The Last Autographs

It’s always difficult (or impossible) to describe what a person is like. Other people knew Jim Carroll in many aspects I never experienced. Everyone who knew him, however, seemed to agree about his kind heart. That’s why I want to share this little tidbit about fan mail. Yep.

At some point in the early- to mid-90s, when I was teaching college English and had a university address and franking privileges (aka “free postage”), I started receiving and forwarding mail from fans (and others) to Jim Carroll. He also received mail through other means, such as talent and publicity agents, publishers, and record labels; I don’t know (or care) what percentage of mail I was responsible for. By the way, I continued this even when I had to pay for postage. In any case, I always respected the privacy of fan mail and never screened or peeked at anything I handed off to Mr. Carroll (generally speaking I considered myself dealing with Mr. Carroll). Even though, later on, I sometimes got the job of hauling Mr. Carroll‘s reply parcels to the post office, I never saw what he sent back to people who wrote to him, and the fans almost never told me either.

In 2006, Jim (note: no longer Mr. Carroll) asked me to hold all mail. He moved twice (from Chelsea to Brooklyn, then Brooklyn to Inwood). Once he was settled back in Inwood, circa 2008, I gave him a big box full of mail backlogged to 2006.

The fan mail box sat unopened in his Inwood apartment, along with boxes containing about 95% of his possessions, until I started unboxing stuff and putting things like books away in his apartment (that’s another story to tell). One of the boxes I opened in July 2009 was the box of mail. Jim got busy reading and responding.

In August 2009, Jim had responded to everything in the box, but there were two he couldn’t mail himself, and he put these two packages in my care. In one case, the recipient had not provided return mailing information or postage. In the other, it had been so long since the recipient had written to Jim, we could not assume the return address was still valid. (Following Jim’s death I located the recipients and delivered these last packages.)

Because I had to deal with these two packages following Jim’s death, I got the rare treat of seeing how Jim communicated with people who wrote to him. And now I want to share the treat with you!

I want to point out that the stationery Jim used for his notes was given to him as a birthday gift by a fan.

Dry Dreams Promo for Brian

“Brian” occupied (circa 2007) Jim’s past apartment (“3A”) in Chelsea. Brian’s sister Janice sent Jim a copy of the Atco promo for Dry Dreams (published in the April 10, 1982 issue of Billboard) and asked him to sign it for her brother.

Jim also wrote a note to Janice, Brian’s sister . . .

Note to Janice

Janice wrote to Jim asking him to sign the above Atco promo for her brother, who, as of about 2007, lived in the Chelsea apartment Jim had previously occupied. (My challenge, in delivering the package, is that Janice did not provide return mailing info. I COULD have mailed it to Jim’s old address, where her brother lived, but that would not have fulfilled the original intent! I can’t remember for sure, but I think I may have mailed it to the Chelsea apartment.)

Note to David Lindsay (1 of 3)

David sent a letter with some drawings and sleeves of all three JCB albums for Jim to sign. Jim signed all of them, front and back, with notations of his favorite songs. Jim also wrote a three-page note to David.

Note to David Lindsay (2 of 3)

Note to David Lindsay (3 of 3)

Catholic Boy LP Inscribed for David Lindsay

Dry Dreams LP Inscribed for David Lindsay

I Write Your Name LP Inscribed for David Lindsay (front)