by Jim Jones (1999)
By looking sympathetically yet realistically at the lives of five people who knew Kerouac intimately, Jones creates a new picture of the Beat legacy that foregrounds the "minor characters" and accurately depicts the heroism of their not-so-ordinary lives. Long before the trend of debunking Kerouac and the Beats had begun, Jones perceived that there were other stories to be told. Use My Name presents the saga of five people whose lives were joined, often in emotional or legal conflict, by their relationship with the same man, the King of the Beatniks.
Helen Brown
Having sworn she'd never get another cat, the author opens her heart to a Siamese who, with her son getting married and her daughter setting off on a personal quest, is just what the household needs during a time of change.
Alix Kates Shulman
At twenty, Alix Kates Shulman wrenched herself from her middle-class family and staked a claim to a fierce independence. In this unflinching but tender memoir, she explores what it means to do what is expected of a daughter - discovering in the process the unexpected, complicated joys of going home. A Good Enough Daughter is the story of Schulman's difficult journey from dependency to alienation to reconciliation, as she returns home to care for her aging parents in the last years of their lives. The intersection of her own memory with family documents discovered in her parents' house provides the structure for this riveting exploration of her life as a daughter.
Eugene O'Neill
Depicts a day in the life of a family deteriorating from alcoholism, drug addiction, and imminent death. Ageing actor, James Tyrone, has abandoned all hope of being a great performer and has settled for being a hack. His bitter wife, Mary, has slipped into morphine addiction, while his eldest son, Jamie, is a drunk. Jamie is envious of the writing talent of his younger brother, Edmund. These four haunted lives clash.
Kelly Corrigan
At 36, Kelly had a good marriage, a couple of kids, and a weekly newspaper column. But she still saw herself as George Corrigan's daughter. A garrulous Irish-American charmer from Baltimore, George was the center of the ebullient, raucous Corrigan clan. Kelly's was a colorful childhood, just the sort a girl could get attached to. She lives deep within what she calls the Middle Place--"that sliver of time when parenthood and childhood overlap"--but she's abruptly shoved into a coming-of-age when she finds a lump in her breast. And so her journey to full-blown adulthood begins. When George, too, learns he has late-stage cancer, it is Kelly's turn to take care of the man who had always taken care of her--and show us a woman as she finally takes the leap and grows up.--From publisher description.