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TOWNIE_MARY

                                       March 18, 2004
                                  Rev: April  1, 2004


Looking for Joan Vollmer in Kerouac's
first novel, "The Town and the
City" (1950), where she (or a
character like her) was presented
under the alias of Mary Dennison.

My first encounter with "Town" was an              BEATGEN_ANGRYMEN
excerpt published in an anthology ("The
Beat Generation and the Angry Young
Men").  Here the Allen Ginsberg figure
is telling us about her:

  There's no doubt about the fact that Mary
  Dennison is mad, but that's only because
  she wants to be mad.  What she has to say
  about the world, about everybody falling
  apart, about everybody clawing
  aggressively at one another in one grand
  finale of our glorious culture, about the
  madness in high places and the insane
  disorganized stupidity of the people who
  let themselves be told what to do and what
  to think by charlatans -- all that is
  true!  All the advertising men who dream
  up unreal bugaboos for people to flee
  from, like B.O. or if you don't have
  such-and-such a color to your wash you're
  an outcast from society.  Don't you see
  it, man? The world's going mad!  Therefore
  it's quite possible there *must be* some
  sort of disease that's started.  There's
  only one real conclusion to be drawn.  In
  Mary's words, everybody got the atomic
  disease, everybody's radioactive.

The interesting thing here is not the ideas, but the
fact that someone has seen fit to describe some of
Joan Vollmer's ideas, instead of just telling us how
smart she is.

So I had high hopes for "The Town and the City".
I figured there might actually be a scene or two
where Kerouac brings his "Mary" on stage.

But this looks like it:

  A girl with dark hair and horn-rimmed glasses
  peered at him from the drapery of the front room
  and vanished again without comment.  This was              Peter =
  Mary Dennison, who rarely spoke to Peter or                  Jack Kerouac
  anyone else who chanced to drop in.  She was
  a confidante of Junkey, whose voice Peter could            Junkey =
  hear in the front room, and she did the housework            Herbert Huncke
  in the dolorous apartment.

She has a non-speaking role.



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