Archive for the ‘beatnik’ Category
another induced epidemic
the allegory of painting by johannes vermeer.
vs.
marc’s hommage to flemish berets
subterranean fox
(photo and Q&A from here)
Question: I am interested in Mardou Fox (really Alene Lee) of Kerouac’s novel The Subterraneans. Can you tell me more about her, and possibly indicate where I might find a photo of her?
Dave Responds: Despite the fact that she was undoubtedly one of Kerouac’s main inspirations, there’s little to be found about Alene Lee anywhere, and surprisingly, perhaps, nothing at all in those books devoted to the female muses and writers: Women of the Beat Generation, A Different Beat, and Girls Who Wore Black.Alene Lee was an attractive, intelligent black woman, half-Cherokee. Kerouac met her in the late summer of 1953 when she was typing up the manuscripts of William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, who at that time were sharing an apartment in New York’s Lower East Side.Bill Morgan’s The Beat Generation in New York has a small section on Alene, and a photo of her with William Burroughs in 1953, the time of her romance with Kerouac (p.125).
There’s a different photo of Alene with Burroughs from the same time in the anthology The Beat Journey (p.172), and this is reprinted in The Beat Vision (p.208).
The Kerouac ROMnibus contains an excellent photograph of Alene, and Steven Turner’s Angelheaded Hipster (p.142) shows Kerouac holding that photo.
On the same page of Turner’s book there’s a photograph of Alene with Kerouac from 1953, and this can also be found in David Sandison’s biography of Jack Kerouac (p.106).
According to Aram Saroyan’s autobiographical work, The Street, in the 1960s Alene was living with Kerouac’s old friend Lucien Carr in New York.
Alene also appears as Irene [May] in Kerouac’s other works, Book of Dreams, and Big Sur.
