The Awakener: A Memoir of Kerouac and the Fifties (2009)

“There is a tendency for memoirs written by women about The Great Man to be self-abnegating exercises in a kind of inverted narcissism—the author seeking to prove her worth as muse, as consort, as chosen one. Not so with Helen Weaver’s beautiful, plainspoken elegy for her time spent with Jack Kerouac, who suddenly appeared at her door in the West Village one white, frosty morning with Allen Ginsberg, who knew Weaver’s roommate, in tow.”—New York Post “Helen Weaver’s book was a revelation to me! . . . This is the most graphic, honest, shameless, and moving documentary of what the newly liberated women in cities got up to—how they lived, loved, and created. Who knew? It is time they did! And here’s how.”—Carolyn ... full descriptionCassady “The book recounts her affair with Kerouac in 1956 during the period when he signed his literary contract for On the Road, but The Awakener is much more than a kiss-and-tell. It is at once a collection of remarkable, first-hand anecdotes about the Beats, an authoritative insight into the times from one who was on the front lines, and a coming-of-age story by the writer, who was immortalized in Kerouac's Desolation Angels as Ruth Heaper.”—The Woodstock Times The Awakener is an intimate memoir of the author’s adventures and coming-of-age alongside Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Lenny Bruce, and other wild characters from the New York City of the '50s and early '60s. Helen Weaver has translated over fifty books from the French. She lives in Kingston, New York. (less description)

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Categories: Arts & Literature, Memoirs, Americas, Biographies & Memoirs, History, Literature & Fiction