Not So Much a Review as a Notice of Publication

Earlier this week, Paul Maher reacted to a pan of his "definitive biography" of Jack Kerouac on this web site by claiming, in part, "The new material I unearthed about Kerouac's formative years in Lowell has been positively received by many who know and love Kerouac's work." The evidence that would support that assertion is decidedly skimpy, and has just gotten even skimpier.

One of the unattributed quotes on Maher's home page cites a Dallas Morning News review that said, in part:

In the late 1950s and '60s, you could divide young people pretty well by whether they liked On the Road. For some, it was a lot like the new rock 'n' roll, a denial of traditional values. For those, Mr. Maher's biography will be a surprise.

As it happens, the Wichita Eagle reprinted the Bob Trimble article from which that quote was taken--and here's the rest of what Trimble had to say about the subject:

Kerouac was born of a French-Canadian family in Massachusetts. A high school athlete, he read literary classics and studied at Columbia University under Mark Van Doren. After a stint in the Merchant Marine, he hooked his star to men like Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Neal Cassady. His was a hand-to-mouth existence of sexual voraciousness, heavy drug use and a self-destructive lifestyle. But Kerouac's dream of writing the great American novel never dimmed, though he never again had another On the Road. He died in 1969 at 47.

Note, if you will, the complete absence of any sort of critical evaluation of Maher's work--Maher's book doesn't even need to exist to support that statement. Now, that's laziness on Trimble's part, certainly, and he could be more accurately described as a book lister than a book reviewer. But the important thing is that Trimble never actually says anything positive about Maher's portrait of Kerouac's life in Lowell (or any other part of his life).

This sort of puffery and misleading blurb generation is not exactly uncommon in the publishing industry. But given the vehemence with which Maher has insisted that "many" have "positively received" his work, it's worth noting that at least one item of "proof" in support of that claim is as intellectually dishonest as, well, the book itself.