“Now Jack as I warned you far back as 1945, if you keep going home to live with your ‘Memère’ you’ll find yourself wound tighter and tighter in her apron strings till you’re an old man and can’t escape…” William Seward Burroughs camping as an André Gideian sophisticate lecturing the earnest Thomas Wolfean All-American youth Jack Kerouac who listens soberly dead-pan to “the most intelligent man in America” for a funny second’s charade in my living room 206 East 7th Street Apt 16, Manhattan, one evening Fall 1953., 1953, printed later

Inscription

signed by artist, lower right on sheet in black ink: Allen Ginsberg; artist inscription, across bottom under image: "Now Jack, as I warned you far back as 1945, if you keep going home to live with your "Memère" you'll find yourself wound tighter and tighter in her apron strings till you're an old man and can't escape..." William Seward Burroughs camping as an André Gideian sophisticate lecturing the earnest Thomas Wolfean all-American youth Jack Kerouac who listens soberly dead-pan to "the most intelligent man in America" for a funny second's charade in my living room 206 East 7th St. Apt 16, Manhattan, one evening Fall 1953.; on verso, by unknown hand, across lower center in graphite: PF 45137H GD-AG-61

Provenance

Allen Ginsberg Estate; Ellen and Gary Davis, Greenwich, CT (through Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York); gift to NGA, 2009.

Exhibition History

2010

Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg, National Gallery of Art, Washington; National Gallery of Art, Washington; Grey Art Gallery & Study Center, New York University, New York; The Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, 2010 - 2013, no. 42.

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