This month, Thunder's Mouth Press is reprinting two autobiographical novels by the late Jan Kerouac, the only child of beat literary avatar Jack Kerouac. In 1999 Thunder's Mouth expects to publish Parrot Fever, Jan's final novel, left unfinished when she died in 1996. It will be reconstructed from the manuscript and notes she left.
Originally published in the 1980s, the novels Baby Driver and Train Song were praised by reviewers. Like her father's books, Jan Kerouac's novels depict the poverty, drugs and peripatetic lifestyle of their author. Yet what should be a literary event will likely become yet another episode in a protracted, bitterly contested dispute (being fought in the courts as well as via the Internet) over the alleged conduct of the estate; the authenticity of Jack's will; and a related court battle over Jan's will. All of this conflict has left Kerouac scholars, contemporaries and fans polarized, confused and frustrated.
The current battle is between John Sampas -- the brother of Jack Kerouac's last wife, Stella Sampas, and the executor of the Jack Kerouac estate and archive -- and Gerald Nicosia, author of Memory Babe, a generally praised biography of Jack published in 1978, and the literary executor of Jan's estate. While the debate is complex, the gist of it is as follows. Before her death in 1996, Jan Kerouac and Nicosia charged the estate of Jack Kerouac with mismanagement, claiming it sold off parts of the collection, withheld Jan's royalties and arbitrarily restricted access to scholars. Jan sued the estate in 1994, claiming the signatures on the 1973 will, which bequeathed the estate to the Sampas family, were forged. In a telephone conversation with PW, John Sampas vigorously denied all these charges.
Now the reprinting of Jan's two novels has spurred a new conflict. The books incorporate supplementary materials -- including interviews with Jan and a publisher's note that repeats the charges about the Sampas family. Neil Ortenberg, publisher of Thunder's Mouth Press, told PW that, after publication, Sampas called his office and made a "physical, thuglike threat," against a Thunder's Mouth employee. Sampas stridently denies this, but said he did threaten Ortenberg with a lawsuit, claiming that the supplementary material was "slanderous."
Ortenberg claims to be neutral in the dispute: "Rightly or wrongly, Jan decided to protect her father's estate. We tried to make it clear that we were not taking sides. We didn't want the feud to dwarf her books."
Sampas said he is "angry at all this vilification. The will was not forged. For years we got along fine with Jan." He admits to selling items from the archive ("some letters, a drawing or two. We needed money to start up the estate"). He blames the estate's agent, Sterling Lord Literistic, for any royalty accounting mistakes and emphasized that they have been corrected. He also told PW he expects that the archive will eventually end up in a "public institution. I would rather it went to the New York Public Library." He was quick to point out that the estate has overseen the publication of seven Kerouac books since 1991 and that historian Douglas Brinkley has been given "complete access and total independence" to write a Kerouac biography scheduled for 2001 from Penguin.
The legal conflict plods on through the courts. While Nicosia is Jan's literary executor, she named her former husband, John Lash, as her general executor, and Lash has moved to drop the lawsuit challenging the will. In a recent ruling, the probate court of New Mexico ruled against Nicosia, limiting his powers and striking down his standing to continue the suit. Undaunted, Nicosia will appeal the ruling -- which he claims may unduly limit the powers of all literary executors -- to the New Mexico State Supreme Court.
Nicosia, who is currently working on a much-delayed book about Vietnam veterans for Henry Holt, told PW he is carrying out his friend's last wishes: "I don't want to betray Jan. I'll carry [the suit] on as long as I can."
