Edie Kerouac-Parker (1922–1993) was the author of her memoir, "You'll Be Okay" from the Beat Generation, and the first wife of Jack Kerouac. She and Joan Vollmer shared an apartment on 118th Street in New York City, frequented by many Beats, among them Vollmer's eventual husband William S. Burroughs.
Parker was a native of Grosse Pointe, Michigan. She and Kerouac married in 1944. At the time, he was in jail as an accessory after the fact in Lucien Carr's murder of David Kammerer. This event expedited their intention to marry so that Edie could access an inheritance from her grandfather's then unprobated estate to post Kerouac's bail. The marriage was annulled in 1952.
She is represented as "Judie Smith" in Jack Kerouac's novel The Town and the City.
Famous quotes containing the word parker:
“Out in Hollywood, where the streets are paved with Goldwyn, the word “sophisticate” means, very simply, “obscene.” A sophisticated story is a dirty story. Some of that meaning was wafted eastward and got itself mixed up into the present definition. So that a “sophisticate” means: one who dwells in a tower made of a DuPont substitute for ivory and holds a glass of flat champagne in one hand and an album of dirty post cards in the other.”
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)