Paul Morphy, Chess Player, World Champion!

Paul Morphy, Chess Player, World Champion! on Facebook

The Murderess and the Hangman - will she escape the hangman?

The-Murderess-and-the-Hangman on Facebook

Kate Webster - London murderess! - did she do it?

Kate Webster on Facebook

Are you a fan of chess and New Orleans?

Matt Fullerty on Facebook

James Hogue, Princeton graduate, athlete, imposter!

James Hogue, Princeton graduate, athlete, imposter! on Facebook

Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac

This is a brief introduction to Memory Babe, A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac by Gerald Nicosia. Without a doubt, this is a full a portrait of Jack's life as any biography has yet delivered. It is very thorough about both the life and work, especially the life. We learn more or less everything that happened to Jack - from his French-Canadian ancestry, his childhood in Lowell Massachusetts to his adventures in the Merchant Marines, New York City, relationships with 'the Beats' poets and writers, and of course, his struggles with fame, fortune and the bottle...
I have been a Kerouac fan for some time - how can you like writing and not be? His language is full of life, energy, and has moments of transcendent beauty unlike any other writer. Its breath is one of youth, hope and new possibilities - no joke! What feeling is there better to capture in writing?

I came to this biography via On The Road (1957) and Big Sur (1962), which read together act as bookends to Kerouac's writing life. I still find it incredible - and here Memory Babe is particular adept at unravelling the life and the myth - that Kerouac wrote so many of his novels before his first (On The Road) was even published.

Overall, Gerald Nicosia's book is an impressive achievement, and my impression is that in its insistence to be faithful to all sides of every point of view on Kerouac, it does achieve a greater objectivity than other Kerouac biographies. At 767 pages, you would hope so. If you are as interested in Kerouac the eternal contradiction - both shy and gregarious, industrious and lazy, free-spirited and dogmatic, soaring spiritual writer, and alcoholic self-abuser - then this book is for you.

Read it and weep!

The Story of "A Confederacy of Dunces"

This is arguably the best biography out there about John Kennedy Toole, the author of the Pulitzer-Prize winning novel, A Confederacy of Dunces (1981). It is also definitely the best biography about his mother, Thelma Toole, who was instrumental in getting the novel published after her son's suicide. As Joel L. Fletcher explains, without Thelma, there would be no Ken. And Thelma's jounrey to publish the book is as interesting as Ken's own struggle to write it.

I say best biography because the challenge with any biography of John Kennedy Toole is to gather sufficient material to tell the story of his life. Toole left few records beyond a handful of letters to friends and family (including to Fletcher, and many of these letters between the two are transcribed in this biography). There is another biography available called Ignatious Rising (2001), but by all accounts - Fletcher's incivive attack on that book's credibility not the least - the authors of Ignatious Rising, Rene Nevils and Deborah Hardy, were at great pains to speculate and elaborate on Ken's life, without having any read evidence to back them up. For that is precisely what is missing from Ken's life - the evidence - but Fletcher is able to side-step that question somewhat by focusing on Thelma as much as her "genius son", as she called Ken.

The Knight of New Orleans - chess in the crescent city!

The Knight of New Orleans on Facebook

Richard Yates: A Tragic Honesty