Lost Jack Kerouac story found among assassinated mafia boss' belongings
17 comments
·October 15, 2025mkovach
ants_everywhere
> Ginsberg, ever the cosmic catcher, enjoyed the sport.
I'm glad to know Ginsberg's interests extended beyond lobbying to legalize child rape
pessimizer
Not far beyond. I'm old, so second-hand it seems that the entire reason he toured to do readings (at least in the 80s and 90s) was to stay with locals who had young male children. I know two horror stories myself.
It was sort of a hippie/counterculture/futurist/Berkeley thing to let pedophiles openly operate and attack anyone as nosy lame perverts who would accuse them of being a problem, even after multiple arrests. See the Breendoggle.
ants_everywhere
There was a similar attitude in some French intellectual circles in the seventies and eighties.
For example I know Simone de Beauvoir and Sartre were involved.
Having known several victims of CSA and some of their abusers, I think many people would be surprised at the amount of effort and planning that goes into ensuring access to a pool of potential victims. Abstractly it's a supply chain problem and is treated as such by the abusers.
abdulhaq
When I was a physics student at Oxford in 1983-86 I was a voracious reader and the Beats figured in that. Ginsberg travelled through Oxford for a day or two and gave a street performance or two. His nephew (Vincent?) was travelling with him, playing guitar IIRC. I must admit, I had my concerns at the time.
eth0up
I lived right down the street from the bar where he died, in Saint Pete FL.
I don't remember what or if the property is / still is.
Perforated ulcer hit critical mass after the daily round of whiskey. I wonder if hpylori made it worse or it was just the suds.
Edit: found this while searching for the bar
VoodooJuJu
[dead]
rmason
I am a life long fan of Jack Kerouac and thought will the biographies written about him every significant fact about his life was known and I am a bit gobsmacked.
Massachusetts, the state of his birth claims Kerouac as their own and Florida where he lived at the time of his death claims him as well. Never seen San Francisco claim him as one of their own before. I think Paris would have the better claim if they were to make one.
habosa
SF seems to claim the Beat movement as a whole. There’s a museum dedicated to it and the area around it has multiple landmarks which play into that as well (City Lights, Vesuvio). I never really considered before if that was fair.
dvh
“If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare me a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German, and Germany will declare that I am a Jew.” -- Einstein
cm2012
I read On The Road but really, truly came to hate the characters. Dean Moriarty is so evil and Sal is so stupid and I feel like this never comes full circle.
pfdietz
Since this was written before 1978 and never published, it's not protected by copyright, yes?
null
jt2190
Writing is protected by copyright the instant it's written.
pfdietz
That's true now. It wasn't true when this was written. Back then, US copyright depended on publication and registration.
jt2190
I'll leave this for you to parse.
> § 303
> Duration of copyright: Works created but not published or copyrighted before January 1, 1978
> (a) Copyright in a work created before January 1, 1978, but not theretofore in the public domain or copyrighted, subsists from January 1, 1978, and endures for the term provided by section 302. In no case, however, shall the term of copyright in such a work expire before December 31, 2002; and, if the work is published on or before December 31, 2002, the term of copyright shall not expire before December 31, 2047
Ah, how wonderful, to stumble upon lost Kerouac like this, tucked away not in some Yale archive but in the collection of Paul Castellano of all people, as if the road had detoured briefly through the Five Families. That it reads like a missing chapter from On the Road makes the find all the more mythic, like a Polaroid from a dream you forgot you had.
But this, for some reason, reminds me that Kerouac was also a devoted baseball mind. Not just a fan, but a proto-fantasy league commissioner before the term existed, meticulously tracking invented teams and players in private box scores. Kerouac, a fantasy baseball writer.
And he wasn't alone: Corso batted lines like fastballs, Ferlinghetti cheered from the dugout of City Lights, and Ginsberg, ever the cosmic catcher, enjoyed the sport. Baseball wasn't a pastime but a parallel Beat narrative, complete with innings, errors, and the occasional poetic balk and haiku.