'On the Road' Turns 50 Amid Controversy

June 6, 2007 — -- The 50th anniversary of Jack Kerouac's generation-defining novel "On the Road" is approaching, but among those closely linked to the writer, it's accompanied by as much acrimony as celebration.

Gerald Nicosia, wrote the 1983 biography, "Memory Babe," which has been described by Library Journal as "the definitive Kerouac biography." But the current executor of Kerouac's estate is trying to erase Nicosia as a source for Kerouac scholarship.

Nicosia accuses John Sampas of telling authors interested in using materials from Kerouac's estate that they will not receive authorization if they cite Nicosia in their works. He also claims that Sampas had references to him and his biography removed from recently written books about Kerouac and other beat authors and poets.

Nicosia supported Kerouac's daughter, Jan, against Sampas in a controversial 1994 case over the ownership of the author's writings, and said that Sampas is seeking revenge.

"I have evidence that Viking Penguin Publishers is deliberately removing my name from books on the beat generation and Jack Kerouac, deliberately keeping out references to me, my Kerouac biography, "Memory Babe," and my beat scholarship in any place and any literary text that they can get away with doing so," Nicosia said yesterday.

He added that three new books to be published by Viking Penguin in honor of the "On the Road" anniversary, as well as a recently released book on the life of poet Allen Ginsburg, lift material from "Memory Babe" without properly acknowledging it.

In unpublished galleys of "I Celebrate Myself," Bill Morgan's biography of beat poet and Kerouac friend Allan Ginsberg, Morgan refers directly to the famous poet admiring"Memory Babe," Nicosia said.

In the published edition, however, rather than mentioning Nicosia by name, the book simply references a "new Kerouac biography."

Viking Penguin publisher Paul Slovak insisted there was no conspiracy to remove references to Nicosia in Morgan's book or the upcoming Kerouac biography "Why Kerouac Matters: The Lessons of On the Road (They're Not What You Think)," by New York Times reporter John Leland.