The Awakener: A Memoir of Jack Kerouac and the Fifties »

Helen Weaver has translated over fifty books from the French of which one, Antonin Artaud: Selected Writings (FSG) was a Finalist for the National Book Award in translation in 1976. She is co-author and general editor of the Larousse Encyclopedia of Astrology and author of The Daisy Sutra, a book on animal communication. She lives in Kingston, New York.

Helen Weaver's insightful and riveting memoir of love and friendship with Jack Kerouac and the Beats.

The New York Times - Tara McKelvey

…a pleasure to read…Early on, [Weaver] quotes Pasternak: "You in others: this is your soul." Kerouac's soul lives on through many people—Joyce Johnson, for one—but few have been as adept as Weaver at capturing both him and the New York bohemia of the time. He was lucky to have met her.

1 Prologue

Sunday Morning 11

2 The Village

Sullivan Street 21

Watchstraps Forever 33

Farrar, Straus 37

The Odd Couple 43

3 Jack

A Heap of Wheat 53

Just in Time 57

Two Dinners 63

Season's Greetings 69

Happy New Year 79

Can't We Be Friends? 91

A Room of my Own 99

4 Lenny

From Beat to Hip 107

Free Speech 121

Webster's Unabridged 137

The Real Obscenity 143

5 Changes

Endings 153

My Claim to Fame 163

A Visit to a Poet 171

The City of Spindles 177

It's All A Dream 187

Reunion 199

Impermanence 211

An American Classic 221

6 Epilogue

Jack's Voice 235

Appendix

The Dictionary of Hip 241

An Astrological Appendix 243

Acknowledgments 257