seaman.

W.C. FIELDS (1880-1946)

William Claude Dukenfield was born in Darby, Pennsylvania. He began his career as a juggler in vaudeville, and appeared on Broadway in the Ziegfeld Follies revues, later becoming famous as a comedic film actor in the 1930s and early 1940s. His most notable movies include My Little Chickadee, The Bank Dick, and Never Give a Sucker an Even Break.

JOHN E. FINELLI

From Bogota, New Jersey. Football colleague of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40.

JEANNE FITZGERALD

Wife of John L. Fitzgerald.

JOHN L. "JACK" FITZGERALD (1923- )

A Columbia student friend of Edie Parker's from Poughkeepsie, NY, whom Kerouac met in 1943. Served in the U.S. Army, Battle of the Bulge. Jazz fan and writer, he became a good friend of Jack's.

LEON FONTAINE

Football colleague of Kerouac's in Dracut Tigers team, 1930s.

DUKE FORD

Seaman friend of Kerouac's on SS Dorchester. Together they climbed a 4000 ft mountain in Greenland, which they named Mount Ford-Kerouac, in August 1942.

CLAIRE FOURNIER (1914- )

Sister of Michael Fournier Jr.

JEANNETTE FOURNIER (1920- )

Sister of Michael Fournier Jr.

LAURETTE FOURNIER (1916- )

Sister of Michael Fournier Jr.

MARIE FOURNIER (1884- )

Wife of Michael Fournier Sr., born in Canada.

MICHAEL FOURNIER, JR. (1921-1991)

Close boyhood friend of Kerouac's in Lowell.

MICHAEL FOURNIER, SR. (1883- )

Born in Canada, a friend of Leo Kerouac in Lowell. Ran the Merrimack Valley Supply Company.

PAUL FOURNIER (1919- )

Brother of Michael Fournier Jr.

RITA FOURNIER (1917- )

Sister of Michael Fournier Jr.

ROBERT "SNORRO" FOURNIER (1925- )

Brother of Michael Fournier Jr., the subject of Kerouac's poem "Awakening From a Dream of Robert Fournier," collected in Pomes All Sizes (1992).

BILL FOX

Business partner of Jerry Newman's at their Greenwich Music Shop, New York. Together they established the Esoteric record label in 1949. Fox moved to Vanguard Records, to become their production coordinator, in 1964.

HOWARD ALFRED FOX

From New York. Classmate of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40. Baseball manager and envied owner of a convertible red roadster. Went on to study at Wharton School.

BEA FRANCO

A Mexican girl whom Kerouac met on a bus out of Bakersfield, California, Autumn 1947. Together they travelled to Los Angeles and Kerouac spent two weeks with her, picking grapes and cotton in Bakersfield and at her hometown of Selma, with Bea's young son Raymond ("Johnny"). [Photo courtesy of Tim Z. Hernandez.]

MARY FRANK (1933- )

Born Mary Lockspeiser in London, England. Studied modern dance in New York, from 1945. Married photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank in 1950. Studied wood carving and drawing, and began working in clay. Married Leo Treltler, pianist and music scholar, in 1995.

ROBERT FRANK (1924- )

Born in Switzerland and emigrated to the USA in 1947, securing the position of fashion photographer for Harper's Bazaar magazine, and later working as a freelance photojournalist for other magazines including McCall's, Vogue, and Fortune. In 1955, inspired by photographer Walker Evans, and with the aid of a grant, he travelled across the United States photographing all strata of its society in some 28,000 shots. He selected 83 of those for publication in his 1959 book The Americans for which Jack Kerouac wrote the introduction. He then moved away from photography to concentrate on filmmaking, his first work being "Pull My Daisy" (1959), based on Kerouac's play Beat Generation and starring Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and Peter Orlovsky, with a narration by Kerouac. Later films included "Me and My Brother" (1965/68), about Peter and Julius Orlovsky, and also featuring Ginsberg; "This Song for Jack" (1983); "Candy Mountain" (1987); and "Last Supper" (1992). Jack Kerouac documented his April 1958 road trip with Frank in "On the Road to Florida," posthumously published in Evergreen Review (1970).

BILL FRANKEL (1920-1988)

William Frankel, a native of New York City, graduated from Townsend Harris High School and City College. He taught at the New School for Social Research and served in the Army Signal Corps in World War II. He was a book editor at Random House and Harcourt, Brace before joining Time-Life Books. Frankel, an ardent communist, was a friend of Kerouac and Ginsberg's around the Columbia campus, late 1940s. He attended Kerouac's wedding party in November 1950.

FULLER

Dr. Fuller was the botanist with whom William Burroughs and Lewis Marker stayed in Ecuador during their search for yage, 1951.

HENRY FUNDERBURK

Railroad brakeman friend of Neal Cassady's. Neal lived for a short time in Henry's house on Divisadero Street, San Francisco, after returning from New York, in September 1950.

RALPH J. FUREY (1903-1984)

Freshman football coach at Columbia University, 1940s.

WILLIAM GADDIS (1922-1998)

Born in New York City and educated at Harvard. Worked as a fact checker for The New Yorker, mid-1940s, then spent five years traveling in Mexico, Central America, Spain, France, England, and North Africa, returning to the United States in 1951. Met Kerouac at Helen Parker's house, Greenwich Village, 1953. His first novel, The Recognitions, was published in 1955, followed by J R (1975), Carpenter's Gothic (1985), A Frolic of His Own (1994), and Agape Agape (2002).

SLIM GAILLARD (1916-1991)

Bulee "Slim" Gaillard was a jazz singer, songwriter, pianist, and guitarist, noted for his vocalese singing and word play in a language he called "Vout." Born in Santa Clara, Cuba of a Greek father and an Afro-Cuban mother, he grew up in Detroit and moved to New York City in the 1930s. Rose to prominence in the late 1930s as part of Slim & Slam, a jazz novelty act he formed with bassist Slam Stewart. Their hits included "Flat Foot Floogie," and "Cement Mixer (Puti Puti)." Kerouac and Cassady saw Slim performing in a San Francisco nightclub (1949).

CHARLEY GALLAGHER

A friend of Leo Kerouac in Lowell.

WILLIE GALLO

Mafia member whom Kerouac encountered in Bronx Jail, August 1944.

MERRILL GARFINKEL

Colleague of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40.

WILLIAM MAYNARD GARVER (189?-1957)

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, into a wealthy family, his father a banker. Drifted into gambling world of the Red River steamboats. Developed a morphine habit and moved to New York where he worked as a con man and overcoat thief to support his addiction. Met with Burroughs, Huncke, and others there in the 1940s. On the death of his father in 1952 he inherited $150 a month from a trust fund and moved to Mexico City to stay with William Burroughs. Kerouac knew him well there, and Garver's ramblings found their way into Kerouac's writings, including a long section of "Orizaba 210 Blues" (31st to 41st choruses - "I had a slouch hat too one time ...") published in Book of Blues. In 1956 Kerouac tried to enlist the help of Malcolm Cowley in negotiating a contract for Garver to write an historical novel about the Zapotec Indians, but nothing came of it and Garver died alone in Mexico City. He is also mentioned in Ginsberg's 1958 poem: "Back on Times Square, Dreaming of Times Square."

ARMAND GAUTHIER (1907-1993)

Worked at Leo Kerouac's printing plant, 1920s. A family friend who was an amateur wrestler and also Leo's unofficial chauffeur. Later worked as a clerk in a furniture store.

ERIC GIBSON (1957- )

Born in San Francisco, the son of Jacqueline Gibson with the poet Gerd Stern. Left the USA when 30, living in Singapore and Thailand for ten years, working as a broadcast systems engineer. Returned to Denver where he is working on his own autobiographical novel, The Duluoz Legend, about events with Kerouac and Cassady when he was a child.

JACQUELINE "JACKY" GIBSON (1927-1997)

Girlfriend of Neal Cassady in San Francisco, 1958, before he served two years in San Quentin. After Neal's release in 1960 he introduced Jacqueline to Kerouac, and they began a brief affair, as described in Big Sur. She married jazz musician (piano and bass) Arnett Mercer in 1961.

EDWARD M. GILBERT (1923- )

Born Edward Ginsberg in New York, he came from entrepreneurial roots. The witty classmate, flashy dancer and chess teammate of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40, went on to Cornell University and later became a "financial wizard" on Wall Street, hitting the headlines by absconding to Brazil with $2 million.

JOHN BIRKS "DIZZY" GILLESPIE (1917-1993)

From Cheraw, South Carolina. Trumpet playing jazz musician, composer and singer. Accompanied Charlie Parker in 1940s on recordings that formed the birth of bebop. Later experimented successfully with Cuban rhythms.

PROF. JOHN T. GILMOUR

Graduated from Norwich University (BS, 1909), and Columbia (MA, 1926). Became mathematics teacher at Horace Mann School in 1923.

ALLEN GINSBERG (1926-1997)

A major Beat Generation poet. Irwin Allen Ginsberg was born in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up in nearby Paterson. His most famous works include Howl (1955), Kaddish (1959), Reality Sandwiches (1963), The Fall of America (1973), and Mind Breaths (1978). His Collected Poems 1947-1980 was published in 1984.

EUGENE GINSBERG (1921-2001)

Elder brother of Allen Ginsberg. Changed his surname to Brooks after his discharge from the Army in 1945. Lawyer and writer who sometimes gave readings with his brother. His poems collected in Rites of Passage (1973).

LOUIS GINSBERG (1896-1976)

Father of Allen Ginsberg. A poet, English teacher, and socialist. Gave poetry readings with Allen in the 1960s.

NAOMI GINSBERG (1894-1956)

Mother of Allen Ginsberg. Naomi was an active member of the Communist Party and took her sons Allen and Eugene to party meetings. Suffered from a rare psychological illness and spent time in Greystone mental hospital.

ROBERT GIROUX (1914-2008)

Influential book editor and publisher. Born in Jersey City, New Jersey. Began his editing career with Harcourt, Brace & Co., where he edited Kerouac's first published novel, The Town and the City 1949-50, striking up a friendship with Jack. Moved to work at Farrar & Strauss in 1955, becoming a partner there, and eventually chairman.

RUDO S. GLOBUS (1923-2006)

From New York. Classmate of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40. Pianist and Glee Club member. Later studied at Brown University.

DICKI GOEBEL

Gay friend of Edie Parker, Joan Vollmer Adams and their circle in New York, early 1940s. Worked as a secretary on Wall Street, and lived on Washington Square, Greenwich Village. Later took a government job and moved to Washington, D.C.

MARTY GOHLKE (1923-2007)

Assistant Ranger at Marblemount Ranger Station, Washington State, whom Kerouac met during his stay on Desolation Peak in 1956.

HERBERT GOLD (1924- )

Born Cleveland, Ohio. Studied philosophy at Columbia University, where he met Ginsberg, Kerouac, and others. Moved to Paris on a Fulbright Scholarship, writing his first novel, Birth of a Hero (1951) there. Other works include The Prospect Before Us (1954), The Man Who Was Not With It (1956), the autobiography My Last Two Thousand Years (1972), and the non-fiction study Bohemia (1994). Settled in the San Francisco area.

HAROLD GOLDFINGER (1906-1989)

Surrealist poet around Greenwich Village. Associate of Jack Micheline's in the 1950s and knew Herbert Huncke in the 1930s.

RICHARD "PETER" M. GORDON

From New York. Classmate and close friend of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40, where he fenced and played football. Went on to Yale University.

JOE GOULD (1889-1957)

Joseph Ferdinand Gould, the eccentric bohemian, was born in Boston and graduated from Harvard with a degree in Literature. Studied Native American culture in North Dakota. Joined the New York Evening Mail as a reporter in 1917 and planned a huge work he would call An Oral History of Our Time, supposedly based on a word for word account of people’s lives, which Gould had listened to. In reality, the book never existed. Gould was the subject of two profiles by Joseph Mitchell, later collected as Joe Gould's Secret (1965). The book was filmed in 2000.

STANLEY GOULD (1926-1985)

A subterranean hipster whom Kerouac first met in New York in the summer of 1953. Gould was the inspiration for Anatole Broyard's essay "A Portrait of the Hipster" (Partisan Review, 1948). Worked at one time for the publisher A.A. Wyn. Gould died of AIDS.

PAUL GOVERNALI

Football colleague of Kerouac's at Columbia University, 1941-42.

DON GRAVES

Scullion colleague of Kerouac's on SS Dorchester during voyage to Greenland, 1942.

WARDELL GRAY (1921-1955)

From Oklahoma City. Tenor sax player influenced by Lester Young and then bop. Accompanied Dexter Gordon on memorably exciting recordings, including "The Hunt" and "The Chase," Los Angeles, 1947. Kerouac writes, in On the Road and Visions of Cody, about playing "The Hunt" on several 78 rpm records when Neal Cassady arrived at the Blake's home in Rocky Mount, Christmas 1948. Gray was found dead in mysterious circumstances, with a broken neck in the open desert near Las Vegas.

WINIFRED GREGOIRE

African American friend of Alan Ansen's in New York, 1940s, to whom he dedicated his elegy for William Cannastra, "Dead Drunk" (1959). Attended Kerouac's wedding party, November 1950.

GREGORIO

Jack and Neal's marijuana contact in Cuidad Victoria, Mexico, 1950.

PHILLIPE GREILSAMER

Came from France to become a colleague of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40. Secretary of the French Club. Went on to study at M.I.T., Boston.

BIZ GRONDIN

Football colleague of Kerouac's in Dracut Tigers team, 1935, recruited from Rosemont Tigers.

GEORGE GROSZ (1893-1959)

German-American painter, caricaturist, and graphic artist, best known for his acerbic satires of German society. Born in Berlin, moved to USA in 1932. Edie Parker studied art with Grosz in New York, 1944.

HELEN GULLION (1923- )

Born in Perkins, Nebraska, the daughter of a farmer. Nurse friend of Neal Cassady and Kerouac in Denver, July 1947. Arranged to meet Kerouac in San Francisco later that year.

RUTH GULLION (1920- )

Born in Perkins, Nebraska, the daughter of a farmer and sister of Helen. Nurse friend of Neal Cassady and Kerouac with whom Jack had brief affair in Denver, July 1947.

ALLAN D. GULLIVER

From New York. Practical-joking classmate of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40, where he was also manager of the football team. Went on to Brown University.

DAVID HAFT

From Deal, New Jersey. Classmate of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40. Played football, baseball and soccer. Later studied at Brown University.

GEORGE "MIKE" HAGGARTY

Track coach at Lowell High School.

CURTIS NEAL HANSEN (1950- )

The son of Neal Cassady and Diana Hansen, born in New York. Educated at University of New Haven, Georgetown University, and Boston University. Has worked at various posts in radio broadcasting, including Group Vice President/Programming at Aurora Communications, Vice President/Operations at ML Media Partners, and Vice President at 108 Radio Company. Currently Operations Manager/Program Director at Cumulus Media, Inc., Bridgeport, Connecticut.

DIANA HANSEN (1923-1974)

Neal Cassady's third wife. Diana was a fashion model and writer in New York. She had graduated from Barnard College, majoring in philosphy and aesthetics, and married her English-literature professor, Ted Hoffman, before meeting Neal in 1949 and marrying him in July 1950. Mother of Curits Hansen, her son with Neal, born November 1950. Married a Swiss banker in 1956.

ALEXIS HARPIN (1880-1930)

Jack's great uncle. Husband of Marie. Born in East Douglas, MA, where his father worked in a local ax factory. The family later moved to Nashua, NH, where Alexis worked in a shoe factory. Married Maria Lydia Levesque in Nashua, 1903, having two children, Raymond and Raoul. The family moved to Bristol, CT, and then to Lynn, MA, where Alexis became an insurance agent.

MARIE HARPIN (1879-1958)

Jack's great aunt. Marie Lydia Levesque was the sister of Gabrielle's father, Louis, and was born in St. Pacome, Quebec, Canada, on the family farm. The family moved to Nashua, NH, around 1900, and like most of the family, Marie worked in local shoe factories. With her sister Claire [Buckley], Marie became one of Gabrielle's surrogate mothers, caring for her when her true mother died when she was one year old in 1896. Married Alexis Harpin in Nashua, 1903, having two children, Raymond and Raoul, and became involved in selling insurance with her husband. When Alexis died in 1930 Marie lived with her son Dr. Raymond Harpin, a physician in Lynn, MA, and took up hair removal by electrolysis. In 1947 Marie moved to live with her other son, Raoul, in Swampscott, MA.

RAOUL HARPIN (1915-1993)

Jack's first cousin, once removed. One of the two sons of Alexis and Marie, Raoul was born in Nashua, NH, moving with his family to Lynn, MA when young. Attended school in Lynn, becoming a proficient pianist and playing varsity football. Graduated from Lynn Classical High School in 1933, and from Harvard College in 1937, where he majored in Romance languages. Enlisted in Army, October 1940, seeing service in England, North Africa, Italy, France, and Germany. Married Mary Pyne of Boston in May 1946, and raised seven children in Swampscott, MA. Spent time as Secretary of Lynn Chamber of Commerce, and with the Lynn Item newspaper before beginning a career in the early 1950s, initially teaching languages but later switching to Biology, which he taught at Lynn Classical High School until his retirement in 1980. Raoul remembered visits by the Kerouac family to Lynn, and scaring Jack by shining a flashlight under his chin in the dark. [Many thanks to Raoul's son, Raymond Harpin, for providing information and photos of the Harpin family.]

HARRIET

A friend of Kerouac and Holmes in New York, late 1940s. The cousin of Russell Durgin.

ALAN HARRINGTON (1918-1997)

Born in Newton, Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard. Worked as science reporter, and witnessed first atomic bomb test at Bikini Atoll, 1946. Later at the Indonesian Information Office, New York, 1950s, and other public relations companies. Introduced Kerouac to John Clellon Holmes (1948). Novels include The Revelations of Dr. Modesto (1955), (in which the main character is called Hal Hingham), Life in the Crystal Palace (1959) and The Secret Swinger (1966). His non-fiction work Psychopaths (1972) includes a study of Neal Cassady. Moved to live near Tucson, Arizona. An account of a visit by Jack and Neal with the Harrington family in Arizona (January 1949) was edited out of the published On the Road (1957) but can be read in the scroll version.

PEGGY HARRINGTON

Wife of Alan Harrington and mother of his two children.

LIL HARRIS

A neighbour of Kerouac's sister Caroline in Rocky Mount, North Carolina.

JOEL HAVET (1944- )

A Breton whom Kerouac met in Paris during his trip to France, June 1965.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1804-1864)

Born in Salem, Massachusetts. One of the greatest American novelists and short story writers, a moralist and allegorist. Author of The Scarlet Letter (1850), and others. A character called Junius appears in his unfinished novel, Septimus Felton.

ARCHIE HAYES

Flatulent shipmate of Kerouac's on SS Dorchester during voyage to Greenland, 1942.

ANTHONY E. HECHT (1923-2004)

Anthony Evan Hecht was born in New York City to German-Jewish parents. Classmate of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40. Music Club President and leading baritone voice in the Glee Club. Went on to study English at Bard College, New York, and decided to become a poet. Drafted into in U.S. Army 1944, and helped liberate Flossenbürg concentration camp. Further study at Kenyon College, Ohio, and Columbia University. Released his first collection, A Summoning of Stones, in 1954. Other publications include The Hard Hours (1967), for which he was awarded a Pulitzer prize, The Venetian Vespers (1979), The Transparent Man (1990), and Flight Among the Tombs (1998). Taught poetry at various institutions, most notably the University of Rochester from 1967 to 1985.

BILL HEINE (1929- )

Grew up in Ardmore, Pennsylvania. A painter, drummer, flautist, and warlock. Played drums with Charlie Parker at the Open Door, 52nd Street, New York, 1953. Recorded with Brew Moore & Tony Fruscella, March 1954, on a session for Atlantic Records, as yet unissued.

JARRY HEISERBERG

An athlete from Oregon whom Kerouac met in San Francisco, summer 1960.

LUANNE HENDERSON (1930-2009)

Neal Cassady's first wife. Born LuAnne Bullard in Peetz, Colorado. Henderson was her stepfather's name. LuAnne met Neal in 1946 and they married August 1. Travelled to New York late 1946 where they first met Kerouac and Ginsberg. Divorced from Neal, March 1948. Married Ray Murphy, 1949, and had a daughter, Anne Marie. Married Samuel Catechi, 1966. Retired to live in Sonoma, California with her last husband, Robert Skonecki, in 1990. LuAnne spent her final years in San Francisco.

RUDOLPH ERNST HENNING

Came from Hamburg, Germany to become a colleague of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40. Helped organize the Radio Club. Went on to study at Columbia University.

MAE DALY HERZOG (1919-1944)

Neal Cassady's half-sister, born in Denver, from his mother's first marriage to James Daly. Lived in the Queen of Heaven Orphanage from 1930 due to collapse of her family during the depression. Married and moved to Los Angeles. Died of liver disease due to alcoholism.

BERNIE HIERONOWITZ

Poet acquaintance of Kerouac's in San Francisco, September 1956.

AL HINKLE (1926- )

Born in Denver, Colorado, where his father was a detective on the Denver police force. Hung around the local poolhalls in his teens, meeting Neal Cassady there. Was in Merchant Marine at end of World War II. Moved to San Francisco and got a job with Southern Pacific Railroad, September 1947. Recommended that Neal Cassady join him working on the railroad, which he did in April 1948. The two remained good friends in San Francisco and later in San Jose. When Al married Helen Argee in December 1948 the three of them drove across country, dropping Helen off in Tucson, Arizona, to make her own way by train to William Burroughs' house in Algiers, New Orleans. They picked up LuAnne in Denver, and drove on to Rocky Mount, North Carolina, where Kerouac was staying with his sister.

HELEN HINKLE (1925-1994)

Born Helen Argee, in Alameda, California, daughter of a Greek-American father - a violin maker - and Portuguese mother. Married Al Hinkle in December 1948. Became a close friend of Carolyn Cassady.

MASON HOFFENBERG (1922-1986)

Acquaintance of Kerouac's around the San Remo bar, New York, mid-1950s. Later, in Paris, he wrote for Girodias's Traveller's Companion series of books, including Until She Screams (as Faustino Perez). Co-authored (with Terry Southern) Candy (1958).

FRED J. HOFFMAN

From Bogota, New Jersey. Football colleague of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40. Went on to Springfield College.

JOHN HOFFMAN (1930-1951)

From Menlo Park, California. A poet friend of Gerd Stern and Philip Lamantia's. Travelled to New York in 1949, based in Greenwich Village. Kerouac met them at Carl Solomon's, c.1950. Rumoured to have died from a peyote overdose in Mexico, 1951, although other reports claim his death was caused by mononucleosis. Left behind just 29 poems, collected as Journey to the End. Lamantia read Hoffman's poems at the famous Six Gallery event, October 1955.

JOHN HOHNSBEEN

From Muskogee, Oklahoma, son of railroad superintendent. At Columbia with Kerouac and Ginsberg, where he studied art. Was Peggy Guggenheim's last secretary.

BILLIE "LADY DAY" HOLIDAY (1915-1959)

(Real name Eleanora Fagan) From Baltimore, Maryland. One of the greatest jazz singers. Recorded with Benny Goodman, 1930s, and later with her life-long soulmate Lester Young.

JOHN HOLLANDER (1929- )

Born to Jewish immigrant parents in New York, he attended Columbia University where he studied under Mark Van Doren and Lionel Trilling, and was a classmate of Allen Ginsberg. One of the first to write about the David Kammerer killing, in the Columbia Spectator, fall 1944. Highly critical of Ginsberg's "Howl," calling it "a dreadful little volume ... very short and very tiresome." (Partisan Review, Spring 1957.)

JOHN HOLMAN

Seafaring, gun-toting acquaintance of Henri Cru's.

ELIZABETH HOLMES (1932- )

Sister of John Clellon Holmes. Married name Elizabeth Von Vogt, she is the author of 681 Lexington Avenue: A Beat Education in New York City 1947-1954, a memoir about growing up with her brother and his Beat friends. Elizabeth has also written other novels in which characters are based on her brother and his two wives, including The Adventures of Dorothy and Marian (2000), The Marriage Martyr (2001), and An Awful Intimacy (2002).

JIM HOLMES (1926-2002)

James T. Holmes was a poolplayer and gambler whom Neal Cassady met in Pederson's pool hall, Denver, in 1945. Holmes was the leader of a group of friends, and Neal approached him to learn pool, offering to teach him philosophy in return. Holmes lived with his grandmother in Denver, and Neal Cassady stayed there, on and off for the next three years. From Holmes he learned the inticacies of pool and how to cheat at cards, and also acquired his first suit.

JOHN CLELLON HOLMES (1926-1988)

Author and poet, born in Holyoke, Massachusetts, the son of a salesman for sporting goods firms. Quit high school to work for Reader's Digest in Chappaqua, New York, but later took some courses at Columbia University. Was drafted into U.S. Navy Hospital Corps. in 1944. Met Kerouac in New York, 1948, and together they were responsible for giving a name to the Beat Generation. Holmes's GO (1952), has been called the first Beat novel. Holmes was also the first to write about the subject in "This Is the Beat Generation," an article published in The New York Times Magazine, November 1952. Holmes's other novels are The Horn (1958), and Get Home Free (1964). He also wrote many essays which are collected in Nothing More to Declare (1967), Displaced Person (1987), Representative Men (1988), and Passionate Opinions (1988). His poetry includes The Bowling Green Poems (1977), Death Drag (1979), Dire Coasts (1988), and Night Music (1989). Holmes shared a love of jazz with Kerouac, and the two made recordings on a disc-cutting machine at Holmes's apartment, together with their mutual friend, Seymour Wyse (1949). At other similar sessions Allen Ginsberg recorded his poetry and Kerouac read from his work-in-progress, The Town and the City as well as from Hamlet.

MARIAN HOLMES (1923- )

First wife of John Clellon Holmes. Born Marian Miliambro, from Chappaqua, New York, the daughter of an Italian immigrant. Met Holmes in 1943 when they were both working for Reader's Digest. Married August 1944 in Manhattan, where they lived until their divorce in April 1952.

SHIRLEY HOLMES (1928-1988)

Second wife of John Clellon Holmes. Born Shirley Anise Allen in Louisiana, she studied art at Washington University. Married Stanley Radulovitch, a partner of Jay Landesman's at his Crystal Palace nightclub in St.Louis, in 1949. Met Holmes in New York, 1951. They married in Haddam, Connecticut, September 1953, and lived together at Old Saybrook. Died of lung cancer just two weeks after John, in April 1988.

MIKE HOUDE

Brother of Pete Houde.

NINIP HOUDE

Younger brother of Pete Houde, who died after being run over by a milk wagon.

PETE HOUDE

Childhood friend of Kerouac's in Pawtucketville, Lowell.

RICHARD HOWARD (1929- )

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, and educated at Columbia University, New York, where he studied under Mark Van Doren. Distinguished poet, literary critic, essayist, translator, and teacher.

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS (1837-1920)

Born in Ohio, worked as printer and journalist. Was American consul in Venice, 1860s, and later the author of romances, such as The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885), and critical works including My Literary Passions (1895).

WILLIAM "BIG SLIM" HOLMES HUBBARD

A hobo from Ruston, Louisiana whom Kerouac met while they were both detained in the sick bay of the U.S. Naval Training Station at Newport, Rhode Island in the spring of 1943. Holmes was a former Louisiana State University football player.

HERBERT EDWARD HUNCKE (1915-1996)

Born in Greenfield, Massachusetts but grew up Chicago. Street hustler and heroin addict whom William Burroughs met in New York, January 1945. Introduced the concept of "Beat" to Kerouac, Ginsberg, Holmes and others. His writings, mostly autobiographical, include Huncke's Journal (1965), The Evening Sun Turned Crimson (1980), and Guilty of Everything (1990).

JOHNNY IRISH (1890-19??)

Junkie friend of William Burroughs in New York, 1940s. Once worked for gangster Dutch Schultz. Hanged himself while imprisoned in the Tombs.

ROBERT HARRISON IRRGANG

A computer programmer for IBM. Robert Lavigne lived at his house on de Haro Street, San Francisco, where Gregory Corso also stayed in 1956.

NATALIE JACKSON (c.1925-1955)

A model of Robert LaVigne's in San Franciso, Natalie Jackson met Neal Cassady in late 1954, and they began an affair, regularly visiting the racetrack together. Certain of winning, Neal persuaded Natalie to impersonate Carolyn, and the two of them withdrew $2500 of the Cassadys’ investment from the bank to use as stake money. When the deception was discovered, in November 1955, Natalie became hysterical and committed suicide by slitting her throat and throwing herself from the roof of a building. A recording of Natalie reading Kerouac's "Jazz of the Beat Generation" survives.

PHYLLIS JACKSON

Literary agent of Kerouac and John Clellon Holmes at MCA, 1950s.

WILLIS "GATOR" JACKSON (1928-1987)

From Miami, Florida. Tenor sax jazz musician and composer who formed a link between Rhythm & Blues and jazz. Kerouac raved about his wild style in "Crazy Jazz" (1949). The 1948 recording "Gator Tail" with Cootie Williams earned him his nickname. Married to singer Ruth Brown.

JACKY

Teenage friend of Neal Cassady's in Denver, 1940s, visiting from North Dakota.

RHODA JAFFE (19??-196?)

Girlfriend of W.H. Auden between 1945 and 1948, and also his secretary before that role was taken on by Alan Ansen. Rhoda was the model for the character Rosetta in Auden's long poem "The Age of Anxiety." Earlier the wife of Milton Klonsky. Committed suicide.

HENRY JAMES (1843-1916)

Born in New York of Irish and Scottish ancestry. Father, Henry James Sr. was a writer on theology. Moved to England, where most of his important novels were written, including The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903), and The Golden Bowl (1904), and short stories such as the ghostly The Turn of the Screw (1898).

WILLIAM JAMES (1842-1910)

Brother of Henry James. A philosopher and antagonist of the Kant and Hegel school. His works include Principles of Psychology (1890), and Varieties of Religious Experience (1902).

RANDALL JARRELL (1914-1965)

Born in Nashville, Tennessee and graduated from Vanderbilt University with two years of graduate work in English and psychology. Best known for his poetry, including the collections Blood for a Stranger (1942) (heavily influenced by Auden), The Woman at the Washington Zoo (1960), and The Lost World (1965), as well as for the humorous novel Pictures From an Institution (1954). Jarrell was struck by a car and killed while out walking in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

JEANNIE

Girlfriend of Kerouac's in Washington DC, spring 1942. From Macon, Georgia.

ALICE JEFFRIES

Wife of Frank Jeffries. She began typing up the first manuscript version of Junkie for William Burroughs in Mexico City.

FRANK S. JEFFRIES (1923-1996)

Son of a newspaper reporter in Denver. A high-jumper in school. Spent four years in the armed services, then six years as an office-worker before accompanying Jack and Neal to Mexico in 1950.

LOU JENKINS

Hobo from Allentown, Pennsylvania.

MATTHEW JENKINS

African-American runner from Worcester, Mass., who beat Kerouac in 30-yard dash, January 1939.

JOEL

Italian language teacher in Mexico City who drove Kerouac, Ginsberg, Peter and Lafcadio Orlovsky, and Gregory Corso from Mexico to New York City in autumn 1956.

JOHNNY JOHNSON

Female head of an Okie family that Jack and Neal stayed with briefly in Denver, August 1949. Mother of Nancy, Billy and Sally.

JOYCE JOHNSON (1935- )

Born Joyce Glassman in Queens, New York, to Jewish parents. Attended Barnard College where she became friends with Elise Cowen who introduced her to Allen Ginsberg, who in turn arranged for Joyce and Jack Kerouac to meet on a blind date. They were together during the time of the publication of On the Road, 1957. Joyce has written about her time with Kerouac in the books Minor Characters (1983), and Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters, 1957-1958 (2002). Her other books include Come and Join the Dance (1962), Bad Connections (1978), In the Night Café (1989), and Missing Men: A Memoir (2004). Joyce was married to the abstract painter James Johnson, who died in a motorcycle accident, and later to the painter Peter Pinchbeck.

NANCY JOHNSON (1935- )

Eldest daughter of Johnny Johnson whom Kerouac met in Denver, 1949. Nancy sent one of her poems to Kerouac in January 1950.

BETTY JONES (1916- )

Girlfriend of Lewis Marker's in Mexico City, 1951. Present when William Burroughs shot Joan.

CONNIE JORDAN

Jazz drummer and vocalist in California, 1940s. Part of Hollywood's Four Blazes (1946), and later the leader of the Connie Jordan Quartet (1948) and Connie Jordan Combo.

JULIE

Friend of Neal Cassady and Helen Hinkle in San Francisco, 1949.

TONY JURE (1921- )

Football colleague of Kerouac's in Lowell High School team.

CHESTER "EDDIE" KALLMAN (1921-1975)

Lifelong boyfriend and companion of W.H. Auden, with whom he collaborated on opera liberatti, including "The Rake's Progress" (1951). Friend of Alan Ansen's in New York and Athens, Greece.

DAVID EAMES KAMMERER (1911-1944)

A schoolfriend of the young William Burroughs in St. Louis, since 1920. As young men, they traveled together and explored Paris’s night life. Met Lucien Carr (11) when Kammerer (25) was a teacher of English and a physical education instructor at Washington University in St. Louis. Kammerer was leading a youth group of which Carr was a member, and quickly became infatuated with the teenager, pursuing him for the next five years, wherever Carr was enrolled at school. On August 14, 1944, when Kammerer's attentions became too intense, Carr stabbed him and threw the body into the Hudson River.

RICHIE KAMUCA (1930-1977)

From Philadelphia, PA. Tenor sax-playing jazz musician who worked with Stan Kenton and Woody Herman in 1950s. Later played in small groups with Gerry Mulligan and Maynard Ferguson, and occasionally with Al Cohn and Zoot Sims (who backed Kerouac on his album Blues & Haikus, 1959).

LENORE KANDEL (1932-2009)

Born in New York City but moved to San Francisco in 1960 where she met Gary Snyder and Lew Welch, becoming Lew's girlfriend. Lenore's poetry collection Word Alchemy was published in 1967, but she is best known for the shorter volume of poetry The Love Book (1966).

YORAM KANIUK (1930- )

Born in Tel Aviv, Palestine. Fought for Israel in the War of Independence, 1948. Shot in the legs and treated at Mount Sinai Hospital, New York. Settled in Greenwich Village to paint in 1950s. Worked as a dishwasher at Minton’s Playhouse jazz club in Harlem, where he befriended jazz legends Charlie Parker and Billie Holliday. Later returned to Israel, becoming an eminent writer, painter, journalist and theatre critic.

PETER KASKEL

Moved from St Christopher School in Letchworth, England, to Kew Gardens, Long Island, to become a classmate of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40. Secretary of the German Club, and Dramatic Club member. Went on to Columbia University.

BOB KAUFMAN (1925-1986)

Robert Garnell Kaufman was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, one of fourteen children of a German-Jewish father and a Roman Catholic mother from Martinique. At age eighteen he joined the United States Merchant Marine, which he left in the early 1940s to briefly study literature at New York's The New School, where he met William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. Moved to San Francisco's North Beach in 1958 and remained there for most of the rest of his life, becoming a Buddhist. He was one of the founders of Beatitude magazine in 1959. Kaufman was a poet in the oral tradition and did not usually write down his poems. Much of his published work survives due to his wife Eileen, who wrote his poems down as he conceived them. Best known for his Abomunist Manifesto (1958), Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness (1965), Golden Sardine (1967), and Ancient Rain: Poems 1956-1978 (1981).

TOM KEADY

Football coach at Lowell High School, 1930s.

BILL KECK

One of the "subterraneans" whom Kerouac met around the San Remo and Fugazzi bars, New York, summer 1953. Keck was a jazz musician, playing guitar on a recording date with trumpeter Tony Fruscella (1959).

JOHN KELLY (1913-1966)

A wealthy writer and critic of Kerouac's philosophy and work from Virginia, who offered Kerouac financial support and a room in his mansion, in 1950. According to Gore Vidal, Kelly paid both Kerouac and Neal Cassady for sex. Kelly was born in New Jersey and educated at Yale and King's College, Cambridge, where he became friendly with Robert Giroux, who was to publish Kelly's novel All Souls' Night (Harcourt, Brace, 1947).

CAPTAIN KENDRICK

Captain of SS Dorchester during Kerouac's voyage to Greenland, 1942. On next voyage, in February 1943, Kendrick was killed when the Dorchester was sunk by a German submarine in Baffin Bay.

JOSEPH KENNEDY

From New York. Classmate and close friend of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40, and later at Columbia University, where his father was basketball coach. Later worked in sales and marketing.

MIRA B. KENT (1925- )

Married woman with whom John Clellon Holmes had an affair 1946-48. The subject of his poem "Frau Von Stein, My Brother's Keeper."

ARMAND KEROUAC (1914-1999)

Jack's cousin, a son of Joseph and Leontine Kerouac. Born in Nashua but moved with his parents to Lowell in 1932 where he helped to run the family store when his father was too ill to work.

BEATRICE KEROUAC (1904- )

Jack's cousin, a daughter of Joseph and Leontine Kerouac. Born in Nashua but moved to Lowell with her parents in 1932.

CAROLINE KEROUAC (1872-1944)

Kerouac's aunt, and Leo's sister. Born in Riviere de Loup, Quebec. She became a nun, joining the Daughters of Charity in Montreal in 1893, being given the name Sister Antoine de Jesus. Later joined other missions in the American West, including South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, and Washington, where she ended her days in Spokane. Briefly visited the Kerouac family in Lowell on the death of Gerard in 1926.

CAROLINE "NIN" KEROUAC

(See Caroline Kerouac Blake.)

EDITH FRANCES PARKER KEROUAC (1922-1993)

Jack's first wife, Edie Parker was born and grew up in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. She met Kerouac through her previous boyfriend Henri Cru, in New York, October 1942. They married in August 1944 and the couple moved to Grosse Pointe to live. This arrangement did not suit Jack, who returned to New York and the marriage was annulled in September 1946. Edie's autobiography, You'll Be Okay was published in 2007.

EDOUARD KEROUAC

Jack's great-grandfather. A potato farmer living in St Jean-Port-Joli, Quebec. Married Severine Malenfont in 1848 and their first child, Jack's grandfather Jean-Baptiste, was born there later that year, and six others followed later.

ERNEST KEROUAC (1885-1954)

Jack's uncle. The brother of Leo Kerouac. Born in Chateauguay, Quebec, but moved with his family to Nashua, New Hampshire in 1890, remaining there for the rest of his life. He worked as a railroad brakeman, and later as a carpenter. Married Alice Chamberlain in 1906.

FRANCIS GERARD KEROUAC (1916-1926)

Jack's elder brother. A major influence on the young Jack who died of rheumatic fever.

GABRIELLE KEROUAC (1895-1973)

Jack's mother. Born Gabrielle L'Évesque in St Pacome, Quebec, one of twin girls, the other dying at birth. Brought up in Nashua, New Hampshire. When she was a year old her mother died giving birth to her sister Dorothee. She was raised by her father and two elder sisters, Claire and Marie, until her father remarried Amanda Dube in 1904. Went to work in a Nashua shoe factory, 1911. Married Leo Kerouac in 1915.

HERVE KEROUAC (1915-1971)

Herve (Harvey) Kerouac was Jack's cousin, a son of Joseph and Leontine Kerouac. Born in Nashua but moved with his parents to Lowell in 1932. Served in the US Army during World War II. [Many thanks to Terry Kerouac Dewar for the photo of her father.]

IRENE KEROUAC (1912-1951)

Jack's cousin, a daughter of Joseph and Leontine Kerouac. Born in Nashua but moved to Lowell with her parents in 1932. Became Mrs Irene Gaudette, living in San Diego, California in the 1940s. Buried in Nashua.

JEAN-BAPTISTE KEROUAC (1848-1906)

Jack's grandfather, born in St Jean-Port-Joli, Quebec. Worked as a farmer. Married Clementine Bernier in St Pascal, 1869. Together they had fifteen children, although five of them died during childhood. Moved the family to Nashua, New Hampshire in 1890, and took up carpentry.

JEAN-BAPTISTE "JOHN" KEROUAC (1887-1969)

Jack's uncle, and Leo's brother. Born in St Hubert, Quebec, but moved with his family to Nashua, New Hampshire in 1890. Worked as a shoemaker. Married Rosanne Dumais in 1912. They became Jack's godparents. Rosanne died in 1940, and John moved from Nashua to Manchester, NH in 1943. Remarried, to Alexina Des Roches in Nashua, 1956. He died just two weeks before his godson.

JEAN-LOUIS "JACK" KEROUAC (1922-1969)

Born Lowell, Masachusetts. Educated at Lowell High School, Horace Mann School, New York, and Columbia University. Served in Merchant Marine during World War II. Author and poet, best known for On the Road (1957), The Subterraneans (1958), The Dharma Bums (1958), Doctor Sax (1959), Mexico City Blues (1959), Big Sur (1962), and Visions of Cody (1973). Died in St. Petersburg, Florida.

JOAN HAVERTY KEROUAC (1930-1990)

Jack's second wife, Joan Virginia Haverty was born and grew up in Albany County, New York. Met William Cannastra at an artists' colony in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and returned with him to New York, 1949, where she worked as a seamstress. After Cannastra's death in 1950, Jack Kerouac moved into the apartment she'd shared with Bill, and they married the following month. The marriage broke up eight months later, during which time Kerouac had written the scroll version of On the Road and Joan had become pregnant. She gave birth to her daughter Janet in February 1952, although Kerouac always denied paternity. Joan's autobiography, Nobody's Wife: The Smart Aleck and the King of the Beats was published in 2000.

JOSEPH KEROUAC (1881-1944)

Jack's uncle. Born in Varennes, Quebec, but moved to Nashua, New Hampshire with his parents in 1890. Married Leontine Rouleau in 1902 and opened a grocery store "Rouleau and Kerouac" in Nashua. The effects of the Depression forced them to close down the business in 1932 when they moved their family to Lowell, opening another small store for a couple of years. Joseph was an asthmatic and in poor health for many years before his death.

LEO KEROUAC (1889-1946)

Jack's father. Born in St Hubert, Quebec, but moved with his family to Nashua, New Hampshire in 1890. An apprentice at the Nashua Telegraph, he moved to Lowell in 1912 to work on a new newspaper, L'Etoile, as writer and printer, living there with his sister Emma. Married Gabrielle L'Évesque 1915 in Nashua.

LEONTINE KEROUAC (1882-1975)

Born Leontine Roleau. Jack's aunt, the wife of Joseph Kerouac, whom she married in 1902, and mother of their five children. Lived in Nashua, New Hampshire until 1932, when the family moved to Lowell.

STELLA SAMPAS KEROUAC (1918-1990)

Jack's third wife. Sister of Jack's boyhood friend, Sebastian Sampas. They married in November 1966, living first of all in Lowell, and moving to St. Petersburg, Florida in November 1968. Stella became the executor of the Kerouac estate after Jack's death.

IVAN D. KING, JR.

From New York. Colleague of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40. A member of the Social Committee. Went on to Williams College.

JOHN KINGSLAND (1927-1997)

From Brooklyn Heights, New York, a student at Columbia University who had a room in the dorms next to Lucien Carr. Later moved into the apartment shared by Edie Parker and Joan Vollmer Adams on West 118th Street, becoming Joan's lover.

LEONID KINSKEY (1903-1998)

Hollywood filmstar of the 1930s who visited Newport RI Naval Base when Kerouac was resident there in 1943. Born St Petersberg, Russia, becoming involved in the theatre. Toured South Africa with a team of actors before settling in the USA in the early 1930s. His film appearances include "Duck Soup" (1933), "Les Miserables" (1941), "Casablanca" (1942), and "The Man With The Golden Arm" (1955).

FRANZ KLINE (1910-1962)

Born in Wilkes-Barre, PA. Studied painting in Boston and London, 1930s. Became an important member of the New York school of abstract expressionism.

MILTON KLONSKY (1921-1981)

New York-based poet and essayist, author of "Greenwich Village: Decline and Fall" (Commentary, 1948) and others. Married to Rhoda Jaffe whom he met, with Chester Kallman, at Brooklyn College, late 1930s. Later taught English at Iowa State University.

PETE KOUCHALAKOS

Member of North Common Panthers football team, later playing in Lowell High School team with Kerouac.

JOHN KOUMANTZELIS

Track colleague and friend of Kerouac's at Lowell High School. Killed during World War II, while training to be an Air Force pilot.

JOE KULIS

Track and football colleague of Kerouac's at Lowell High School.

JEAN BAPTISTE LABOSSIERE

St. Louis Parish priest who consoled Gabrielle Kerouac after her son Gerard's death in 1926.

LOLA LA CHATA (1906-1957)

Real name Maria Dolores Estévez Zulueta. A drug courier from the age of thirteen, she became the most important drug trafficker operating in Mexico City from the 1930s to 1950s. William Burroughs' drug connection there.

PHILIP LAMANTIA (1927-2005)

Born in San Francisco to Sicilian immigrants. His poetry was first published in the magazine View in 1943, when he was fifteen and in the final issue of the Surrealist magazine VVV the following year. In 1944 he dropped out of Balboa High School to pursue poetry in New York City. He returned to the Bay Area in 1945 and his first book, Erotic Poems, was published a year later. He appeared at the famous Six Gallery event in 1955, reading the poems of John Hoffman, a friend who had recently died. Lamantia's work includes Ekstasis (1959), Narcotica (1959), Selected Poems 1943-1966 (1967), Becoming Visible (1981), and Bed of Sphinxes: New and Selected Poems, 1943-1993 (1997).

JOHNNY LAMBERT

Acquaintance of Kerouac's in New York, 1940.

BILL LANCASTER

Acquaintance of Kerouac's around West End Bar, New York, 1944.

FRAN LANDESMAN (1927-2011)

Born Frances Deitsch in New York City. Her father was a dress manufacturer, her mother a journalist. Educated at at Temple University, Philadelphia, and the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York. Met Jay Landesman in 1949 and they married in 1950. Fran wrote the lyrics for the musical version of Jay's autobiographical The Nervous Set, including "The Ballad of the Sad Young Men," and "Spring Can Really Hang You up the Most," a hip take on T.S. Eliot's line from The Waste Land: "April is the cruelest month..." Fran's poetry has been published in several volumes, including The Ballad of the Sad Young Men (1975), Invade My Privacy (1978), More Truth than Poetry (1979), and Is it Overcrowded in Heaven? (1981).

JAY LANDESMAN (1919-2011)

Irving Ned Landesman was born in St. Louis, Missouri, where his family had an antiques business, and was educated at the University of Missouri and Rice University, Houston. Moved to New York in 1949, having founded the magazine Neurotica the year before. Married Frances Deitsch in 1950, a lyricist he had met in Greenwich Village. The couple moved back to St. Louis, where Jay and his brother Fred opened the Crystal Palace, a cabaret theatre bar that hosted acts including Lenny Bruce, Barbra Streisand, Woody Allen and Dick Gregory. In 1959 he produced a version of his autobiographical novel The Nervous Set as a musical, with lyrics by Fran and music by Tommy Wolf, which was also staged on Broadway, New York. The Landesmans moved to London in 1964, becoming involved in the local arts scene, with Jay setting up Polytantric Press. Landesman's work includes three volumes of autobiography: Rebel Without Applause (1987), Jaywalking (1993), and Tales of a Cultural Conduit (2006). A complete set of his magazines was reissued in book form as Neurotica: The Authentic Voice of the Beat Generation, 1948-1951 (1981).

JAY LAUGHLIN (1914-1997)

James Laughlin was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a member of the wealthy family which co-owned the Jones and Laughlin Steel Company. Studied at Harvard and travelled in France and Italy, where he met many writers and began composing his own poems. In 1936 he founded New Directions, which was to publish writers such as as William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Henry Miller, Herman Hesse, Kafka, Nabokov, Pasternak, Sartre, and E. E. Cummings, as well as some of his own poetry. Laughlin was responsible for publishing in New Directions the first edition of Kerouac's Visions of Cody in 1959, although as a heavily edited collection of excerpts comprising about one third of the total work.

ROBERT LAVIGNE (1928- )

A student at the California School of Fine Arts, 1953, and at San Francisco State College, 1954. Peter Orlovsky was his model and lover. Ginsberg was attracted to a portrait of Orlovsky by LaVigne and in 1954 asked to be introduced to him, beginning a lifelong relationship. Moved to New York in 1964, and later to Seattle.

FRANK LEAHY (1908-1973)

Francis William Leahy, born O'Neill, Nebraska. Football coach at Boston College, later at Notre Dame.

PIERRE LE BRIS (1920- )

Born in Plomelin, near Quimper, Brittany. Owner of a bookshop in Brest whom Kerouac visited when he was researching his family history in France, June 1965.

ALENE LEE (1931-1991)

Born Arlene Garris in Washington DC, she grew up on Staten Island, New York. An African- and Native-American whom Kerouac met and had an intense love affair with in New York during the summer of 1953. At that time Alene was typing up the work of both Ginsberg and Burroughs that was eventually published as The Yage Letters (1963). Alene lived with Lucien Carr from 1962-1973. She had a daughter, Christina, by John Mitchell, the proprietor of the famous Gaslight coffee bar in Greenwich Village, where many folk artists appeared in the late 1950s and early '60s, including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Len Chandler, and where Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso read their poetry. Some of Alene's autobiographical writing was published in Beatdom #6 (2010).

GERSHON LEGMAN (1917-1999)

Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania; father a kosher butcher. As a young man he became interested in sexuality, erotic folklore, and origami. His book Love and Death, an attack on sexual censorship, was published in 1949, an outgrowth of the little magazine Neurotica, which he and Jay Landesman edited and published in nine issues between 1948 and 1952, with contributors including Allen Ginsberg, Marshall McLuhan, and Kenneth Patchen. Legman's other books include Rationale of the Dirty Joke (1968), Limerick (1991), and Bibliography of Paper-folding (1952).

JINNY BAKER LEHRMAN (1932- )

A girlfriend of Kerouac's whom he first met at an Allen Ginsberg party, New York, July 1948. They met again in San Francisco, October 1955, at the first public reading of Ginsberg's "Howl" and began an affair. By this time she was married to a graduate student from University of California at Berkeley, Walter Lehrman.

LIZ LEHRMAN (1928- )

Born in Greenwich Village, NYC, to communist parents. A painter girlfriend of Lucien Carr's, 1950. They attended Kerouac and Joan Haverty's wedding party together, November 1950. Married name Liza Williams. Has written of her times with Lucien Carr and of their visit with William and Joan Burroughs in Mexico City in The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats (1999).

LES

Midwestern friend of Edward Stringham's, New York, 1940s.

DENISE LEVERTOV (1923-1997)

Born in Ilford, Essex, England of a Welsh mother and Russian Jewish father. Published her first poem when she was 17 and her first book, The Double Image, six years later. In 1947, she married American writer Mitchell Goodman and moved with him to the United States the following year. Taught at Brandeis University, MIT, Tufts University, University of Washington and for 11 years (1982-1993) held a full professorship at Stanford University. Associated with the Black Mountain school. Much of her work is included in Collected Earlier Poems 1940-1960 (1979), Selected Poems (1986), and This Great Unknowing: Last Poems (2000).

KEN LEWARS (1922-2000)

A student of W.H. Auden's at Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania, and friend of Alan Ansen's. At Columbia University his MA thesis was "The Quest in Auden's Pomes and Plays" (1947), and his article "Auden's Swarthmore Chart" was published in volume 1 of the Connecticut Review (1968).

VARNUM LEWIS (1926-1993)

Acquaintance of Kerouac's in New York.

VACHEL LINDSAY (1879-1931)

Born in Springfield, Illinois, Lindsay studied medicine at Hiram College in Ohio from 1897 to 1900, but did not want to be a doctor. While in New York in 1905 Lindsay turned to poetry, and became famous as a travelling bard. In 1906 he journeyed 600 miles on foot from Jacksonville, Florida to Kentucky, trading his poetry for food and lodging. In 1908, he undertook another poetry-selling trek, walking from New York City to Hiram, Ohio, and in 1912 another trip took him from Illinois to New Mexico. Two of his poems were published in Poetry Magazine in 1913 and 1914, and from then on Lindsay was famous. A six-month journey in 1928-29 throughout the East and Midwest left Lindsay exhausted and depressed, and he committed suicide in 1931 by drinking a bottle of Lysol.

LINDY

Junkie contact of William Burroughs in New Orleans.

LINK

William Burroughs' lawyer in New Orleans, 1949.

CHET LIPKA

Football colleague of Kerouac's in Lowell High School team.

MORT LIPPMANN

Colleague of Kerouac's at Columbia University, 1942.

LOU LITTLE (1893-1979)

(Real name Luigi Piccolo). Head football coach at Columbia University, 1930s-'40s.

MARIA LIVORNESE (1932- )

Younger sister of Tom Livornese. Girlfriend of both Ed White and Jack Kerouac, who accompanied Maria to her junior prom, 1948. Maria married Alexa Halpern, May 1964, and their son, filmmaker Alex Halpern has made a documentary movie about the Livornese family, Nine Good Teeth (2003).

TOM LIVORNESE (1924-1990)

Born in Lynbrook, Long Island. A jazz enthusiast and pianist who studied at Columbia University, where Kerouac met him in 1946, and helped him write two term papers for his music course, "Jazz and the Modern Symphony" and "The New Music" (both reprinted in Moody Street Irregulars #15, 1985). Later worked as a lawyer.

LOUISE

Lesbian who lived above William Burroughs at 69 Bedford Street, Greenwich Village, 1944.

BILL LUCE

Assistant editor colleague of Lucien Carr's, New York, 1950s.

LULU

African-American prostitute whom Kerouac knew in San Francisco, February 1952. Niece of Marie. (Also mentioned in March, 1952 letter to John Clellon Holmes.)

PAUL AXEL LUND (1914- )

Son of a wealthy Danish father, he grew up in Birmingham, England. Took to crime and spent time in several British prisons, including Dartmoor. Fled to Tangier after a bank robbery. Met William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac there. Subject of the biography Smiling Damned Villain by Rupert Croft-Cooke (1959).

GERALDINE "GERRY" LUST

Friend of Edie Parker and Joan Vollmer Adams in New York, 1940s. From the South, she was a day student at Barnard College.

ROGER LYNDON (1917-1988)

Friend of John Clellon Holmes and Edward Stringham's. Educated at Harvard, a brilliant mathematician, later at Princeton. Mentioned in Kerouac's letter to Holmes of May 27, 1956.

SUSAN LYNDON

German-born wife of Roger Lyndon, brought up in England, where they met during World War II. Later divorced, and married to an anthropologist in London.

JOHN "IAN" MACDONALD

Colleague of Kerouac's at Bartlett Junior High School. Later a member, with Kerouac, of the Young Prometheans, an intellectual discussion group.

NORMAN MAILER (1923-2007)

Novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter and film director, born in Long Branch, New Jersey and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Graduated from Harvard University in 1943, where he studied aeronautical engineering, and served in the U.S. Army during World War II. The experience provided material for his first novel The Naked and the Dead (1948), and his subsequent work included Barbary Shore (1951), The Deer Park (1955), Advertisements for Myself (1959), The Executioner's Song Boston (1979), Ancient Evenings (1983), and Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery (1996). His 1957 essay "The White Negro" was an early study of the American hipster.

BOB MALKIN

Cousin of Allan Temko's, in whose Spanish Harlem coldwater flat Neal Cassady and Luanne stayed on their first visit to New York City, December 1946.

AL MALO

Friend of Kerouac's in Lowell. Attended Jack's surprise 17th birthday party.

MISS HELEN MANSFIELD (1893-1967)

Helen Lucinda Mansfield was Kerouac's ninth grade English teacher at Bartlett Junior High School, Lowell, and school librarian, 1930s. Lived on White Street, off Riverside Street, Lowell with her mother Susie.

MARIE

African-American prostitute whom Kerouac knew in San Francisco, February 1952. (Also mentioned in March, 1952 letter to John Clellon Holmes.)

ADELBERT LEWIS MARKER (1930-1998)

From Tampa, Florida. Joined army, 1946, spending three years in Germany in Counter-Intelligence Corps. Left army 1949 and moved to Mexico City on the G.I. Bill, where he met William Burroughs, 1951. The pair travelled to South America together. Burroughs dedicated his novel Junkie to A.L.M. (1953).

EDWARD MARSHALL (1932- )

Born in Chichester, New Hampshire, and raised by aunt and uncle. Moved to Boston in 1953, meeting up with poets John Weiners and Stephen Jonas there. Began writing poetry, which was published by LeRoi Jones in his magazine Yugen. Settled in New York, 1956. Best known for his poem "Leave the Word Alone," which was included in Donald Allen's anthology The New American Poetry: 1945-1960. Allen Ginsberg stated that the poem was the source of inspiration for his own "Kaddish."

WILLIAM MARSHALL

Friend of Kerouac's in Lowell. Attended Jack's surprise 17th birthday party.

EDDY MARTIN (1903-?)

Edward Martin, born in Boston, Mass., was the husband of Loretta, Gabrielle Kerouac's step-sister. Lived in Brooklyn, New York, and worked in trucking warehouse.

PROF. HARRY W. MARTIN

Graduated from Cornell University (BA, 1906), and Columbia (MA, 1917). Joined Horace Mann School as history teacher in 1911, becoming head of department.

LORETTA MARTIN (1905-1988)

Born in Nashua, New Hampshire, the daughter of Amanda Adamakis by her first husband (Gabrielle Kerouac's father), Louis L'Évesque. Later moved to Brooklyn, New York, with her mother.

SHERI MARTINELLI (1918-1996)

A painter, muse, poet, and editor, born Shirley Burns Brennan in Philadelphia, of Irish ancestry. Married painter Ezio Martinelli, early 1940s. In 1955 became the long-time muse and mistress of Ezra Pound in Washington, D.C. Charlie Parker and the members of the Modern Jazz Quartet hung out at her Greenwich Village apartment where she was one of the "Three Graces," the other two being Iris Brody and a woman known as the "silent Madonna." Sheri has appeared under the pseudonym "Sheri Donatti" in Anatole Broyard’s Kafka Was the Rage (1993), under her own name in David Markson’s novel Reader’s Block (1996), as "Lady Carey" in Larry McMurty's 1995 novel Dead Man's Walk, and was anthologized in Richard Peabody’s anthology A Different Beat (1997). Sheri was one of the first to publish Charles Bukowski in her own magazine, the Anagogic & Paideumic Review (1959-70), which was also the very first to review his work. A volume of their correspondence was published as Beerspit Night and Cursing in 2001.

MAURINE

Worked in admission booth of a Times Square, New York jazz club (probably The Three Deuces). Had fling with Neal Cassady, January 1949.

MORTON "MORTY" H. MAXWELL

From New York. Classmate of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40. President of the Debating and French Clubs. Moved to Los Angeles to become a practising physician.

JOE MAY

Acquaintance of Kerouac's 1940s, living on Thompson Street, Greenwich Village, New York.

HENRY "HANK" MAZUR (1920-2004)

Senior football teammate of Kerouac's at Lowell High School, where he pushed Kerouac out of the showers. Later member of Army football team, and an army colonel.

BENNY McARTHUR

Colleague of Kerouac's at Lowell High School.

MICHAEL McCLURE (1932- )

Born in Marysville, Kansas. A poet, playwright, songwriter, and novelist. Moved to San Francisco as a young man and found fame as one of the poets who read at the famous San Francisco Six Gallery event in 1955. His first book of poetry, Passage, was published in 1956, and subsequent works include the poetry collections Dark Brown (1961), Ghost Tantras (1964), Little Odes (1967), Rare Angel (1974), Jaguar Skies (1975), and Antechamber (1981). His work as a novelist includes the autobiographical The Mad Cub (1970) and The Adept (1971). McClure's controversial play The Beard (1965) was banned in California in the 1960s, but won awards when it transferred to New York in 1967.

CITA McCORKLE (1953- )

Daughter of Locke and Valery McCorkle.

LOCKE McCORKLE (1933- )

A Marin County carpenter living in a house in Mill Valley. A small cabin at the back ("Marin-An") was home to Snyder, Whalen, Lou Welch and Kerouac at various times in the 1950s. Kerouac wrote Scripture of the Golden Eternity and most of Old Angel Midnight there. He also wrote "Visions of Locke." Moved to Arizona and Majorca in 1960s. Author of How to Make Love: The Spiritual Nature of Sex (1969). Became senior aide to Werner Erhard, the founder of EST human potential training seminars, in 1970s.

VALERY McCORKLE

First wife of Locke McCorkle.

VALERY McCORKLE'S BROTHER

Brother of Valery McCorkle.

PATRICK EDLOW McCUE

From New York. Studied at Peekskill Military Academy before becoming a colleague of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40. Played in the soccer team there, and later studied at Syracuse University.

HUGH McELNCHAN

Backfield football coach at Boston College who gave Kerouac a tryout in 1940.

HUGH McILHENNAN

Senior football teammate of Kerouac's at Columbia University.

ROBERT MEARNS (1870-1943)

Socialist shipmate of Kerouac's on his trip to Greenland on the SS Dorchester (1942). Died when the Dorchester was sunk by a German submarine in the North Atlantic, February 1943.

JACK MELODIAS ("LITTLE JACK MELODY") (1923-1983)

From Maspeth, Queens, New York. Of Sicilian-American descent, the son of the secretary treasurer of the eastern seaboard Mafia. Small-time thief and safe-robber, in New York and Washington DC. Friend of Herbert Huncke and Phil White, and boyfriend of Vickie Russell.

HERMAN MELVILLE (1819-1891)

Born in New York City. A sailor and autodidact who later took to writing, with novels such as Typee (1846), Redburn: His First Voyage (1849) and Moby Dick (1851). The critical and financial failure of his books at the time forced him to spend his last twenty years as a customs officer in New York.

JAMES MERRILL (1926-1995)

Born in New York City, the son of a founding member of the Merrill Lynch investment firm. Served in US Army during World War II then studied at Amherst College. A poet, his work includes The Black Swan (1946), Divine Comedies (1976), which earned him a Pulitzer Prize, Mirabell: Books of Number (1978), The Changing Light at Sandover (1982), as well as a collection of essays, Recitive (1986) and the memoir A Different Person (1993).

CHARLEY MEW

Vertically challenged merchant seaman friend of the Cassadys' in San Francisco. They sometimes looked after Charley's young daughter Linda when he was away at sea. In Desolation Angels, Kerouac describes him as just 4ft. 2ins. tall, although in Some of the Dharma he is said to be 4ft. 10ins.

MARIE LOUISE MICHAUD (1878-1962)

Kerouac's aunt, and Leo's sister. Born in Varennes, Quebec, but moved with her family to Nashua, New Hampshire in 1890 and remained there for the rest of her life. She was crippled when hit by a car when young. Became a dressmaker. Married Philippe Michaud, a weaver, in 1899. He died in 1909 and in 1922 she remarried, to Magoire Belanger, but they divorced six months later, due to "impotency."

BOB MILLER (1)

Acquaintance of Kerouac's at Columbia University, 1940s.

BOB MILLER (2)

Ex-getaway car driver and neighbour of Lew Welch's whom Kerouac met in San Francisco, summer 1960.

MIMI

French girlfriend of Philip Lamantia in San Francisco, 1950s.

JACK MINGER (1931-2010)

Jazz trumpet player, based in San Francisco. Played for a long time with Dick Oxtot and Bob Mielke's New Bearcats. Accompanied poet ruth weiss at poetry and jazz sessions in 1956 at the Cellar, North Beach, which he partly owned. Composer of the melody "So Beautiful."

WALTER BUDD MOHR

From Rutherford, New Jersey. Football colleague of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40. His father a contractor involved in building the gym. Later studied at Williams College.

THELONIOUS SPHERE MONK (1917-1982)

From Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Pianist who was one of the most original and unorthodox composers and performers in jazz. Contributed to the development of bebop in the 1940s.

JOHN McVEY MONTGOMERY (1919-1992)

Born in Spokane, Washington, and grew up on the Idaho panhandle, later in Oregon, Tennessee, Vermont, and California. Served in U.S. Army 1942-43. Matriculated at UC Berkeley and married Frances Cooney, 1948, and Dora Dale Rogers, 1974. John worked for 14 years as a librarian, and 17 years for the U.S. Post Office. Met Kerouac in 1955 when they climbed a twelve thousand foot ridge of the Matterhorn Mountain in Yosemite, California with Gary Snyder. Produced the books: Jack Kerouac: A Memoir ... (1970), Kerouac West Coast: A Bohemian Pilot ... (1976), The Kerouac We Knew (1982), Kerouac at the "Wild Boar" and Other Skirmishes (1987). A collection of John Montgomery's poetry, Hip, Beat, Cool & Antic, was published in 1988.

MARIANNE MOORE (1887-1972)

Born in Kirkwood, Missouri and educated at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania. A Modernist poet and writer noted for her irony and wit. Her work is collected in The Complete Poems (1981), and The Complete Prose (1986).

MILTON AUBREY "BREW" MOORE (1924-1973)

Born in Indianola, Mississippi. Tenor sax playing jazz musician active in New York with Gerry Mulligan and Kai Winding, late 1940s. Drove to California with Woody Guthrie and Jack Elliott, 1954, and stayed in San Francisco until 1960, when he moved to Europe. A disciple of Lester Young.

ADELE MORALES (1925- )

Born in New York of a Peruvian father and Cuban mother. A painter who majored in art at Washington Irving college. Met Kerouac at the New School, New York, in the late 1940s and had brief affair. Became the second of Norman Mailer's six wives in 1954, and the mother of two of his children. Mailer stabbed her at a party in 1960 and they divorced 1962. Her autobiography, The Last Party: Scenes From My Life With Norman Mailer, was published in 1997.

MRS. MORAN

Girlfriend of Neal Cassady's in San Francisco, 1956.

SIMONNE MOREAU

Friend of Kerouac's in Lowell. Attended Jack's surprise 17th birthday party.

DOROTHY "DUSTY" MORELAND

A painter from Lusk, Wyoming. Attended Lusk High School from 1946. Moved with her friend Mardean Butler to New York in 1950, staying in Greenwich Village. Became a friend of Kerouac and Ginsberg, also of Corso and Lucien Carr. One of Allen Ginsberg's first girlfriends, with whom he had an on-off affair in New York, commencing autumn 1950.

CHARLES H. MORISSETTE (1909-1987)

Born in Canada. First husband of Jack's sister Caroline Kerouac, they married in May 1937. With his wife, hosted Kerouac's surprise 17th birthday party.

ROBERT MORISSETTE (1920-1986)

Younger brother of Charles Morissette, born in Lowell, a close teenage friend of Kerouac's. Cousin of Kerouac's priest in Lowell, Father Armand "Spike" Morissette (1910-1991). According to Father Spike, the Morissettes were a family with English roots, originally called Somerset. Finding themselves in a part of Canada dominated by the French, they decided it would be prudent to change the family name by switching the position of the consonants (Somerset --> Moresset --> Morissette).

WILLIAM MORRIS

Painter friend of Philip Whalen's in San Francisco, 1960s.

DOLORES (DODY) MULLER (1927-2001)

Widow of Figurative Expressionist painter Jan Muller (1922-1958). Met Kerouac at a Robert Frank party in October 1958 and was his girlfriend until February 1959. Her maiden name was James and she claimed to be descended from the outlaw Jesse James.

CORNELIUS "CONNIE" MURPHY (1920-2011)

Cornelius Francis Murphy was born in Tilton, New Hampshire but grew up in Lowell where he was a colleague of Kerouac's at Bartlett Junior High School. Later, a member, with Kerouac, of the Young Prometheans, an intellectual discussion group. Served in the Army Signal Corps in Europe during World War II. Studied nuclear physics and worked at Brookhaven laboratories before becoming a doctor in Washington DC.

DENNIS MURPHY

Writer from New York whom Kerouac met at Big Sur, 1960.

PETER MURRAY

Seafaring acquaintance of Henri Cru's.

LEO NADEAU (1921- )

Childhood friend and later track colleague of Kerouac's at Lowell High School. Jack stayed with the Nadeaus one summer when his parents went on holiday to Canada.

TI NADEAU

Younger brother of Leo Nadeau, whom Jack accidentally hit in throat with thrown slate.

PROF. WILLIAM J. NAGLE

Graduated from Harvard (BA, 1908), and Columbia (MA, 1916). Joined Horace Mann School in 1911, becoming Head of the Classical Language Department.

EL NEGRO

Curio-selling junkie friend of Esperanza's in Mexico City.

NESSE

Friend of Mary Carney's, who lived opposite her in Billerica Street, Lowell.

JERRY NEWMAN (1918-1970)

A student at Columbia University, 1941, and a friend of Seymour Wyse. Newman recorded jazz performances at Minton's Playhouse and Monroe's Uptown House, Harlem, featuring Charlie Christian, Dizzy Gillespie, and Thelonious Monk, on his disc-cutting machines. Joined the U.S. Army in 1942 and took part in the Normandy invasion, 1944. Launched the Greenwich Music Shop with Seymour Wyse, 1948, and also founded the record labels Esoteric and Counterpoint, on which he released some of the recordings he'd made in the jazz clubs. Met Kerouac during this time. They became good friends, and Newman recorded Kerouac singing in his studio.

NICOLE (1939- )

Girlfriend of Gregory Corso's in San Francisco, 1956.

JEANNE NIELD

Girlfriend of Victor (Tejeira?) - 1950.

HOAGY NORMAN

Contact of William Burroughs who worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Supplied Burroughs with stolen tommy gun and morphine syrettes, late 1944.

ERNIE NOVAL

Boyhood friend of Kerouac's in Lowell.

JAMES O'BRIEN

Detective Sergeant of NYPD who interrogated Kerouac after Kammerer murder, August 1944.

JAMES "HARPER" O'DEA

High school friend from Lowell with whom Kerouac hitchhiked to Boston in June 1942 to join Marines. Later became District Attorney of Essex County, Massachusetts, and a member of John F. Kennedy's staff in Boston.

ART OLSON

Baseball pitcher friend of Kerouac's at Lowell High School, who lived in the same street as Mary Carney.

[?] OLSTAD

Sister of Robert Olstad, with whom Kerouac had a brief affair.

ROBERT B. OLSTAD

From Yonkers, New York, where he attented Gorton High School. Football colleague of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40, and also pitched for the baseball team. Jack spent weekends at his parent's house. Went on to Brown University.

COLEMAN "NICK" O'MALLEY

From New York. Wise-cracking colleague of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40. Member of soccer, basketball and athletic teams. Went on to Columbia University.

OMER (1920- )

Retarded friend of Jack and his childhood gang in Lowell. Later interned in asylum.

DAVID E. OPPENHEIMER

From New York. Classmate of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40. Member of Music Club, president of Glee Club, and also a fencer. Went on to study at Brown University.

DIANNE ORIN

Girlfriend of Henri Cru's, San Francisco, 1947. ("Formally Bernice Orin" according to Henri.)

LAFCADIO ORLOVSKY (1940- )

Younger brother of Peter orlovsky. Travelled to Mexico with Peter, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Gregory Corso in summer 1956.

NICKI ORLOVSKY

Brother of Peter Orlovsky. Worked as a pinboy in a Bowery bowling alley.

PETER ORLOVSKY (1933-2010)

Peter Anton Orlovsky was born in the Lower East Side of New York City, the son of a Russian immigrant. Worked as an orderly at Creedmoor State Mental Hospital, then in 1953 was drafted into the United States Army to served in the Korean War but was transferred to work as a medic in a San Francisco hospital. While working as a model for the painter Robert LaVigne he met Allen Ginsberg, December 1954, and they became lifelong partners. Began writing poetry in 1957 when the pair were living in Paris. His published works include Clean Asshole Poems & Smiling Vegetable Songs (1978), and Straight Hearts' Delight: Love Poems and Selected Letters (with Allen Ginsberg) (1980). With his brother Julius, a catatonic schizophrenic, and Allen Ginsberg, he appeared in the movie Me and My Brother (1969), a documentary directed by Robert Frank.

E. ADRIEN ORTEIG

From New York. Classmate of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40. Member of the tennis team and Stamp Club. Went on to Brown University.

ELLIOTT OSSERMAN

Colleague of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40.

ROGER OUELLETTE (1920- )

Boyhood friend of Gerard and Jack Kerouac in Lowell. Later worked as a machinist and part-time in the clubhouse of the Lowell golf course.

BURTON PALTER

From New York. Classmate of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40. Played in the football team.

BIOF PAQUETTE

Boyhood friend of Kerouac's in Lowell. The Paquette family lived on Sarah Avenue, where the Kerouacs also resided, 1935-39.

JEAN PAQUETTE (1924- )

Brother of Biof Paquette.

MAURICE PAQUETTE (1928- )

Brother of Biof Paquette.

BRUCE PARKER

Younger son of Helen Parker with husband Thomas. Brother of Tom Parker.

CHARLIE "BIRD" PARKER (1920-1955)

From Kansas City, Missouri. Alto sax genius jazz musician who was to play a major part in the introduction and development of bebop in the 1940s. Early death due to heroin and alcohol dependence. Kerouac's poem of tribute to Charlie Parker is included in three choruses of Mexico City Blues (1955).

EDIE PARKER

(See Frances Edith Parker Kerouac.)

HELEN PARKER (1920-1993)

Helen Arliss Bell was born in Langford, South Dakota, and grew up in Chicago. She married Thomas Parker, an alto saxophonist in "Happy" Felton's band, and had two sons, Tom and Bruce. Moved to New York with her sons in 1945 and worked in publishing. Helen was once engaged to the writer John Dos Passos, and knew many other writers including Ernest Hemingway, William Gaddis, Joshua Logan and Thomas Heggen. Mentioned in the book Ross & Tom: Two American Tragedies, by John Leggett. Helen became the first girlfriend of Allen Ginsberg's, spring 1950, and had brief affairs with Kerouac and folksinger "Rambling" Jack Elliott. Married Charles Jeremiah in Saratoga, Florida in 1982, and lived there until her death, eleven years later.

TOM PARKER (1940- )

Older son of Helen Parker with husband Thomas. Brother of Bruce Parker.

PAULINE

From Pennsylvania. A girlfriend of Kerouac's in New York, 1948-49. Modelled for artist Alan Wood-Thomas. Married to Italian mechanic.

ROBERT F. PAYNE

Graduated from Union College (BS, 1913). Joined Horace Mann School in March 1919, becoming Head of Science Department, Administrative Assistant, and scout-troop leader.

JIM PENOFF

Denver friend of Neal Cassady's with whom he'd made trips to California, early 1940s.

JAMIE PERPIGNAN

Friend of Neal Cassady's in San Francisco, 1960. Had spent time in Soledad State Prison for attempted robbery.

ARNOLD PESTRONK

Colleague of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40.

WILL PETERSEN

Friend of Gary Snyder's from the Buddhist Study Center in Berkeley, California. Artist, caligrapher, writer and translator, he edited the Berkeley Bussei and published some of Kerouac's haikus and an extract from Mexico City Blues. Left for Kyoto, Japan in the fall of 1955. Later illustrated Snyder's Totem Press edition of Myths and Texts.

GENE PIPPIN

From Kansas. Friend of Ginsberg's at Columbia University. Married Mary Crabtree.

MARY CRABTREE PIPPIN (1921-2008)

Mary Inez Crabtree was born in Wichita, Kansas, the sister of Bruce Crabtree. Attended University of Kansas. Married Gene Pippin, whom she left for William Cannastra. Later married Eldred Mowrie and lived on Cape Cod.

NORMAN PODHORETZ (1930- )

Born and raised in Brownsville, Brooklyn, of Jewish immigrants from the Central European region of Galicia. Studied at Columbia under Leonard Trilling, and later at Cambridge University. A neoconservative and a critic of the Beats. His 1958 Partisan Review article "The Know-Nothing Bohemians" was a vehement critique primarily of Kerouac's On the Road and The Subterraneans, as well as Ginsberg's Howl. Podhoretz also objected to the establishment of the Kerouac Commemorative Park in Lowell with his New York Post article "Strange Honor for a False Prophet" (1988).

EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809-1849)

Born in Boston, Massachusetts. Spent time in Lowell, 1840s. Poet, journalist and short story writer specializing in tales of mystery and imagination, such as The Fall of the House of Usher (1839) and The Pit and the Pendulum (1842). Most famous poem, "The Raven" (1845).

HORACE POTTER

Football teammate of Kerouac's at Columbia University.

DUNCAN PURCELL (1921-1968)

A Columbia student friend of Edie Parker and Joan Vollmer Adams, 1940s. Also known as "Uncle Dunc." From Poughkeepsie, NY, he studied psychology at Columbia.

JOE PYNE

English teacher at Lowell High School, 1930s.

WILLIAM A. QUINN

From Englewood, New Jersey, where he attended St Cecilia High School. Football colleague of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40, and also member of the basketball team. Went on to Holy Cross College, and later returned to Horace Mann as football coach.

MRS. QUINN (?)

Neighbour of the Kerouacs' in Lowell, 1920s.

RAIMY

Mexican truck-driver who gave Kerouac a ride from Beaumont, California to Calexico, on the Mexico border, December 1955.

JACKY RAPINIC

Wife of John Rapinic.

JOHN RAPINIC

Organizer of the Seven Arts Coffee Gallery in New York, 1959.

MARK RASOVSKY

One of the "subterraneans" whom Kerouac met around the San Remo and Fugazzi bars, New York, summer 1953.

PAT REEL (1913- )

Communist shipmate of Kerouac's on SS Dorchester, 1942. Wounded fighting with John Lardner in Abe Lincoln Brigade, Spanish Civil War.

KENNETH REXROTH (1905-1982)

Poet, translator and critical essayist, born in South Bend, Indiana. Studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and became involved in the anarchist movement. Spent some time in Greenwich Village, New York, then hitched around the country (1924) before settling in San Francisco. A central figure in the San Francisco Renaissance, he helped organise the famous 1955 Six Gallery poetry event where he acted as master of ceremonies. Rexroth's poetry is published in Complete Poems (2003).

WILLIAM E. RHODES

From New York. Classmate and close friend of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40. Skilful pianist, and member of Music Club and Speakers' Forum. Jack spent weekends at his home. Went on to Colorado College.

JOE RICKS

Long-time junkie whom William Burroughs met in New Orleans, 1948.

BERTHA ROBERGE

Girlfriend of Robert Morissette's. Attended Kerouac's surprise 17th birthday party.

ALBERT "SKIPPY" ROBERGE

Boyhood friend of Kerouac's in Lowell.

ED ROBERTS

Friend of Philip Lamantia's whom Jack and Neal met at peotl party in San Francisco, 1952.

DR. VICTOR ROCHETTE (? - 1931)

A physician from Montreal, Canada, practising in Lowell from 1893 until his death.

TOM ROCK

Football colleague of Kerouac's at Columbia University. Later to become captain of the Columbia varsity, and a doctor.

ROD

A neighbour of Kerouac's sister Caroline in Rocky Mount, North Carolina.

BOB RONDEAU

Childhood friend of Kerouac's in Lowell. Member of Dracut Tigers football team, 1935.

RONNIE [?]

Poet on the San Francisco scene, 1956.

RONTEJOUX

Worker at the National Archive, Paris, where Kerouac went to research his family history, May 1965.

IRL WALTER ROSE II

From New York. Classmate of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40. Athletics, football and swimming star. Went on to Dartmouth College.

ANTON ROSENBERG (1926-1998)

A subterranean hipster from Brooklyn, the son of a wealthy New York industrialist, Rosenberg was a painter and jazz musician around Greenwich Village in the 1950s.

DR. ROSENBERG

Psychiatrist at Bethesda Naval Hospital, Maryland, who examined Kerouac in May 1943.

IRVING ROSENTHAL (1930- )

Editor and author, born in San Francisco. Attended Pomona College and then the University of Chicago, where he edited the Chicago Review and was responsible for publishing Kerouac's Old Angel Midnight and the first parts of William Burroughs' Naked Lunch (1958) before the University of Chicago censored his editorial practice. Rosenthal resigned and moved to New York where he founded Big Table and published the same material in full (1959). He met Ginsberg, Huncke, and other Beat figures, and visited Burroughs and Paul Bowles in Tangier, 1963. While in Morocco, Rosenthal was deeply affected by the death of a friend he had met there and began writing Sheeper. He hoped that his novel would reveal the true cause of Mohammed's death and serve as a memorial to him. Sheeper was published in 1967 and contains references to many Beat characters.

BURTON U. ROTH

From New York, previously attending DeWitt Clinton High School. Classmate and friend of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40. A member of the baseball and soccer teams. Jack spent weekends at his apartment on Riverside Drive. Went on to Cornell, but was killed in World War II.

CHARLIE RUITER

Football colleague of Kerouac's on Lowell High School team.

ERNEST "THE HAWK" RUPOLO (1908-1964)

Mafia member whom Kerouac encountered in Bronx Jail, August 1944. He was born in Borough Park, New York, and grew up in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn.

VICKIE RUSSELL (1925- )

Real name Priscilla Arminger, from Detroit, Michigan. Moved to New York, changed her name, and met up with Herbert Huncke, Little Jack Melody, and later Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs. Occasionally worked as high-class call girl to support her benzedrine habit. Ginsberg kept a portrait of her on his mantle, painted by Little Jack Melody. Later returned to Detroit, married, and had two children. Herbert Huncke has written about Vickie, as "Detroit Redhead, 1943-1947" in The Evening Sun Turned Crimson (1980). According to Brenda Knight in Women of the Beat Generation (1996), Vickie was the daughter of a wealthy Philadelphia magistrate, although both Kerouac and Huncke believed her to have been from Detroit.

ALBERT SAIJO (1926- )

Born in Los Angeles, the son of a Christian preacher and a Japanese schoolteacher and writer. Studied Zen Buddhism in LA in the late 1940s and in the 1950s moved to the Bay Area, where he met and befriended Jack Kerouac and other Beat poets in San Francisco’s Chinatown. A cross-country drive in 1959 with Kerouac and Lew Welch resulted in a book of “road-trip haiku” called Trip Trap (1973) to which all three contributed.

ST. JEAN

Boyhood friend of Kerouac's in Lowell.

RAY "RED" ST. LOUIS

Jitterbug dancing friend of Kerouac's who introduced him to Mary Carney, 1939.

ROLAND "SALVEY" SALVAS (1924- )

Close boyhood friend of Kerouac's in Pawtucketville, Lowell. Later, worked as salesman.

DEMOSTHENES SAMARAS

Member of North Common Panthers football team, Lowell, 1930s.

CHARLES G. SAMPAS (1911-1976)

Brother of Stella Sampas. Graduated from Boston College, 1933, with degree in journalism. Columnist on the Lowell Sun, and later news editor. Husband of Lowell Sun columnist, "Pertinax" (Mary Sampas), who interviewed Kerouac for the newspaper in 1959 and 1962.

CLAIRE SAMPAS (1921- )

Sister of Stella Sampas.

HELEN SAMPAS

Sister of Stella Sampas.

JIM SAMPAS (1926-2006)

Brother of Stella Sampas. A career diplomat in the U.S. State Department.

JOHN SAMPAS

Brother of Stella Sampas. Inherited the Kerouac estate from Stella upon her death in 1990.

MIKE SAMPAS (1929-1990)

Brother of Stella Sampas. Owned a dry cleaning business.

NICK SAMPAS (1916- )

Brother of Stella Sampas. Bought the Old 66 Café in Lowell, and renamed it "Nicky's Bar." It became one of Kerouac's regular hang-outs when in Lowell.

SEBASTIAN "SAMMY" SAMPAS (1922-1944)

Close boyhood friend of Kerouac's in Lowell. Sister of Kerouac's third wife, Stella Sampas. Killed in action at Anzio, Italy during World War II.

STELLA SAMPAS

(See Stella Sampas Kerouac.)

TONY SAMPAS (1924-1999)

Brother of Stella Sampas. Member of the OSS during World War WII. Obtained Master's degree in psychology from Marietta College, Ohio. Inherited Kerouac's On the Road scroll following the death of his sister Stella, 1990. After Tony's death the scroll was sold by auction, May 2001, and purchased by Jim Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts, for $2.43 million.

CARL SANDBURG (1878-1967)

A poet and singer, influenced by Walt Whitman, and noted for his celebration of America and his collection of folklore and ballads. His poetry includes the collection Smoke and Steel (1920).

SANDOW

Bohemian frined of Kerouac and Holmes in New York, 1940s.

MANUEL SANTOS

Business partner of Leo Kerouac in the Spotlight Print, 463 Market Street, Lowell. Their partnership was dissolved in June 1927.

TEDDY SARGENT

Junkie friend of William Garver's.

ED SAUCIER (1912-1962)

Edgar Saucier was born in Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi. An alto saxophone player who worked with many jazz and blues artists, including Fletcher Henderson, Little Brother Montgomery, Lonnie Johnson, Lil Green, Bill Gaither, Ollie Shepard, and Georgia White. Made recordings in Chicago, 1930s. Moved to San Francisco, where Kerouac and Neal Cassady met him in 1949. Neal considered taking saxophone lessons from Ed Saucier in 1951, but it did not happen. [Neal Cassady, in his letters to Kerouac, wrote Ed's surname as 'Sousiox'.]

VIC SAWYER

Boyhood friend of Kerouac's in Lowell.

NORMAN SCHNALL (1924- )

From the Bronx, New York, a friend of Kerouac and Ginsberg in the 1940s.

JIMMY SCONDRAS

Lowell track rival of Kerouac's at Boston Garden, 1939.

GEORGE SHEARING (1919-2011)

Born in London, England. Blind from birth, he began playing piano at the age of three, eventually becoming a talented and influential jazz pianist. Emigrated to the USA in 1947 where he had huge hits with his recordings of "Lullaby of Birdland" and "September in the Rain." Kerouac and Cassady saw him perform in both New York and Chicago (1949).

EUGENE SHEFFER (1904-1981)

Professor of French at Columbia University who also compiled crossword puzzles for the New York Journal-American. Kerouac worked as Sheffer's private secretary when he was at Columbia in the 1940s, helping him edit and translate his French textbook.

JACKIE SHERESKY

Sister of Richard Sheresky. Married name Jackie Gruder.

RICHARD ALLEN SHERESKY (1923-1998)

From New York. Classmate and good friend of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40. A member of the baseball and football teams. Went on to Cornell University. In the 1950s he owned restaurants in New York City.

EDDIE SHU (1918-1986)

Born New York City. Jazz saxophonist and clarinettist friend of Sheri Martinelli's. He played with Tad Dameron, George Shearing, Lionel Hampton, Charlie Barnet, Chubby Jackson, and Gene Krupa. Moved to Florida in 1960s. Died in Tampa.

LOUIS SIMPSON (1923- )

Born Louis Aston Marantz Simpson in Jamaica, to a father of Scottish descent and a Russian mother. Moved to USA in 1940 to attend Columbia University, studying under Mark Van Doren. After serving in World War II, he attended the University of Paris. His first book was The Arrivistes (1949). He received a Ph.D. from Columbia and taught there, as well as University of California, Berkeley, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He won the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his collection At The End Of The Open Road.

GEORGE E. SLOAT

From Leonia, New Jersey. Football colleague of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40, and also played in the baseball and basketball teams. Went on to Pennsylvania University.

GROVER SMITH (1923- )

Friend of Kerouac and Ginsberg's in New York, fall 1944. Grover Cleveland Smith was born in Atlanta Georgia, and educated at Columbia University. He taught classes in English at CCNY, Rutgers, and Yale Universities, and was Professor of English at Duke University from 1952 until his retirement in the mid-1980s. His publications include the critical study T.S. Eliot's Poetry and Plays.

LUXEY SMITH

Alcoholic hermit whom Kerouac and his gang had carried home to Riverside Street, Lowell, 1938.

PAUL SMITH

Hipster friend of Lew Welch's whom Kerouac met in San Francisco, summer 1960.

GARY SNYDER (1930- )

Born Gareth Sherman Snyder in San Francisco. Moved to Portland, Oregon in 1942 where he attended Reed College. Worked as fire lookout in the North Cascade mountains, 1952 and 1953. Met Allen Ginsberg in San Francisco, 1955, and through him, Jack Kerouac. Snyder spent many years studying and working in Japan, becoming a major poet and essayist whose main works are Riprap (1959), Myths & Texts (1960), Earth House Hold (1969), and Turtle Island (1974). He has won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

THEA SNYDER (1932-2000)

Anthea Corinne Snyder, the younger sister of Gary Snyder, born Lake City, Washington. Attended Reed College during the same time that Gary Snyder, Lew Welch and Philip Whalen all studied there. Had a relationship with Kerouac in New York, after her first marriage, to James Barna broke down. Later married Jack Hogan and then Thomas Power Lowry. Thea died as the result of a car accident.

CARL SOLOMON (1928-1993)

Born in the Bronx, New York. Attended the City College of New York for a short time before joining the Marines in 1944. In his travels overseas, Solomon became exposed to Surrealism and Dada, ideas that would inspire him throughout his life. Met Allen Ginsberg when they were fellow inmates at the Psychiatric Institute of Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in 1949. Ginsberg originally titled his famous 1955 poem Howl for Carl Solomon. Solomon's Report from the Asylum: Afterthoughts of a Shock Patient was published in Jay Landesman's Neurotica magazine in 1950, under the pseudonym Carl Goy. His other work includes the prose poem collections Mishaps, Perhaps (1966) and More Mishaps (1968). Emergency Messages (1989), features selections from the two books, along with some of Solomon's other autobiographical, critical and poetic writings.

IAN SOMMERVILLE (1940-1976)

Electronics technician, mathematician and computer programmer, educated at King's School, Canterbury and Cambridge University. Became William Burroughs' systems adviser and companion in Paris, Tangier and London, 1959-65, assisting with the development of his audio and movie cut-up experiments. Also collaborated with Brion Gysin on the Dream Machine (1961). Died in car accident at Bath, England.

EDDY SORENSEN

Boyhood friend of Kerouac's in Lowell. They drew cartoons together, aged four years.

JOE SOROTA (1921-1999)

Born in Lowell, of Polish parents. Football colleague of Kerouac's on Lowell High School team.

LOIS SORRELLS (1935- )

Girlfriend of Kerouac's in Northport, 1960. Jack made tape recordings for her, reading from Doctor Sax, Old Angel Midnight, and San Francisco Blues. Married Jacques Beckwith, 1964. They divorced 1982.

ADAM SPIEGEL

Senior football teammate of Kerouac's at Columbia University.

BOB STEEN

Friend of William Cannastra and boyfriend of Kerouac's second wife, Joan Haverty, whom she met in Provincetown, Cape Cod, before she knew Kerouac.

RAY E. STEINBACHER

From Ridgefield, New Jersey. Football and baseball colleague of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40. Went on to Manhattan College.

STEPHANIE STEWART

Lesbian pianist who entertained in the bars around Brooklyn. Friend of Vickie Russell's.

MISS ALICE STICKNEY (1884-1980)

Kerouac's home room teacher at Lowell High School. Lived with her father, Charles Stickney, in School Street, Lowell.

BURTON J. STOLLMACK

From New York. Classmate of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40. Went on to Cornell University. Entered the shoe business, owning retail stores and later representing manufacturers in sales and management capacities.

EDWARD STRINGHAM (1918-1994)

Edward Macdowell Stringham, born New Mexico, grew up in New York. Son of Edwin J. Stringham, a professor of music at Queens College, New York, and University of North Carolina. Educated at Harvard, where he met Alan Ansen and Alan Harrington. Worked for Publishers' Weekly and as collation editor for The New Yorker. Friend of John Clellon Holmes in New York, where Ed lived with his companion George Wickstrom. Interests included Slavic music and literature. David Diamond composed a string quartet for him "in friendship" (1943-44). Retired to North Carolina.

FREDDY STRONG

Jazz vocalist and conga drum player active on the West Coast. Kerouac describes his performance of "Close Your Eyes" in a San Francisco jazz club in 1949. Freddy Strong went on to tour with Dizzy Gillespie two years later, cutting a record with Diz and John Coltrane - "We Love to Boogie" in March 1951. In Neal Cassady's letter to Kerouac of August 10, 1951, he describes meeting up again with Freddy Strong, and hearing his record "Slick Cat Blues" on a jukebox. However, no such recording has ever been traced. Strong also recorded two co-composed songs with Fats Gaines' Orchestra in San Francisco, July 1952: "Gaines Boogie" and "Blue Mood."

AL SUBLETTE (1931- )

Born in St. Louis, Al Sublette was a merchant seaman friend of Neal and Jack’s in San Francisco. He was one of the first people Allen Ginsberg met when he reached San Francisco in the Summer of 1954. Described by Ginsberg as "a Huncke with an income."

CONNIE SUBLETTE (1938-1958)

Common law wife of Al Sublette. Murdered by Frank Harris, a seaman, high on heroin and whiskey, outside Al's apartment on Lyon Street, San Francisco, in June 1958.

BILL SULLIVAN

Owner of Sullivan Printers, where Leo Kerouac was employed. Also publicist for Boston College who had Leo fired when Kerouac opted for Columbia University in 1939.

MICKEY SULLIVAN

Track colleague of Kerouac's at Lowell High School.

SUSIE

Buddhist girlfriend of Kerouac, Ginsberg, Orlovsky and Corso in San Francisco, September 1956.

AKIM TAMIROFF (1899-1972)

Famous Hollywood filmstar of the 1930s who visited Newport RI Naval Base when Kerouac was resident there in 1943. Born in Baku, Russia, he trained for the stage at Moscow Art Theatre drama school. Arrived in the USA in 1923 on an acting tour and decided to stay. Began appearing in Hollywood films from early 1930s, usually cast as a villain. Nominated for Oscars for his performances in "The General Died At Dawn" (1936) and "For Whom The Bell Tolls" (1943). Transferred to European films in the 1950s.

ALLEN TATE (1899-1979)

American poet, essayist, social commentator, and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1943 to 1944.

VICTOR TEJEIRA

A poet who was dating Kerouac's girlfriend, Jinny Baker, in New York, 1948. A South American (possibly Venezuelan). Appears to have been an archetypal subterranean motorcycle-riding hipster, on the New York scene, 1951-53. If anyone knows more about Victor Tejeira, please get in touch.

ALLAN TEMKO (1924-2006)

Born in New York City and raised in Weehawken, New Jersey, Temko served as a U.S. Navy officer in World War II, graduated from Columbia University in 1947, and continued his graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and at the Sorbonne in Paris, France. An architechtural critic and university professor, he won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1990 and was the author of three books, Notre-Dame of Paris: The Biography of a Cathedral (1955), Eero Saarinen (1962), and No Way to Build a Ballpark (1993). Temko also worked on and off for the San Francisco Chronicle for more than 40 years.

DAVE TERCERERO (1899-1954)

"Old Dave" - a street pedlar and William Burroughs' junk connection in Mexico City. Born in Mexico, but ran away to the United States as a teenager, during the Mexican revolution, spending time in Los Angeles, San Diego, Portland, Oregon, and Spokane, Washington, before returning to Mexico. Told his life story to Kerouac in 1952. Kerouac published it as "Dave" in Leroi Jones' Kulchur magazine, 1961.

ESPERANZA VILLANUEVA TERCERERO (1924- )

Wife of Dave Tercerero, she became William Burroughs' junk connection after her husband's death. Born in southern Texas, she attended Carrizo Springs High School. Later moved to Mexico. A junkie and part-time prostitute, Kerouac had a brief affair with her during his visits to Mexico City in the summers of 1955 and 1956.

WILLIAM "UMP" TEWHILL

Football coach at Horace Mann School, 1930s-'40s.

JIMMY THOMAS

Colleague of Kerouac's at Columbia University, 1940-41, who had attempted to tutor him in chemistry.

LES THOMPSON

A friend of Philip Whalen's, whom Kerouac met during his trip to San Francisco, summer 1960.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU (1817-1862)

Born in Concord, Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard. A friend and follower of Ralph Waldo Emerson, he undertook an experiment in self-sufficiency by living alone in a wooden hut near Walden Pond for two years. His description of this period, Walden (1854), is recognized as a literary masterpiece.

DEAN CHARLES C. TILLINGHAST (1884-?)

Attended Providence, Rhode Island, High School, and graduated from Brown University (BA, 1906), and Columbia (MA, 1917). Taught at schools in Vermont and New Jersey before joining Horace Mann School in September 1920 as Headmaster.

BILL TOMSON (1929-1982)

From Denver, a friend of Neal Cassady's whom he met in Pederson's pool hall, 1945. Also known as Bill Barrett, after his step-father. Bill was a boyfriend of Carolyn Robinson's whom he introduced to Neal in 1947. After Bill's marriage to Helen in 1948 they moved to San Francisco and Neal managed to get Bill a job as a clerk on the Southern Pacific railroad. Later the owner of a retail lumber business in Denver.

HELEN TOMSON (1925-1979)

From Buffalo, Wyoming. Helen married Bill Tomson in 1948.

ALFRED TOWNE

The pen name for pieces written jointly by John Clellon Holmes and Jay Landesman, and also occasionally for work by Holmes alone.

LIONEL TRILLING (1905-1975)

A literary critic, author, and teacher, born in Queens, New York. Educated at DeWitt Clinton High School and entered Columbia University at age sixteen. He returned to teach at Columbia, where his students included Kerouac and Ginsberg. Author of the novel The Middle of the Journey (1947) and many essays.

LENNIE TRISTANO (1919-1978)

Leonard Joseph Tristano was born in Chicago, of Italian parents. Blind from infancy, he graduated from the American Conservatory of Music Jazz in 1943 and moved to New York in 1946, becoming a famous and influential jazz pianist and composer, and a particular favourite of Kerouac's, as well as friends John Clellon Holmes and Tom Livornese.

ALEXANDER TROCCHI (1925-1984)

Born and eductated in Glasgow, Scotland. Worked as a seaman on the Murmansk convoys. Lived in Paris in the early 1950s, and edited the literary magazine Merlin, which published Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett, Christopher Logue, and Pablo Neruda, amongst others. Became a close friend of writer Terry Southern, who lived in Paris from 1948-1952. Trocchi wrote pornography for Maurice Girodias, which was published under pseudonyms by his Olympia Press. Acquired his lifelong addiction to heroin in Paris. He left for the United States and spent time in Taos, New Mexico, before settling in New York City, where he worked on a stone scow on the Hudson river. This time is chronicled in the semi-autobiographical novel Cain's Book (published 1960), where he appears as Joe Necchi. In the late 1950s he lived in Venice, USA, then the centre of the Southern California Beat scene. Became involved with the Lettrist International and then the Situationist International in 1955. Moved to London in the 1960s, remaining there for the rest of his life. Devoted most of his energy at that time toward organizing a broad collaboration of international underground movements under the auspices of what he called the Sigma Project. Subject of the movie Cain's Film (1969) and the biography The Making of the Monster by Andrew Murray Scott (1985). Trocchi's earlier novel Young Adam (1957) was adapted into a film starring Ewan McGregor and Tilda Swinton in 2003. His poetry is collected in Man at Leisure (1972).

LOUIE TURNER

A Lowell cop.

MARK TWAIN (1835-1910)

Real name Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Born in Florida, Missouri. Mississippi river pilot and newspaper correspondent. His novels Tom Sawyer (1876) and Huckleberry Finn (1884) combined picaresque adventure with satire.

STANLEY TWARDOWICZ (1917-2008)

American abstract painter and photographer, born in Detroit. Painter friend of Kerouac's in Northport, Long Island, 1960s. Jack also painted in Stanley's studio, and the April 1964 Northport Library interviews of Kerouac were conducted at his home.

ED UHL

Owned a cattle ranch at Padroni, near Sterling, Colorado, where Neal Cassady found employment, early 1946. Jack and Neal visited Uhl during their trip from San Francisco to New York, in August 1949.

BILL ULLMAN

Son of a travel writer whom Kerouac met in Tangier, 1957. They travelled to France together.

UNCLE [?]

Jack's uncle. A farmer in the Nashua woods. The exact relationship is unknown.

EMMA VAILLANCOURT (1871-1967)

Jack's aunt, and Leo's sister. Born in Riviere de Loup, Quebec, but moved with her family to Nashua, New Hampshire in 1890, where she worked in the mills. Married Pierre Vaillancourt, a cotton-mill hand from Lowell in 1904, and moved there to live. In 1924 they settled in Lewiston, Maine. Pierre died in 1939, but Emma lived until she was 96, spending her final days in a nursing home in Sanford, Maine.

MARY VALENTINE

Friend of Dorothy Farnan and Chester Kallman, whom she met at University of Michigan.

PETER VAN METER

"Subterranean cowboy" friend of Kerouac's in New York, early 1950s.

GEORGE VAREWSKI

Shipmate of Kerouac's during his voyage from San Francisco to New Orleans on the S.S. William Carruth in the summer of 1953.

BILL VAROWSKY

Football colleague of Kerouac's at Columbia University.

VENDETTE

Friend of Leo Kerouac's in Lowell, 1920s-1930s.

LUCIA VERNARELLI (1920-1995)

Born Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Studied painting at American Artists' School, Manhattan. Worked at painting, woodblock printing and collage in Greenwich Village, and became one of William Cannastra's lovers.

GORE VIDAL (1925-2012)

Born in West Point, New York, but raised and educated in Washington, D.C. Served in the U.S. Army Reserve during World War II. An author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His many novels include The City and the Pillar (1948), Myra Breckinridge (1968), Two Sisters (1970), Burr (1973), Hollywood (1990), and The Golden Age (2000). Had infamous one-night liaison with Kerouac in the Chelsea Hotel, New York, summer 1953.

JOSE GARCIA VILLA (1908-1997)

Philippino poet whom Kerouac knew in New York, late 1940s-'50s.

ENRIQUE VILLANUEVA

A Mexican shoemaker from Vera Cruz who befriended Kerouac during his trip to Mexico City, spring 1952.

GIRARDO VILLANUEVA (1934- )

A Mexican from Vera Cruz who, with his elder brother Enrique, befriended Kerouac during his trip to Mexico City, spring 1952.

BILLY VINSON

Officer in Navy during World War II. Educated at University of Michigan where he met boyfriend Chester Kallman. Later a distinguished microbiologist at Harvard.

JOE VOYER

Football colleague of Kerouac's in Dracut Tigers team, 1930s.

DICK WAKEFIELD

Fellow worker of Kerouac's at an Atlantic Whiteflash filling station in Manchester, Connecticut, fall 1941. (Also mentioned, as "Bob," in version of Kerouac's January 10, 1951 letter to Neal Cassady as reproduced in Selected Letters, Vol.1.)

WIG WALTERS

Jazz bass-player from San Francisco whom Kerouac met in Mexico City at William Burroughs' house, 1952, and also saw him playing in New York, 1954.

ROBERT PENN WARREN (1905-1989)

Born in Guthrie, Kentucky, he graduated from Clarksville High School in Tennessee, Vanderbilt University in 1925 and the University of California, Berkeley in 1926. Warren later attended Yale University and obtained his B. Litt. as a Rhodes Scholar from New College, Oxford, in England in 1930. A poet, novelist, and literary critic, and one of the founders of New Criticism.

ALAN WATTS (1915-1973)

Born in Chislehurst, Kent, England. Became interested in Zen Buddhist after hearing D.T. Suzuki in London, and moved to America in 1938, staying at first in New York but settling in San Francisco in 1951, where he became administrator of the American Academy of Asian Studies. Kerouac met him there in 1955. In the late 1950s he dabbled with psychedelic drugs, initially mescaline, and later LSD. His books include The Spirit of Zen (1936), Myth and Ritual in Christianity (1953), The Way of Zen (1957), and Beat Zen, Square Zen and Zen (1959).

FRED WEAVER

Deck engineer on the S.S. William Carruth, whom Kerouac met on his voyage of summer 1953.

HELEN WEAVER (1931- )

Born Madison, Wisconsin, and grew up in Scarsdale, NY. Graduated from Oberlin College 1952. Worked as literary translator, rendering some fifty books from the French, including Antonin Artaud: Selected Writings (1976). Met Kerouac 1956 and had relationship with him until 1957. General editor of Larousse Encyclopedia of Astrology (1980) and author of The Awakener: A Memoir of Kerouac and the Fifties (2009), Currently lives in Woodstock, NY.

JOHN WEINERS (1934-2002)

American lyric poet, born Milton, Massachusetts. Studied under Charles Olson and Robert Duncan at Black Mountain College, mid-1950s. Moved to California and participated in the San Francisco Literary Renaissance in the late-1950s. Lived on Lower East Side, New York with Herbert Huncke, 1962-63. Work published in The Hotel Wentley Poems, Asylum Poems, Nerves, Behind the State Capitol or Cincinnati Pike, and others.

BERNIE WELCH

Football colleague of Kerouac's in Lowell High School team.

LEW WELCH (1926-1971)

Born in Phoenix, Arizona, but moved with his mother and sister to California in 1929. Welch went to Portland, Oregon in 1948 to attend Reed College, where he roomed with poets Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen. He later attended the University of Chicago, studying philosophy and English. Met Kerouac in San Francisco, November 1959, after Jack's appearance on the Steve Allen TV show in Los Angeles. Lew drove Jack back home to New York in his Jeep station-wagon, accompanied by the poet Albert Saijo. The cross-country drive resulted in a book of “road-trip haiku” called Trip Trap (1973) to which all three contributed. In May 1971 Welch left Gary Snyder's house in the mountains of California, leaving behind a suicide note. His body has never been found. Welch is remembered for his posthumously published works: Selected Poems (1976), Ring of Bone: Collected Poems (1979), and I, Leo: An Unfinished Novel (1977).

PHILIP WHALEN (1923-2002)

Philip Glenn Whalen was born in Portland, Oregon. Attended Reed College, meeting gary Snyder and Lew Welch there. Became a Zen Buddhist and spent two years in Japan. His work includes the poetry collections Memoirs of an Interglacial Age (1960), On Boar's Head (1969), Decompressions (1977), and Heavy Breathing (1983), and the novels You Didn't Even Try (1967) and Imaginary Speeches for a Brazen Head (1972).

ED WHITE (1925- )

Edward Divine White, Jr. was born and raised in Denver, Colorado. Studied at Columbia University, New York, where he became friendly with Kerouac. White graduated with degrees in architecture and returned to Denver, where he laid the groundwork for and made many contributions to the early years of historic preservation in Colorado. He has since spent time on national, state and local preservation societies, committees and organizations. It was Ed White who suggested to Kerouac that he should try "sketching" with words, in October 1951.

JEAN WHITE (1920- )

Sister of Ed White. She was Allan Temko's girlfriend, 1947.

KAY WHITE

Wife of Phil White. Worked as an editor at McGraw-Hill.

PHIL WHITE

From Tennessee. Pick-pocket and heroin addict friend of Huncke and Burroughs. Shipped out with Huncke in Merchant Marine just after World War II. Hung himself while imprisoned in New York's Tombs, 1951.

WHITEY

Polish American hoodlum who frequented the Angler Bar, 43rd Street, New York. Friend of Herbert Huncke and Vickie Russell.

WALT WHITMAN (1819-1892)

Born on Long Island, New York. Little formal education. Worked as printer and wandering schoolteacher. Produced major collections of poems, Leaves of Grass (1855), Drum-Taps (1865), as well as prose such as Specimen Days (1882), an account of his travelling life.

ANDY WILCOX

Known as "Andy the Packer" or "One-Eyed Wilcox." A muleskinner, originally from Wyoming, based at Marblemount Ranger Station, Washington State, whom Kerouac met during his stay on Desolation Peak, 1956.

LEN WILL

Football colleague of Kerouac's at Columbia University.

VICKIE WILLIAMS

Welsh dancer who Kerouac watched at the Lion's Den, New York, autumn 1940.

WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS (1883-1963)

Born in Rutherford, New Jersey to an English father and a Puerto Rican mother. Studied at the medical school of the University of Pennsylvania where he met and befriended Ezra Pound. He returned to Rutherford to work as a GP but also had an active literary career, producing poems, short stories, plays and novels, as well as critical essays and an autobiography. Williams was an early supporter of the poetry of Allen Ginsberg.

JOHN FREDERICK WILSON

From New York. Football colleague of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40, also in baseball team. Went on to Brown University.

BERNIE WINEBAUM (1923-1989)

Friend of Alan Ansen and William Gaddis in New York.

RUTH WITT-DIAMANT (1899-1989)

A professor at San Francisco State University from 1931, Ruth founded and was the first director of the SFSU Poetry Center in 1954. She hosted many famous poets in the guest room of her San Francisco house, including Anaïs Nin, W. H. Auden, James Broughton, Robert Lowell, Stephen Spender, Theodore Roethke, and Dylan Thomas. Ginsberg, Corso, and Kerouac attended one of her dinner parties in 1956.

DONALD WOLF (1922- )

Musical friend of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40, where he led a band. Became a songwriter, with songs recorded by Frank Sinatra, Nat "King" Cole and Louis Jordan.

VICTOR WONG (1927-2001)

Born in San Francisco, Wong studied political science and journalism at the University of California, Berkeley and Theology at the University of Chicago. When he returned to San Francisco, Wong resumed his studies at the San Francisco Art Institute under Mark Rothko. His later career as a character actor saw him in roles on stage in San Francisco and New York, and led to TV and movie work. Wong met Lawrence Ferlinghetti in the 1950s, and through him Jack Kerouac.

THORNLEY WOOD

Football colleague of Kerouac's at Columbia University.

EDDIE WOODS (1931- )

Fellow ex-serviceman and boyhood friend of Lewis Marker, from Tampa, Florida. Both were present when William Burroughs shot Joan in Mexico City.

A.A. WYN (1898-1967)

Aaron A. Wyn, born Weinstein, was a publisher who edited pulp magazines for Harold Hersey before branching out into book publishing in 1945. He founded Ace Books, which specialized in genre paperback books, in 1952, and the following year published William Burroughs' Junkie, although he turned down the chance to publish work by Alan Ansen, Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac, including On the Road. Wyn was the uncle of Allen Ginsberg's friend, Carl Solomon.

SEYMOUR MICHAEL WYSE (1923- )

Born in Hampstead, London. In 1939 his father sent Seymour, with his mother and younger brother Derek to New York, in order to avoid bombing during the Second World War. Seymour attended Horace Mann School in New York, and met Kerouac there. They became good friends, sharing an interest in jazz and visiting many clubs together. Joined the Canadian Air Force in 1943, stationed near Montreal. Came back to New York in 1948 and worked with Jerry Newman at the Greenwich Music Shop. In 1951 Seymour returned to England and for many years ran a hi-fi shop in King's Road, Chelsea, London.

RUSTY YARNETT

Coach of the Lowell Textile Institute baseball team.

CELINE YOUNG (1924-1972)

From Pelham, Westchester County, NY. A Barnard student and girlfriend of Lucien Carr's, with whom Kerouac had a brief affair, 1944. Maid of honour at Kerouac's marriage to Edie Parker, August 22, 1944.

LESTER WILLIS "PREZ" YOUNG (1909-1959)

From Woodville, Mississippi. Poet of the jazz tenor sax, playing with Count Basie and foreshadowing the bop era before appearing in small groups under his own name in the 1940s.

ZACOUCCI

Acquaintance of Kerouac's in New York, 1951.

HERBERT JAMES ZASLOVE (1923-1995)

From New York. Football and track colleague of Kerouac's at Horace Mann School, 1939-40, also member of soccer and swimming teams. Went on to Dartmouth College.

CHRIS ZOUKIS (1921-2009)

Football colleague of Kerouac's in the Lowell High School team.