Lucien Carr, my oldest friend from college days, had introduced me to Jack Kerouac after they’d met at the West End bar on 113th St. & Broadway, and connected Jack + me to his fellow St. Louis uppermiddle-class (aristocrat we thought) confrère William S. Burroughs, late winter 1944. We lived down the hall from each other on 7th floor Union Theological Seminary, Columbia freshman dorm during W.W.II, I heard haunting Brahms sextet music through his door, knocked, we met. Kerouac heard Old Angel Midnight eloquence in Lucien’s laconic “Celtic” intonations. Here four decades later, wise Old Dog Bureau Manager United Press International he was visiting former house-mate Alene Lee’s Soho loft. More eyes perused his wire-service prose than all Jack’s & my texts, I’ll bet. December 2, 1986., 1986, printed 1996

Inscription

signed by artist, lower right on sheet in black ink: Allen Ginsberg; artist inscription, across bottom under image: Lucien Carr, my oldest friend from college days, had introduced me to Jack Kerouac after they'd met at the West End bar on 113th st. & Broadway and connected Jack + me to his fellow St. Louis upper-middle-class (aristocrat we thought) confrère William S. Burroughs, late winter 1944. We lived down the hill from each other on 7th floor Union Theological Seminary, Columbia freshman dorm during W.W.II, I heard haunting Brahms sextette music through his door, knocked, we met. Kerouac heard _Old Angel Midnight_ eloquence in Lucien's laconic "Celtic" intonations. Here four dacades later, wise Old Dog Bureau Manager United Press International he was visiting former house-mate Alana Lee's Soho loft. More eyes perused his wire-service prose than all Jack's & my texts, I'll bet. December 2, 1986.; on verso, by artist's hand, across lower center in black ink on a pink post-it note [kept separate from print, in object file]: all captions are slightly different - this is the best for computer Allen G. 6/15/96; by unknown hand, across lower center in graphite: GD-AG-107; across lower right: GDC-878

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. 83.

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