The real Mardou Fox panned Kerouac’s Subterraneans as poseur fiction

Evidence

Lee, a figure so subterranean that she is referred to in some Kerouac biographies by her fictional name Mardou Fox, actually reviewed The Subterraneans in the Village Voice, as A. Lee. Her scathing put-down blows off Kerouoc’s fictional subterranean pals as “a superior order of poseurs” and the novel itself, concluding with the question, “Are our senses now to be assaulted by long-winded tortuous accounts of erotic experiences which verge on secondary self-masturbation?” — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1835

Categorization

• CANDY: The woman who inspired Mardou Fox publicly trashing the novel as poseur self-indulgence is a small delightful fact.
• XREF: Self-critique from inside the scene complicates the market-dilution narrative — the scene policed its own authenticity early.