You'll Be Okay

Anyone who, like me, grew-up enthralled by the fact that Jack Kerouac once lived, abeit very briefly, in Detroit, will be thrilled by this book.That said, while I remain a fan of the art of Jack Kerouac, this book adds more fire to the fuel of his caddishness. While Edie Kerouac-Parker, Jack's first wife, doesn't beat you over the head with this aspect of his character - indeed, one can't help but see that she carried a torch for him throughout her life - the manner in which he treated her, especially right after they were married, can't help but leave one feeling cold.Edie was one of the few people who were right there as the Beat Generation was founded. Indeed, she helped in it's creation, as she introduced Kerouac to Lucien Carr, who in turn introduced Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs to Kerouac. Anyone who has ever delved into the history of this literary movement will find the information contained in this book to be invaluable.Beyond that, while a light read, it benefits from this by not being over-pretentious. As with Kerouac's personality shortcomings, Edie Kerouac-Parker does not try and overstate her importance. This is a welcome addition to the biographical cannon of Jack Kerouac's former wives and lovers, and a bit more, as well.

Engaging personal history of experiences with the Beats, especially interesting if you have followed Beat poets, writers, etc. Further, very real history of what (her) life was like at that time, and what the world (and NY) was like during the war years and just after. Very worth reading.

Great read, and a welcome addition to the Beat Canon ! Edie Parker adds her memories to flesh out key scenes from the birth of a literary movement.

Ok read

Edie was a family friend....very interesting life

The author neglects to mention Edie Parkers' son David Parker. Weird.

I've never been able to get very far in ON THE ROAD, which I own, and I've never read any other Kerouac books, so I'd hoped to learn something interesting about Jack Kerouac from reading this book by his first wife. I didn't. The best thing I can say about YOU'LL BE OKAY: MY LIFE WITH JACK KEROUAC is that I only paid half price for it. Edie Kerouac-Parker was not a writer. That much is painfully obvious. In fact she writes like someone who probably struggled to finish fifth grade. It's that inane, that simple-minded. What she remembers about her brief marriage to Kerouac in the late 1940s is told mostly in terms of "we went here, we did this, we ate this, we drank that, I was wearing this, he was wearing that, etc." After living together for a time in various seedy apartments in NYC, almost always with other people living there too, Edie married Jack while he was in jail for being a 'material witness' to a sordid murder involving a couple friends. He was released soon after, but they never appear to have had much of a marriage at all, although she tries, in her grade school girl sentences, to make it sound romantic, maybe because it was the most interesting time of her life. They never did have a private place of their own, always living with friends, or his parents in Massachusetts or her mother in Michigan. It was almost as though neither one of them had yet grown up. And although they were both married twice more after their own strange liaison, I'm not sure either one of them ever did grow up.I did learn that Kerouac was briefly in both the Merchant Marine and the Navy during the war, and, if Edie knows what she's talking about, that he was discharged from the Navy for being "schizoid." But I suspect a real biography would tell me a lot more about this, as well as other obscure aspects of the Beat author's short life. Edie wrote this 'memoir' years after Kerouac died, apparently at the urging of others, like Kerouac's one-time drinking buddy, William Burroughs. Let me just say it was a bad idea. The woman cannot write - at all. I suspect the spelling and grammar was cleaned up by her editors, Tim Moran and Bill Morgan, who published it some years after Edie's death, probably hoping to make a buck.A much better book is Joyce Johnson's MINOR CHARACTERS memoir of her brief time with Kerouac.Bottom line: this is a crappy book. Don't buy it. Not even at a discount. And I have even less desire now to read any of Jack Kerouac's work. NOT recommended.- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER

'You'll Be Okay: My Life with Jack Kerouac' is, for anyone with an interest in Jack Kerouac and the leading members of the Beat Generation group of writers and artists, a fascinating story of how they lived in wartime New York City during the early 1940s. Edie herself was married to Kerouac between 1944 and 1948.I confess to knowing little about Jack Kerouac and not having read any of his books. But a couple of years ago, I went to see the movie 'Kill Your Darlings' which was centered on the college days of the earliest members of the Beat Generation: Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and Lucien Carr, whose murder of David Kammerer in August 1944 - an old acquaintance from St. Louis who had an overweening attraction to Carr and stalked him - is at the heart of that movie. I enjoyed the movie, which reminded me of "You'll Be Okay", which I had purchased at BORDERS a few years earlier, but had yet to read. Now having read it, I enjoyed Edie Parker's reminiscences on an era (the 1940s) that fascinates me to no end. She made the New York of that time as she experienced it so tangibly real to me. Most of her friends were then in their early 20s and they wanted to LIVE and experienced to the full all that life afforded them. And as most of them (with the exception of Kerouac who had entered Colombia University on a football scholarship in 1940) came from affluent backgrounds, they were free --- wartime rationing and privations notwithstanding --- to live and work in New York, then as now one of the most colorful and exciting cities on Earth.Thus, for its nostalgic value, I give 'You'll Be Okay: My Life with Jack Kerouac' FIVE STARS.

Cool

Bon témoignage qui permet d'apprendre beaucoup sur la vie de Kerouac, mais peut être pas assez sur son activité créatrice. Mais il est sûrement très difficile de retranscrire par écrit les échanges "intellectuels" entre les membres de la Beat Generation. Le livre n'est pas traduit en français, mais écrit très simplement il demeure très compréhensible.

Cool