Mr. Stern recalled receiving the letter as “part of a stash of about two and a half feet of books and manuscripts that Allen had collected from all of his buddies.” He said he had returned them all except for the Burroughs text published as “Junkie” in 1953. Soon after, he said, Ginsberg started the rumor that the letter had been thrown overboard, and Kerouac repeated it in an interview with The Paris Review.
Once Mr. Stern returned the letter, Ginsberg evidently sent it to another publisher, in whose archives it was discovered, unopened.
“At the best, he forgot that I gave it to him,” Mr. Stern told The Associated Press. “At the worst, he said it just to stick it to me. But it doesn’t matter now. Allen’s dead. Jack’s dead. Neal’s dead. But I’m still alive.”
Mr. Stern’s first marriage, to Jane Hill, ended in divorce, as did his second, to Ann London; his third, to Judith Wilson; and his fourth, to Sara Shaw. He is survived by a daughter, Radha Stern, from his first marriage; a son, Zalman Stern, from his third marriage; another son, Abram Stern, from his fourth marriage; several grandchildren; and a great-grandchild. Three other sons and a grandson died earlier.
In his later years, Mr. Stern contributed to the libretto to Anne LeBaron’s “LSD: The Opera.” He worked with Judith Sokoloff, a magazine editor, to compile an international anthology, “Hag Sameach: Poems for the Jewish Holidays.” And he participated in Poetry Science Talks, known as PST, a salon-like discussion group hosted monthly in New York.
PST was “Gerd’s final avant garde intellectual home,” said Neal M. Goldsmith, the co-author of Mr. Stern’s just-completed, forthcoming final book, “PST: The Extraordinary 18-Year Run of the Poetry Science Talks Salon.”
