Graham McKeen; last of the authentic bohemians (Cool)
Hyfler/Rosner
February 11, 2007 Sunday
Final Edition
A boulevardier who befriended literary giants of his age:
'He was the last of the authentic bohemians. He was a
paradox, charming, insightful'
BYLINE: ALAN HUSTAK, The Gazette
Graham McKeen spent a lifetime avoiding real work, drinking,
scuffling for money, playing piano, writing and dining out
on stories about the famous people he befriended like Beat
poets Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and writer Norman Mailer.
Admirably careless about his life, McKeen, a genial
boulevardier and raconteur who livened Montreal's bar scene,
died of esophegal cancer at the Jewish General Hospital on
Jan. 29. He was 74.
"He was a s--t-faced drunk who brought happiness to the
unhappy and relaxation to the wired," Mailer said of McKeen.
"No matter how drunk Graham got, he never was a s--t. He was
an astonishing mixture of the bold and the reflective. He
was a man who lived by his wits and his deep enjoyment of
life which gave his heart, and conceivably his knees,
resonance enough to take him over the bumps. There was
always part of him that remained a class act."
Graham Cournoyer McKeen, the son of New Brunswick's deputy
minister of public works, was born in Newcastle, N.B, July
16, 1932. When the Second World War began his father
enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force and his mother
moved the family to Montreal.
McKeen and his three siblings grew up in Notre Dame de Grace
and Sorel.
"He was a natural, God-given pianist," his brother Fraser
said.
"He just sat at the piano and played. He couldn't read score
worth a damn. We never knew what it was or where the talent
came from. He had a gifted ear, he would just sit at the
keyboard and go and he'd gather a crowd."
Still in his teens, McKeen did a brief stint in the merchant
marine, went west to play piano at the Banff Springs Hotel,
worked in the Arctic building radar stations for the Distant
Early Warning Line and, when he had enough money in his
pocket, would take off and disappear for months, hanging out
in Provincetown and New York.
In the 1950s he moved to New York's Greenwich Village and,
as he wrote in his memoirs, worked as a street hustler "to
make a quick buck to drink with." He sometimes played piano
at the Saint Remo, a bar where he hung around with writers
and actors like Dylan Thomas, Brendan Behan, composer
Charles Mills and Marion Tanner, a village den mother who
was the inspiration for Auntie Mame, the fictional madcap
character of a book, musical and movie.
"He was the last of the authentic bohemians. He was a
beatnik," said Montreal actor and journalist Terry Haig, who
was with McKeen when he died. "He was a paradox, charming,
insightful. While some would call him a mooch, he was
generous of spirit. He was never a con artist. He appealed
to your better nature to be generous."
An alcoholic who struggled with the disease all his life, a
car accident in the 1960s left him an epileptic. McKeen used
the money he received in damages from the accident to live
briefly in Tangiers, where he traded his medication for
hashish and alcohol. When he returned to Canada, he was
singled out by Ginsberg as one of Kerouac's lifelong
friends, and found himself in demand as a guest speaker at
various Kerouac and Beat Generation conferences in Canada
and the United States.
He was, in fact, expected to travel to Kerouac's home town,
Lowell Mass., in June for the 50th anniversary celebrations
commemorating the publishing of Kerouac's groundbreaking
novel, On The Road.
In 1991, with Norman Mailer's support, McKeen was given a
Canada Council grant to complete his autobiography, Never
Give Up, which dealt with his relationship with Kerouac.
"I have been told that I am a storyteller," it begins, "My
story begins then with my birth, although it is hard to say
which came first, the birth or the bottle. My first words
were "a double scotch and soda, please. That's when my
battle began....."
He never finished the book.
He fathered a daughter, Karen Bronlow, that he didn't know
he had until she tracked him down in Montreal in 1989 when
she was 27. Shortly after being united with her father,
Bronlow died of a drug overdose.
McKeen is survived by his brothers, John and Fraser (Buddy)
and his sister Carol Pisani.
A memorial service will be held in the spring.
Rich Clancey
>He never finished the book.
>He fathered a daughter, Karen Bronlow, that he didn't know
>he had until she tracked him down in Montreal in 1989 when
>she was 27. Shortly after being united with her father,
>Bronlow died of a drug overdose.
Charming guy.
--
rich clancey r...@bahleevyoome.world.std.com
"Shun those who deny we have eyes in order to see, and instead say we
see because we happen to have eyes." -- Leibniz