Jack Kerouac, railroad brakeman’s rule-book in pocket, couch-pillows airing on fire-escape three flights up overlooking backyard clotheslines south. He’d already published The Town & the City and completed a treasury of half-dozen unprinted classic volumes including On the Road, Visions of Cody, Doctor Sax, early books of Blues and Dreams, & had begun The Subterraneans’ adventurous love affair with Alene Lee, “Mardou Fox.” Alene typed for W. S. Burroughs then in residence editing Yage Letters and Queer mss., unpublishable that decade, censorship ruled. I scribed “The Green Automobile,” Gregory Corso visited that season, 206 East 7th Street near Tompkins Park, Manhattan, probably September 1953. , 1953, printed later

Inscription

signed by artist, lower right on sheet in black ink: Allen Ginsberg; artist inscription, across bottom under image: Jack Kerouac, railroad brakeman's rule-book in pocket, couch-pillows airing on fire-escape three flights up overlooking backyard clotheslines south. He'd already published _The Town & The City_ and completed a treasury of half-dozen unprinted classic volumes including _On The Road_, _Visions of Cody_, _Doctor Sax_, early books of blues and dreams, & had begun _The Subterraneans'_ adventurous love affair with Aileen Lee, "Mardou Fox." Aileen typed for W. S. Burroughs then in residence editing Yage [sic] _Letters_ and _Queer_ mss., unpublishable that decade, censorship ruled. I scribed "The Green Automobile," Gregory Corso visited that season, 206 East 7th Street near Tompkins Park, Manhattan, probably September 1953.

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. 47.

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