Read Online The Empty Chair by Bruce Wagner - Free Book Online

was
stealing
from him, but he liked the fellow and didn’t want to hear it. He’s got a
different
manager now.
[He pretended I’d asked him a question]
What do I think of
whom
?
Joyce Johnson? Oh,
her.
3
She’s, well—
ugh
—I won’t get into that. They’re all whores and hangers-on. They slept with Jack
once
and all of them want to write about it.
[Again, he pretended to be engaged by an invisible interlocutor]
Who? Oh!
That
one
always
liked Burroughs—which probably explained why he stopped talking to me, and why I stayed away.”
    They
all
seemed to stay away from Dame Fag Hag Iron Lady! I’m really
channeling
that cunt . . . What else did we talk about? Allen Ginsberg’s visit to Ezra Pound in Italy—Ginsberg
and
Pound must have been hungry for a pair of hands, no doubt! And Peter Ackroyd. I’m not sure
how
Mr. Ackroyd came up, but dear Carolyn had an opinion!
    â€œOh yes, he’s a
wonderful
biographer. I used to stay in his house in London whenever I was in the city. He’s written some marvelous
books—the big one about Dickens—that’s the one he’s known for—I haven’t read the last few—he stopped drinking and now he’s
so
fat
.
We don’t talk anymore, I used to know
why
,
but I can’t remember just now. Don’t care, really . . .
    â€œ
Joyce Johnson and I do not speak.
She’s jealous! My God, how those women lived! Sleeping around—with
anyone.
I never did that—
    â€œThe fact is, I
never
liked most of their writing much—the Beats—
none of them
—never did. Jack wrote a few good ones. But you see, I went to Bennington. I was a
discerning
reader
.
I was
disciplined, I had a classical
education. Do you know that’s what Neal
was seeking? Classicism and a traditional life. He wanted
respectability.
That was how he wanted to
live
and we
did
that. Neal was able to get along with people of all classes. And I had respectable friends. That was all Neal really wanted. Neal never had a mother. That’s what he was looking for in me.
    â€œI make good money now, they come and pick my house clean as a bone! I call them the ‘Archive People.’ The Archive People come and comb. And wow, do they know what they’re looking for. In one of my memoirs, I wrote about a book Jack liked, by Sri Au—Sri
Audi
-something—like the car—no, hold on, let me look . . . I’ve got one of his over here somewhere—
Sri Aurobindo.
I don’t know what the ‘Sri’ is all about, maybe it’s supposed to be ‘sir’ but someone got dyslexic. He was a sage, from India, one of those holy men who appealed to Jack. I wrote somewhere that Jack made notes in the margins of books—even
I
forgot, but the
Archive People
didn’t! They asked me if I still had it and I said I didn’t know so they came over and we looked, and they
found
it. O there’s quite a market! I sold a sticker, and this was a
tiny
‘Can You Pass the Acid Test?’ signed by Neal, I think I got 75,000 after commission. You know, that was the little diploma they used to give . . . or maybe I got the 75
before
commission. Gave it all to my son, told him to
use
it, because he was destitute.
Don’t wait till I’m dead
, I told him. See, he’s out there selling cars
and no one’s buying.
    â€œMy money manager invests
everything
and my account is getting
fat.
There’s a Swedish rock star, the Elvis of his country. A friend told me she’d been to one of his concerts. She said that, behind him, right onstage, was an enormous picture of
yours truly.
Because this Swedish Elvis was influenced by Jack and everybody and even wrote some books, about
ten
, that became bestsellers over there. My friend saw that picture and said, ‘Carolyn, you should be making money off that.’
So I rang up the singer and said, ‘You