Visions of Joan Vollmer – Beat Generation’s muse
Mexico City, September 6th,1951. Beat Generation’s intoxicated writer, William Burroughs and his intriguing wife, Joan Vollmer, found themselves too drunk when Burroughs decided to call her to participate in a dangerous game inspired by William Tell. The trick consisted of shooting objects off someone’s head. The helter-skelter of the moment led Burroughs to mistakenly shoot Joan’s head instead of the glass that was on the top of her head. There are some controversies regarding this accident, however it’s because of this incident that many people know the fascinating woman she was. Vollmer wasn’t a writer like the Beat authors, but she is responsible for gathering them together and inspiring them. Born in Albany, New York, Joan was an attractive, enigmatic and provocative woman.
In the 40s, while her ex- husband was fighting in the Second World War, Joan moved out to different apartments along with her college friend, Edie Parker. Both challenged the housewife label and didn’t mind sharing their home with junkies, gamblers and writers. Edie and the outstanding Beat writer, Jack Kerouac, started dating and soon he was living with them. Other notable authors like Allen Ginsberg, Lucien Carr and Hal Chase also cosied themselves up on their place and within a few years, they’d become part of the well known Beat Generation. In 1945, Joan met her future husband, William Burroughs. According to Allen Ginsberg, she was his feminine counterpart. Both shared a routine of uninterrupted use of benzedrine, the drug of the moment. Their passion towards the drug wasn’t the only driving force behind their relationship. They understood each other perfectly, sometimes communicating only telepathically. Much was said in one look. In the following year, Joan was interned in a psychiatric hospital due to a nervous breakdown and William was arrested for getting drugs with no prescription. When free, both decided to move to Texas, then to New Orleans, where Joan’s wild side was evinced and inspired many Beat’s works.
Sal Paradise from Kerouac’s counterculture bible, On the Road (1957) visits the couple in their house in New Orleans. By observing them, he notices that both had an active and intellectual voice which called the attention of everyone around them.
In an excerpt from Kerouac’s first novel, The Town and The City (1950), Ginsberg’s character describes Joan, here named Mary Dennison, as an insane woman, however, accurate in her perception of people’s alienation by corrupted men:
"There’s no doubt about the fact that Mary Dennison is mad, but that’s only because she wants to be mad"
Unfortunately, in On the Road, Sal also notices her features, pointing out the negative effects of taking benzedrine. In the cinematographic adaptation from the same book, Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles pictures Joan’s autonomy regarding topics like sex; at the same time, he shows her degradation due to her drug abuse. Salles adds a real episode of her life that wasn’t seen in the book, but in another work from a Beat writer called Herbert Huncke. In his work, Joan would spend all night casting lizards out of her yard. The movie may not be fully satisfactory, but the nuances interpreted by Amy Adams are remarkable.
Burroughs' homosexuality became a problem to Joan after some years of marriage. She found herself lame, her body started to languish due to tequila and benzedrine abuse and she didn’t pay much attention to her kids, one conceived by William.
Her physical decay was noticed by Kerouac’s travelling buddy, Neal Cassidy, through their exchanged letters (1944–67) :
" Joan is brittle, blasé brittleness is her forte. With sharpened laughs and dainty oblique statements she fashions the topic at hand. You know these things, I need not elaborate. But you ask for an angle, well, Julie’s hair is matted with dirt I told; oh fuck it, disintegration of continued habit patterns (child raising here) has Joan laboring in a bastardized world wherein the supply of benzedrine completely conditions her reaction to everyday life. ETC. I love her."
Once again, her audacious nature and decay are contrasted, which doesn’t belittle her importance in the strongly male literary world of the Beat writers.
The homosexual and drug scene in New Orleans kept William away from home. Arrested for heroin possession, Joan and her attorney succeed in transferring him to a sanatorium. In 1949, he was released and the couple moved out one more time to Texas, which lasted for a while, not long after they went to Mexico. With notenough benzedrine around there, Joan relies on tequila and starts to complain a lot about his drug abuse. In Burroughs' first novel, Junky (1953) he mentions vaguely her objections regarding his addiction. In August 1951, Lucien Carr and Allen Ginsberg visited their house when William was absent. Once again, he abandoned Joan for men and went to Equator with Lewis Marker, in a search for a hallucinogen called Yage.
Meanwhile, Joan and the guys were having a fun time in Guadalajara, where Lucien and Joan had a short affair. This fact is portrayed in the movie Beat (2000) in which Courtney Love incorporates the most notable visions of Joan: the intellectual and independent woman. Some people question the film’s veracity, but what’s relevant about it is that it protagonizes a woman in a movie about a mostly male dominated movement, with no female writers or names highlighted. Her features are reinforced through her bold opinions, which were part of the writers' conversation when they lived in her apartment in NY. The only thing in the way to make this movie accurate is that it shows a healthy Joan in the height of her physical decay. But I believe that her vision here is focused on her untouchable boldness. The movie ends with the tragic accident mentioned in the beginning of the post.
Why is the relevant presence of Joan Vollmer not strongly recognised? I believe that the answer is in the tradition of concealing the female intellectual contributions to History, Literature, Cinema and etc. Recently, there’s been an urge to praise women’s roles to these subjects. The Beat Generation that we know wouldn’t have the same sensitivity without Joan. Allen Ginsberg wouldn’t have written his most prominent poem, Howl, once its inspiration came from a dream about Joan. Just like Burroughs wouldn’t have left his sullen and impacting legacy. Surrounding Vollmer’s tragic life, there’s a certain mystery that dazzled everyone that she met.
Even many years after her death, she continued to intrigue her writer fellas. Her records are limited to rare pictures, excerpts in Beat’s novels and letters that she sent to Ginsberg who was, without a doubt, her biggest admirer. I think that there’s much more to find out about Joan. She really awakes a curiosity in those who try to unveil her.
This post was originally published in Portuguese on my Blogspot :
http://thebelljarsgirl.blogspot.com.br/2016/04/visoes-de-joan-vollmer-grande-musa-da.html
