Krim recently penned the introduction to Jack Kerouac’s novel Desolation Angels. In it, he made the case for Kerouac’s literary legitimacy, which was subject to debate by book critics at the time. In his 1958 review of On the Road in the Saturday Review, Gleason argued similarly.  

Gleason wrote Krim in his capacity as the book editor for Ramparts. The New Left glossy had recently moved to San Francisco. Interested in running Krim’s introduction to Desolation Angels, He requested some editing changes, preceded by his assessment of Krim’s piece:

I think it is an important essay, even if I think you’re full of shit in places, like the crap about the coast north from frisco, which could only be written by some square like seemore kime who has never been here. As it stands, it is too fucking long and there are parts of it that are expendable, I think. If you want, I’ll edit it for your okay, but I would rather you did.

As this shows, Gleason could be brutally frank, especially when he sensed false notes in a piece of writing, like Krim’s long-distance imagining of the California coast. It may be that the pair’s relationship allowed such directness.

But one has to wonder how Krim took this. There’s no record of Ramparts publishing Krim’s piece.

Afterword

As for Gleason, he left Ramparts a few years later in a huff. Editor Warren Hinckle ditched Gleason’s glowing piece on the San Francisco counterculture and published Hinckle’s anti-hippie screed instead. The clash exemplified the clash between the political and cultural Left at the time.

As a side note, Gleason’s letter shows his typing style, complete with typos, cross-outs, and overwrites. Gleason typed rapidly, spontaneously expressing his thoughts and feelings in the moment. This gave his music reviews vitality, pulling the reader into the action.

Krim, an essential and underrecognized figure in the New York Beat movement, also contributed to the New Journalism movement, writing for the New York Herald Tribune alongside Tom Wolfe. Despite an accomplished career, Krim suffered from bouts of severe mental illness. He took his own life in his one-room apartment on East 10th Street due to a barbiturate overdose on August 30, 1989.

For more on Ralph Gleason’s 40-year involvement in the American Left, read my book The Life and Writings of Ralph J. Gleason: Dispatches from the Front. Available in paperback on August 21, 2025.