Alex Traub in today’s online New York Times —
“Helen Weaver, who fell in love with Jack Kerouac months before
‘On the Road’ rocketed him into the literary stratosphere, and who
53 years later made a record of their romance in an enduring book
of her own, died on April 13 at her home in Woodstock, N.Y.
She was 89.”
“The Beat rebel charmed Ms. Weaver with gentleness.
He agreed to attend a dinner party with Ms. Weaver’s
parents in New Milford, Conn., and began the evening
by asking whether they believed in God.”
“Helen Hemenway Weaver was born on June 18, 1931,
in Madison, Wis. Her father, Warren, was chairman of
the mathematics department at the University of
Wisconsin, and her mother, Mary (Hemenway) Weaver,
was a schoolteacher and later a homemaker.
Helen grew up in Scarsdale, N.Y., where the family had
moved when her father began working as an executive at
the Rockefeller Foundation and other nonprofit organizations.”
In Nomine Patris
The Times‘s Warren link above leads to an obituary of Warren Weaver:
He was the author, or co‐author, of books ranging from works on pure science during his early career to “Lady Luck,” a popular discussion of the theory of probability that sold widely in paperback. Wrote About ‘Alice’ Among his other books was “Alice in Many Tongues,” which dealt with foreign translations of “Alice in Wonderland.” He had the largest collection of the writing of Lewis Carroll, the author of “Alice,” now owned by the University of Texas. |