Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac

Born:	March 12, 1922 Lowell, Massachusetts
Died:	October 21, 1969 St. Petersburg, Florida
Occupation:	Novelist Poet
Nationality:	United States
Genres:	Beat Poets
Literary movement:	Beat
Influences:	Thomas Wolfe Fyodor Dostoevsky Marcel Proust Jack London James Joyce
Influenced:	Tom Robbins Richard Brautigan Ken Kesey Jim Morrison John Lennon Bob Dylan Tom Wolfe Tom Waits Jerry Garcia

Jack Kerouac (pronounced [dʒæk ˈkɛɹəwæk]) (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969) was an American novelist, writer, poet, and artist. He is perhaps the best known of a group of writers and friends who came to be known as the Beat Generation, a term he himself created.

Kerouac enjoyed some degree of popular appeal but little critical acclaim during his lifetime. Today, however, he is considered an important and influential author. His spontaneous, confessional prose style has inspired numerous other writers, including Tom Robbins, Lester Bangs, Richard Brautigan and Ken Kesey, as well authors in the New Journalism school of writing. Kerouac was also an influence on baby boomer musicians, including The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Morrissey and Jim Morrison.^[1] Kerouac's best known works are On the Road, The Dharma Bums, Big Sur and Visions of Cody.

Kerouac divided most of his young adult life between roaming the vast American landscape and life at home with his mother. Faced with a changing post-war America, he sought to find his place, but eventually came to reject the values and social norms of the Fifties. His writing often reflects a desire to break free from society's structures and to find higher meaning.

This search led Kerouac to experiment with drugs and to embark on trips around the world. His writings are often credited as a catalyst for the 1960s counterculture. Kerouac died in St. Petersburg, Florida, at the age of 47 from an internal hemorrhage, the result of alcoholism.

Contents 1 Life 2 Career 3 Style 4 Trivia 5 Influence 6 Bibliography 6.1 Prose 6.2 Poetry, letters, audio recordings and other writings 7 Film 8 See also 9 Notes 10 Further reading 11 External links

Life

Jack Kerouac was born Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac, in Lowell, Massachusetts to French-Canadian parents, Leo-Alcide Kerouac and Gabrielle-Ange Lévesque, natives of the province of Québec, Canada. Like many other Québécois of their generation, the Lévesques and Kerouacs were part of the Quebec emigration to New England to find employment.

Kerouac did not start to learn English until the age of six, and at home he and his family spoke Quebec French. At an early age, he was profoundly affected by the death (from rhuematic fever, age nine) of his elder brother Gérard, an event later described in his novel Visions of Gerard. Some of Kerouac's poetry was written in French, and in letters written to friend Allen Ginsberg towards the end of his life, he expressed his desire to speak his parents' native tongue again.

Kerouac's athletic prowess led him to become a star on his local high school football team and earned him scholarship offers from Boston College, Notre Dame and Columbia University. He entered Columbia University after spending the scholarship's required year at Horace Mann School. Kerouac broke a leg playing football during his freshman season, and argued constantly with coach Lou Little who kept him benched. While at Columbia, he wrote several sports articles for the student newspaper, the Columbia Daily Spectator.

When his football scholarship did not pan out, Kerouac dropped out of Columbia, though he continued to live for a period on New York City's Upper West Side with his girlfriend, Edie Parker. It was during this time that he met the people with whom he was later to journey around the world, the subjects of many of his novels: the so-called Beat Generation, including Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, John Clellon Holmes, Herbert Huncke and William S. Burroughs. Kerouac joined the United States Merchant Marine in 1942 and in 1943 joined the United States Navy, but was discharged during World War II on psychiatric grounds (he was of "indifferent disposition").^[2]

In 1944, Kerouac was arrested as an accessory in the murder of David Kammerer, who'd been stalking Kerouac's friend Lucien Carr since Carr was a teenager in St. Louis. (William Burroughs was himself a native of St. Louis, and it was through Carr that Kerouac came to know both Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg.) When Kammerer's obsession with Carr turned violent, Carr stabbed him to death and turned to Kerouac for help. Together, they disposed of evidence. Advised by Burroughs to turn themselves in, Kerouac's bail was set at $100, which his father first refused to pay. He then agreed to marry Edie Parker if she'd pay it. Their marriage was annulled a year later, and Kerouac and Burroughs briefly collaborated on a novel about the Kammerer murder entitled And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks. Though the book was never published, an excerpt eventually appeared in Word Virus: A William S. Burroughs Reader. Kerouac also later wrote about the murder in his novel Vanity of Duluoz.

In between sea voyages, Kerouac stayed in New York with friends from Fordham University in The Bronx.^{[citation needed]}. Later, he lived with his parents in the Ozone Park neighborhood of Queens, after they, too, moved to New York. He wrote his first novel, The Town and the City while living there. His friends jokingly called him "The Wizard of Ozone Park."^[3]

The Town and the City was published in 1950 under the name "John Kerouac," and, though it earned him a few respectable reviews, the book sold poorly. Heavily influenced by Kerouac's reading of Thomas Wolfe, it reflects on the generational epic formula and the contrasts of small town life versus the multi-dimensional, and larger, city. The book was heavily edited by Robert Giroux; some 400 pages were taken out.

For the next six years, Kerouac wrote constantly but could not find a publisher. Building upon previous drafts tentatively titled "The Beat Generation" and "Gone on the Road," Kerouac wrote what is now known as On the Road in April, 1951 (ISBN 0-312-20677-1).

Part of the Kerouac myth is that, fueled by Benzedrine and coffee, he completed the first version of the novel during a three week extended session of spontaneous confessional prose. This session produced the now famous scroll of On the Road. In fact, according to his Columbia professor and mentor Mark Van Doren, he had outlined much of the work in his journals over several years. His technique was heavily influenced by Jazz, especially Bebop, and later, Buddhism, as well as the famous Joan Anderson letter, authored by Neal Cassady.^[4]

Publishers rejected the book due to its experimental writing style and its sympathetic tone towards minorities and marginalized social groups of the United States in the 1950s. In 1957, Viking Press purchased the novel, demanding major revisions.^[5]

In 2007, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of On the Road's publishing,^[6] an uncensored version of On the Road will be released by Viking Press, containing text that was removed from the released version because it was deemed too explicit for 1957 audiences. It will be drawn solely from the original scroll^[7] and the only things not included will be things that Kerouac himself crossed out.

The book was largely autobiographical, narrated from the point of view of the character Sal Paradise, describing Kerouac's roadtrip adventures across the United States and Mexico with Neal Cassady, the model for the character of Dean Moriarty. Kerouac's novel is often described as the defining work of the post-World War II Beat Generation and Kerouac came to be called "the king of the beat generation," a term that he never felt comfortable with, and once observed, I'm not a beatnik, I'm a Catholic.^[8] Kerouac's friendship with Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and Gregory Corso, among others, defined a generation. Kerouac also wrote and narrated a "Beat" movie entitled Pull My Daisy in 1958. In 1954, Kerouac discovered Dwight Goddard's A Buddhist Bible at the San Jose Library, which marked the beginning of Kerouac's immersion into Buddhism.

He chronicled parts of this, as well as some of his adventures with Gary Snyder and other San Francisco-area poets, in the book The Dharma Bums, set in California and published in 1958. The Dharma Bums, which some have called the sequel to On the Road, was written in Orlando, Florida during late 1957 through early 1958.

Kerouac developed something of a friendship with the scholar Alan Watts (cryptically named Arthur Wayne in Kerouac's novel Big Sur, and Alex Aums in Desolation Angels). He also met and had discussions with the famous Japanese Zen Buddhist authority D.T. Suzuki.

In July 1957, Kerouac moved to a small house on Clouser Ave. in the College Park section of Orlando, Florida to await the release of On the Road. A few weeks later, the review appears in the New York Times proclaiming Kerouac the voice of a new generation. Kerouac was hailed as a major American writer, and reluctantly as the voice of the Beat Generation. His fame would come as an unmanageable surge that would ultimately be his undoing.

John Antonelli's 1985 documentary Kerouac, the Movie begins and ends with footage of Kerouac reading from On the Road and "Visions of Cody" from The Tonight Show with Steve Allen in 1957. Kerouac appears intelligent but shy. "Are you nervous?" asks Steve Allen. "Naw", says Kerouac, sweating and fiddling.

In 1955 Kerouac wrote a biography of Siddhartha Gautama, entitled Wake Up, which was unpublished during his lifetime but eventually serialised in Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, 1993-95. Shortly before his death Kerouac told interviewer Joseph Lelyveld of the New York Times, "I'm not a beatnik. I'm a Catholic." After pointing to a painting of Pope Paul VI, Kerouac noted, "You know who painted that? Me."^[9]

He died on October 21, 1969 at St. Anthony's Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida, one day after being rushed with severe abdominal pain from his St. Petersburg home by ambulance. His death, at the age of 47, resulted from an internal hemorrhage (bleeding esophageal varices) caused by cirrhosis of the liver, the result of a lifetime of heavy drinking. At the time of his death, he was living with his third wife Stella, and his mother Gabrielle. Kerouac is buried in his home town of Lowell and was honored posthumously with a Doctor of Letters degree from his hometown's University of Massachusetts - Lowell on June 2, 2007.

Career

Kerouac realized he wanted to be a writer before the age of ten; his father was a linotypist and ran a print shop, publishing The Lowell Spotlight.^{[citation needed]} He tended to write constantly, carrying a notebook with him everywhere. Letters to friends and family members tended to be long and rambling, including great detail about his daily life and thoughts.

Prior to becoming a writer, he tried a varied list of careers. He was a sports reporter for The Lowell Sun; a temporary worker in construction and food service; a United States Merchant Marine and he joined the United States Navy twice. Throughout all of this he led a nomadic lifestyle, never having a home of his own.^{[citation needed]} Alternatively, he lived with his mother, stayed with friends or camped out.

Style

Kerouac is considered by some as the King of the Beats as well as the Father of the Hippies, although it must be said that he actively disliked such labels, and, in particular, regarded the Hippie movement with some disdain. Kerouac's method was heavily influenced by the prolific explosion of Jazz, especially the Bebop genre established by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and others. Later, Kerouac would include ideas he developed in his Buddhist studies, beginning with Gary Snyder. He called this style Spontaneous Prose, a literary technique akin to stream of consciousness.

Kerouac's motto was "first-thought=best thought", and many of his books exemplified this approach including On the Road, Visions of Cody, Visions of Gerard, Big Sur, and The Subterraneans. The central features of this writing method were the ideas of breath (borrowed from Jazz and from Buddhist meditation breathing), improvising words over the inherent structures of mind and language, and not editing a single word (much of his work was edited by Donald Merriam Allen, a major figure in Beat Generation poetry who also edited some of Ginsberg's work as well). Connected with his idea of breath was the elimination of the period, preferring to use a long, connecting dash instead. As such, the phrases occurring between dashes might resemble improvisational jazz licks. When spoken, the words might take on a certain kind of rhythm, though none of it pre-meditated.

Gary Snyder was greatly admired by Kerouac, and many of his ideas influenced Kerouac. The Dharma Bums contains accounts of a mountain climbing trip Kerouac took with Snyder. Kerouac took a job as a fire lookout in the North Cascade Mountains (Washington State) one summer on Snyder's recommendation, which was a difficult but ultimately rewarding experience. Kerouac described the experience in his novel Desolation Angels.

He would go on for hours to friends and strangers about his method, often drunk, which at first wasn't well received by Ginsberg. He had an acute awareness of the need to sell literature (to publishers) as much as write it, though Ginsberg would later be one of its great proponents, and indeed was apparently influenced by Kerouac's free flowing prose method of writing in the composition of his masterpiece "Howl". It was at about the time that Kerouac wrote The Subterraneans that he was approached by Ginsberg and others to formally explicate exactly how he wrote it, how he did Spontaneous Prose. Among the writings he set down specifically about his Spontaneous Prose method, the most concise would be Belief and Technique for Modern Prose, a list of thirty "essentials."

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside your own house
4. Be in love with your life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yrself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You're a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars, and in the middle, you see the blue center-light pop, and everybody goes ahh..." from On the Road, which demonstrates Kerouac's use of imagery in a beat style.

Some believed that at times Kerouac's writing technique did not produce lively or energetic prose. Truman Capote famously said about Kerouac's work, "That's not writing, it's typing." Despite such criticism, it should be kept in mind that what Kerouac said about writing and how he wrote are sometimes seen to be separate. According to Carolyn Cassady and other people who knew him he rewrote and rewrote. Some claim his own style was in no way spontaneous. However it should be taken into account that throughout most of the '50s, Kerouac was constantly trying to have his work published, and consequently he often revised and re-arranged manuscripts in an often futile attempt to interest publishers, as is clearly documented in his collected letters (which are in themselves wonderful examples of his style). The Subterraneans and Visions of Cody are possibly the best examples of Kerouac's free-flowing spontaneous prose method.

Trivia

• Kerouac mentions his best friends George Apostolos and Sebastian Sampas, killed during World War II, on numerous occasions throughout his writings.^[10]
• Kerouac's boyhood friends George Apostolos and Sammy Sampas were the uncle and cousin, respectively, of Ted Leonsis the prominent businessman.^[11]
• At the time of his death in 1969, Kerouac's estate was worth little more than ninety-one dollars, but by 2004 had grown to an estimated $20 million.
• Kerouac did not learn to drive until 1956 (at age 34) and he never had a driver's license.
• In a scene from Bob Dylan's 1978 film Renaldo and Clara, Dylan and poet Allen Ginsberg are seen at Kerouac's grave.
• The alley that separates the City Lights Bookstore and Vesuvio Saloon on Columbus Avenue in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood is officially named by the city as Jack Kerouac Alley. The alley is famous for being a meeting ground for many luminaires of the Beat Generation, including Kerouac who often drank at Vesuvio.
• Kerouac was related to botanist Brother Marie Victorin (born Conrad Kirouac) from his father's side, while his mother was a second cousin of Quebec Premier René Lévesque.
• Kerouac invented his own fantasy baseball league when he was a child. He continued playing this game well into adulthood.^[12]
• Kerouac appeared as the character Gene Pasternak in Go by John Clellon Holmes.
• The 10,000 Maniacs 1987 LP "In My Tribe" contained a song titled "Hey Jack Kerouac"
• In Steve Earles album "The Hard Way" the first song "The Other Kind" mentions Jack Kerouac and being back out the on the road again an obvious influence on his music.

Influence

Kerouac is considered by some as the "King of the Beats" as well as the "Father of the Hippies".

Kerouac's plainspeak manner of writing prose, as well as his nearly long-form haiku style of poetry have inspired countless modern neo-beat writers and artists, such as George Condo (Painter), Roger Craton (Poet and Philosopher), and John McNaughton (filmmaker).

Brazilian poet Wagner Hertzog de Oliveira said that "Kerouac was the most beautiful, sensitive and meaningful voice of American literature post-World War II."^{[citation needed]}

The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University is named in his honor. In 2007, Kerouac was awarded a posthumous honorary degree from the University of Massachusetts Lowell.^[13]

Bibliography

Prose

• Atop an Underwood: Early Stories and Other Writings (1936-1943) (ISBN 0-670-88822-2)
• Orpheus Emerged (1944-1945) (ISBN 0-7434-7514-3)
• And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks (1945) (unpublished work; with William S. Burroughs)
• The Town and the City (1946-1949) (ISBN 0-15-690790-9)
• On the Road (1948-1956) (ISBN 0-14-004259-8)
• Visions of Cody (1951-1952) (ISBN 0-14-017907-0)
• Pic (1951 & 1969) (ISBN 0-7043-1122-4, out of print; currently available in ISBN 0-8021-3061-5)
• Book of Sketches (1952-1957) (ISBN 0-14-200215-1)
• Book of Dreams (1952-1960) (ISBN 0-87286-027-2)
• Doctor Sax (1952) (ISBN 0-8021-3049-6)
• Maggie Cassidy (1953) (ISBN 0-14-017906-2)
• The Subterraneans (1953) (ISBN 0-8021-3186-7)
• Good Blonde & Others (1955) (ISBN 0-912516-22-4)
• Tristessa (1955-1956) (ISBN 0-14-016811-7)
• Visions of Gerard (1956) (ISBN 0-14-014452-8)
• Old Angel Midnight (1956) (ISBN 0-912516-97-6)
• Desolation Angels (1956 & 1961) (ISBN 1-57322-505-3)
• The Dharma Bums (1957) (ISBN 0-14-004252-0)
• Lonesome Traveler (1960) (ISBN 0-8021-3074-7)
• Big Sur (1961) (ISBN 0-14-016812-5)
• Satori in Paris (1965) (ISBN 0-394-17437-2, out of print; currently available in ISBN 0-8021-3061-5)
• Vanity of Duluoz (1968) (ISBN 0-14-023639-2)

Poetry, letters, audio recordings and other writings

• Mexico City Blues (1955)
• Scattered Poems (1945-1968)
• Heaven and Other Poems (1957-1962)
• Trip Trap: Haiku on the Road from SF to NY (1959) (with Albert Saijo and Lew Welch)
• Pomes All Sizes (compiled 1960)
• San Francisco Blues (1954)
• Book of Blues (1954-1961)
• Book of Haikus
• Dear Carolyn: Letters to Carolyn Cassady (1983) (1000 copies Edited By Arthur and Kit Knight) ISBN 0-934660-06-9
• The Scripture of the Golden Eternity (1956) (meditations, koans, poems) ISBN 0-87286-291-7
• Wake Up (1955)
• Some of the Dharma (1954-1955)
• Beat Generation (a play written in 1957 but not found or published until 2005)[1]
• Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters, 1940-1956
• Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters, 1957-1969
• Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac (1947-1954)
• Safe In Heaven Dead (Interview fragments)
• Conversations with Jack Kerouac (Interviews)
• Empty Phantoms (Interviews)
• Departed Angels: The Lost Paintings
• Readings by Jack Kerouac on the Beat Generation (1959) (LP)
• Poetry For The Beat Generation (1959) (LP)
• Blues And Haikus (1960) (LP)
• The Jack Kerouac Collection (1990) [Box] (Audio CD Collection of 3 LPs)
• The Jack Kerouac Romnibus(1995) (a multimedia CD-ROM project coupled with a book) (Ralph Lombreglia and Kate Bernhardt)
• Reads on the Road (1999) (Audio CD)
• Doctor Sax & Great World Snake (2003) (Play Adaptation with Audio CD)
• Door Wide Open (2000) (by Joyce Johnson. Includes letters from Jack Kerouac)

Film

• What Happened to Kerouac? (1986 - Documentary) [2]

See also

• Beat generation
• Beatnik
• Neal Cassady
• References in On the Road

Notes

Further reading

Kerouac.com — Online Resource

Jack Kerouac's Life

Jack Kerouac GLBT page

Jack Kerouac Bibliography

Books comprising Jack Kerouac's Duluoz legend

Key to the characters in Jack Kerouac's books, and their real-life counterparts

Key to the real people represented in Jack Kerouac's books, and their fictional counterparts

A more complete Jack Kerouac Character Key from the everything2 site

Blue Neon Alley — Jack Kerouac directory

Interview with Jack Kerouac (Montreal, 1967) (in French)

Blyler, Kerouac, and Bohemian Roads — Article linking Kerouac's novel On the Road with D.A. Blyler's Steffi's Club.

A letter he wrote to Timothy Leary, describing his experience with psilocybin

American Writers: Jack Kerouac — A two-hour C-SPAN television show about Jack Kerouac

"A Vision of Kerouac as The Shadow" — a six page comic about two guys in Indiana talking about Kerouac

"About the Beat Generation", by Jack Kerouac — a definition of the Beat Generation in Kerouac's own words

Dharma Bummed: A Marxist Analysis of Jack Kerouac and the Beats

Language Is A Virus Kerouac's 'Belief and Technique for Modern Prose' and 'Essentials of Spontaneous Prose'

Denver Beat Photo Tour

Photos of the Kerouac Gas Station in Longmont, CO

Neal Cassady's official site authored by his family and updated monthly with stories and photos

Photos, Jack Kerouac's Last House, St. Petersburg, FL

Dharma Beat — A Jack Kerouac website with articles on Kerouac including a Calendar and a Links page

Jack Kerouac Project website

Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! festival site

Independent on Sunday feature

Analysis of Kerouac's life and works from a Roman Catholic perspective

A selection of front covers of various editions of On the Road

Guardian article on the history of the play Beat Generation, written and left unpublished for almost 50 years

The beat goes on: Tracing Kerouac's tracks 50 years later: A restless spirit and 'holy' pie endure By Charles M. Sennott, Boston Globe Staff | July 15, 2007

Books by Jack Kerouac

The Town and the City • On the Road • The Subterraneans • The Dharma Bums • Doctor Sax • Maggie Cassidy • Mexico City Blues • Book of Dreams • Tristessa • Visions of Cody • Lonesome Traveler • Big Sur • Visions of Gerard • Desolation Angels • Satori in Paris • Vanity of Duluoz • Pic • Scattered Poems • Atop an Underwood: Early Stories and Other Writings • Old Angel Midnight • Good Blonde & Others • Orpheus Emerged • Book of Sketches • And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks (unpublished)

Persondata
NAME	Kerouac, Jack
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	American novelist and poet
DATE OF BIRTH	March 12, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH	Lowell, Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH	October 21, 1969
PLACE OF DEATH	St. Petersburg, Florida

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