Spiders across the stars

Control click heading to hear Bob Edwards interview Joyce Johnson and John Leland (Why Kerouac Matters).

Photo by Jerry Yulsman: Jack Kerouac and Joyce Johnson in 1957.





Today is Jack Kerouac's birthday. He was born March 12, 1922 in Lowell, Massachusetts.

I remember it, I remember the day of my birth. I remember the red air and the sadness—"the strange red afternoon light" Wolfe also was hung on—with peculiar eternity-dream vividness, or if not vividness, vastness; some dream of late afternoon. Six years later, on a similar red afternoon, but in dead frozen winter, I discovered my soul; that is to say, I looked about for the first time and realized I was in a world and not just myself.

When I met the photographer Jerry Yulsman, he had moved away from photography into writing novels. I told him how much I liked his photo of Kerouac and Joyce Johnson that she had used on the cover of her book. I probably said something to the effect that it was perhaps the greatest of all Kerouac photos. To my astonishment, he casually replied, "I guess I should get that back from her, eh?"


When one of Yulsman's photos was used in a Gap ad ("Kerouac wore khakis"), Joyce Johnson was airbrushed out of existence.

Further, the Kettle of Fish bar's neon sign was apparently cropped and altered so it could appear to read "Gap" rather than "Bar".