Biography delay? Author explains Kerouac wait

Holly George-Warren speaks to R&BG

SOCIAL MEDIA rumours that a much-anticipated new biography of Jack Kerouac has been held up by the writer’s other commitments have been nixed by the author herself.

Holly George-Warren, one of the most respected rock journalists in the US but also a cultural historian with a deep interest in the Beat Generation, has been working on the Kerouac volume for two years.

She was invited by Jim Sampas, the Literary Executor of the Jack Kerouac Estate, back in late 2020 to take on the prestigious biographical project. There were comments at the time that while this was not an authorised commission, George-Warren would have unique access to archives unavailable so far to previous biographers.

She spent six months researching and writing  a book proposal, which was then shopped to publishers by her literary agent. After an auction with numerous bidders, she signed a contract with Viking (Penguin Random) in 2021.

Pictured above: Author Holly George-Warren

George-Warren has made her name, firstly as an author whose first book was published in 1991 and as a bylined arts writer, then as the editorial director of Rolling Stone Press, the book division of the magazine Rolling Stone. She has subsequently written biographies of Gene Autry, Alex Chilton and Janis Joplin, and, most recently, she has collaborated as co-writer on Dolly Parton's just-published memoir.

Along the way, she was also the driving force behind a key Beat book that would see the worlds of writing and rock music converge. In 1999, she edited The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats: The Beat Generation and the Counterculture, a volume that featured articles and interviews concerned with that group of novelists and poets but also pieces on multiple musical artists who had been shaped by their literary influence.

In 2018, George-Warren continued to display her Beat credentials with her essay in the collection Kerouac on Record: A Literary Soundtrack, which explored the connections between Joplin and On the Road and the Texas and San Francisco scenes of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Over the last few weeks, there has been widespread media interest in the release of her portrait, in words and pictures, of country legend Dolly Parton. The book has generated not only column inches and significant web coverage but has enjoyed an extended spell in the bestsellers chart.

This reporting appears to have seeded suggestions that the Kerouac venture has been off George-Warren’s radar and this is holding up her portrait of the leading Beat chronicler. However, George-Warren, who also has teaching roles at the State University of New York in New Paltz and New York University's Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, has exclusively told Rock and the Beat Generation that this interpretation is actually wide of the mark.

She points out that, as an academic and author, she is used to juggling several projects at once ‘between teaching university classes, writing books, and writing articles and so on’. She adds: ‘Fortunately, this is something I've been doing for decades, otherwise I probably would not have been able to write or co-write 18 books, not to mention all the book projects that I've edited or co-edited.’

Pictured above: Holly George-Warren edited this valued 1999 release

George-Warren explains that she completed her Parton co-write – she shares a credit with the singer and Rebecca Seaver on Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones –back in early 2023. The book, published in late October, has now been on the New York Times bestseller lists for six straight weeks.

The writer continues: ‘Anyone familiar with writing biographies understands that these massive projects cannot be rushed. My publisher Viking and the Kerouac Estate certainly understand that. I take the time I need to conduct very thorough research and write a manuscript to the highest standard possible.

‘I'm nonetheless flattered that folks are impatiently awaiting my book's publication. The date will be announced some 9-12 months in advance of publication.’