Joan Haverty Kerouac (1931– May 15, 1990),
born Joan Virginia Haverty,
was the second wife of writer
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (; March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation.
Of French-Canadian a ...
and the author of an autobiography, ''Nobody's Wife: The Smart Aleck and the King of the Beats''. Joan Kerouac's autobiography, which existed only in manuscript form when she died, appeared in book form in 2000 after the Kerouacs' only child,
Jan Kerouac, her half-brother, David, and David's brother-in-law John Bowers helped prepare it for publication.
Joan Kerouac was born near
Albany, New York, and grew up there. At age 19, she moved to
Manhattan after befriending
Bill Cannastra, a lawyer she met in
Provincetown, Massachusetts, while visiting an artists' colony. She remained close to Cannastra until his death in a subway accident in 1950. Later in 1950, Joan met Jack Kerouac in Manhattan. He invited her to his mother's home to meet his mother, Gabrielle Kerouac, and two weeks later Joan and Jack were married. Joan became the model for the character Laura in Jack Kerouac's novel ''
On the Road
''On the Road'' is a 1957 novel by American writer Jack Kerouac, based on the travels of Kerouac and his friends across the United States. It is considered a defining work of the postwar Beat and Counterculture generations, with its protagonis ...
''. The marriage, during which Joan became pregnant with Jan, lasted only eight months, and the couple separated before Jan was born.
Jack for many years denied paternity. He went to court to avoid paying
child support and did not meet his daughter until she was 10. After separating from Jack, Joan lived at times in other parts of the U.S., including San Francisco, the state of
Washington, and
Eugene, Oregon
Eugene ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Oregon. It is located at the southern end of the Willamette Valley, near the confluence of the McKenzie and Willamette rivers, about east of the Oregon Coast.
As of the 2020 United States Census, Eu ...
.
She remarried and eventually had three more children:
David and twins Sharon and Kathy. In 1974, she changed her last name to Stuart. Joan Haverty Kerouac Stuart died on May 15, 1990, in Eugene.
Reviewer David Adox said in ''The New York Times'' that ''Nobody's Wife'' "...shows the fragile and insecure side of
ackKerouac, and interweaves details of Kerouac's life with the story of a young, smart and sensitive woman coming of age in the 1950s." A review in ''
Publishers Weekly'', says that the book "...is as much about Haverty's early grab at independence in 1950s New York and the other men in that period of her life as it is about her brief marriage to the Beat hero...". The reviewer concludes that "...Haverty's straightforward, infrequently lyric prose isn't under the spell of the Beats–which will probably count against her with Kerouac-worshipping Beat fans."
Bibliography
Autobiography
* ''Nobody's Wife: The Smart Aleck and the King of the Beats'' (2000, published posthumously)
Magazine article
* "My Ex-Husband, Jack Kerouac, Is an Ingrate", ''
Confidential'', 1961
References
External links
"Nobody's Wife"– Blog entry by J. S. Bowers, who edited the book
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kerouac, Joan Haverty
1990 deaths
20th-century American women writers
1931 births
Writers from Albany, New York
Writers from Eugene, Oregon
American autobiographers
20th-century American non-fiction writers