2022
Commemorating Kerouac: An Interview (1998)
I first met Paul Marion not long after the dedication of the Kerouac Commemorative. I was living in Boston at the time and read his name in the Boston Globe, in their reporting on the years-long movement in Lowell to honor Jack Kerouac with a public monument. I had been reading Kerouac for twenty years at that time, but I had never been to Lowell. I felt like I needed a guide to point me in the right direction. I got Paul’s phone number from “Directory Assistance” and called him cold, to tell him of my interest in photographing “Kerouac places” in Lowell, and to ask his help in finding whatever locales still existed in the city from Kerouac’s time. Paul was open to meeting with me, and we sat down one afternoon in a Greek restaurant on Market Street. I remember him telling me, “Growing up here and being a poet, Kerouac—as a creative influence—is a piano on your back, almost overwhelming. You can’t write anything about this place without taking him into consideration.” Born in 1954, Paul’s first home was in the Centralville section of Lowell, around the corner from Kerouac’s birthplace. The author was in New York then, but sometimes made nostalgic visits to wander around his old neighborhoods. I used to joke that Kerouac probably walked past Paul in his baby carriage, throwing a shade that predetermined the rest of his life. When we met, Paul had two books of poetry (Strong Place and Middle Distance) and his own small publishing operation—Loom Press, which is still in existence, and thriving, in 2021. He gave me copies of his books, and I went straight to a poem with an obvious Kerouac connection, “Big Sur,” in Middle Distance. Kerouac-influenced, it was; but not Kerouac-dominated. The poem echoed the title of one of Jack’s books, but it was not about California, it was about the Kerouac Commemorative. Paul clearly had his own voice, even then. “Kerouac’s back in the news”— it began . . . his hometown elected his art. There’ll be a fresh green lawn with his breath set in polished red-brown stones that will sing to those come to find him. I was certainly one of “those come.” From late 1988 until the fall of 1993, I visited Lowell regularly, walking along the walls of the mills with my cameras, praying for good photo-luck at the Grotto, climbing over the rocks under the Moody Street bridge, shooting pool at the Pawtucketville Social Club, even getting to meet Jack’s old high school girlfriend, Mary Carney, still living in the same house on the bank of the Concord River where Kerouac wooed her. In 1989, on the twentieth anniversary of his passing, I published my first photo-essay of 154
The Lowell Review
