Describing the famous Gallery Six poetry reading in The Dharma Bums, Kerouac writes,
The other poets were either hornrimmed intellectual hepcats with wild black hair like Alvah Goldbrook, or delicate pale handsome poets like Ike O'Shay (in a suit), or out-of-this-world genteel looking Renaissance Italians like Francis DaPavia (who looks like a young priest), or bow-tied wild-haired old anarchist fuds like Reinhold Cacoethes, or big fat bespectacled quiet booboos like Warren Coughlin.
Who are or were these five poets in real life?
I’m can only make a stab at the last one: Warren Coughlin = Allen Ginsberg?
No, but one of the characters is Allen Ginsberg.
I think I got it:
Warren Coughlin = Philip Whalen
Alvah Goldbrook = Alan Ginsburg
Ike O’Shay = Michael McClure
Francis DaPavia = Philip Lamantia
My first post on my favorite blog and I misspell “Allen Ginsberg.” Sorry…
Bill, I have a question for you, though it has nothing to do with Kerouac.
Is it possible that content has anything to do with the likelyhood of something’s existing? I mean, could it be that what it is that would exist has anything to do with the likelyhood of it’s actually existing?
Paul
Nathan,
You got it, except for Rheinhold Cacoethes.
Paul,
If something’s nature involved a logical contradiction, then the probability of it existing would be zero.
Reinhold Cacoethes has got to be Kenneth Rexroth.
Patrick,
Yep. ‘Cacoethes’ means itch or compulsion as in ‘cacoethes scribendi’ the compulsion to write. Kerouac and Rexroth didn’t like each other.