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About
The Awakener is Helen Weaver's long awaited memoir of her adventures with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Lenny Bruce, and other wild characters from the New York City of the fifties and sixties. The sheltered but rebellious daughter of bookish Midwestern parents, Weaver survived a repressive upbringing in the wealthy suburbs of Scarsdale and an early divorce to land in Greenwich Village just in time for the birth of rock 'n' roll--and the counterculture movement known as the Beat Generation. Shortly after her arrival Kerouac, Ginsberg, and company--old friends of her roommate--arrive on their doorstep after a non-stop drive from Mexico. Weaver and Kerouac fall in love on sight, and Kerouac moves in.
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Reviews
"A wonderful view of Jack Kerouac and, most of all, a classic coming of age story. Brilliant and very moving to read: honest, funny, sad, and beautiful. I couldn't put it down."
David Amram
"A remarkable and intimate portrait of Greenwich Village in the fifties. The material on Kerouac, Ginsberg, Lenny Bruce, et al, provides a valuable and highly readable account of that important era. A wonderful and irreplaceable book, gracefully written with a sense of humor as well as of history."
Dan Wakefield
"Weaver discovered herself in the 1950s, with Kerouac and other artists like Ginsberg and Lenny Bruce, and although most Americans don't have an impressive list of famous friends, her story is our story; every twenty-something college graduate experiences the ecstasy of new ideas and profound perception that comes with real life. Whether our is in New York City or Nowhere, USA, Weaver's experience
Meredith Boe