Jerry Schwartz
Singer-Songwriter, Novelist
The Jerrys
Lucien Carr's Apartment Building, New York City
November 11, 2016 June 5, 2016 by Jerry Schwartz
In 1984, I visited a number of literary sites in New York City, one of those being the building at 149 W. 21st Street, where Lucien Carr lived from 1950-1951. Credited with introducing Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs to each other, Carr was a key member of the original circle of the Beat Generation. After Kerouac finished the first draft of On the Road in April 1951, he moved briefly into Carr's apartment, where he wrote a second draft on a roll of United Press teleprinter paper before transferring it to individual pages. That scroll still exists—all but the end, eaten by Carr's dog, Patchkee.
Categories Books Tags Beat Generation, Jack Kerouac, literary, Lucien Carr, New York City 1 Comment
World Trade Center Brochure
November 21, 2016 May 21, 2015 by Jerry Schwartz
I got this brochure at the World Trade Center one night in 1982. For the record, the view was spectacular.
Categories Assorted Tags New York City, skyline, skyscraper
New York City, Lead and Charcoal
I used lead and charcoal to create this drawing of a photo of New York City in 1983.
Categories Assorted Tags art, charcoal, New York City, NYC, skyline
Thomas Wolfe Memorial
November 21, 2016 September 15, 2014 by Jerry Schwartz
A few years ago my family and I visited the Thomas Wolfe Memorial, one of the settings of Look Homeward, Angel, Wolfe's first novel and one of my favorite novels. The following is from the pamphlet:
Thomas Wolfe was perhaps the most overtly autobiographical of this nation's major novelists. His boyhood in the boardinghouse at 48 Spruce Street colored his work and influenced the rest of his life. His reminiscences were so frank and realistic that Look Homeward, Angel was banned from Asheville's public library for more than seven years. Today Wolfe is celebrated as one of Asheville's most famous citizens, and his boyhood home has become a part of the nation's literary history.
The many exhibits at the visitor center included Wolfe's hat and Majestic Cabinet Radio (shown below), the folding sofa bed on which slept Julia Wolfe slept while visiting Wolfe in New York City, a ceiling medallion cast by W. O. Wolfe (Wolfe's father owned a tombstone shop)—even artifacts obtained on excavating the large house's cistern.
Also on display are items that Fred Wolfe recovered from the Chelsea Hotel at Wolfe's death in 1938. These include Wolfe's suit and the typewriter used by his typist as they worked on The Web and the Rock and You Can't Go Home Again.
After our tour of the Wolfe home, we stopped briefly at the historic Riverside Cemetery, where Wolfe and his family are buried. William Sydney Porter, also known as O. Henry, is also buried there. On a separate literary note, it was also in Asheville that Zelda Fitzgerald (who once stayed at Julia Wolfe's boardinghouse) perished in a fire at a mental hospital.
Categories Books Tags Asheville, author, Bildungsroman, Chelsea Hotel, fiction, literary, literature, New York City, novelist, Thomas Wolfe, writer, You Can't Go Home Again
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