Who was Jack Kerouac?

An American poet, author, and painter, Jack Kerouac rose to notoriety during his short lifetime for his questioning the values and views of mainstream America. After his death in 1969, the life and works of this artist are still being uncovered, scrutinized, and honored as an influence on many people’s lives. Though his name might not be familiar to those under 40, he was most noted for his brash style of writing, his constant pursuit of new experiences and ideology, thus shaping the generation of Beatniks.

Born in 1922 to French-Canadian parents, he started out as Jean Louise Kerouac, a child of Canadian immigrants to Massachusetts in search of work. Though he often told differing accounts of his childhood and ancestry, his family spoke French and it was not until he was six years old that he began instruction in the English language.

After the death of his nine-year-old brother to rheumatic fever, Jack was never the same. Most of his life and writings, including his art, would be influenced by this haunting event in his young childhood. Though he wrote much during his adolescent years, mostly in French, this would not be discovered until late in his life. He took his inspiration from The Shadow radio program of the 1940s and writer, Thomas Wolfe.

In high school, he ran on the track team and earned scholarships for his skills in American Football. He ended up playing football at Columbia University, but injured his tibia in his freshman year, and began writing articles for the campus sports columns.

He eventually dropped out of college, though he remained in New York City for some time. It is there that he began his relationships with now famous people who remain associated with his name, from his characterizations of them in his novels:   Allen Ginsburg, Neal Cassady, Herbert Huncke, John Clellon Holmes, and William Burroughs, other famed authors of the Beat Generation.

Jack enrolled in the Marines in 1942 and the Navy in 1943, but was discharged during World War II, honorably, for having indifferent character. This indifference later resulted in his arrest in 1944, as a material witness in the murder trial of a stalker of one of Kerouac’s friends, Lucien Carr. When Carr had enough stalking by a homosexual, David Kammerer, he stabbed him and Jack helped dispose of the evidence. This event led to Jack’s first short-lived marriage. His girlfriend, Edie Parker, agreed to post his bail in exchange for matrimony. The marriage was annulled within one year, in 1945.

The events surrounding his brush with the law and the murder itself would later be addressed in the book, And the Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks, a collaboration with William Burroughs, who had been introduced to Jack through their mutual friend, Lucien Carr. This murder mystery was not published during either’s lifetime, but Jack also wrote about it in his book, Vanity of Duluoz.

Jack wrote his first novel, Town and the City, published in 1950 by Harcourt Brace. The story centered around a town called Galloway, which was actually his hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts. This autobiographical essay actually separates the author’s person into three different personas, and gives a glimpse into the mind of the artist, Jack Kerouac.

After marriage to his second wife, Joan Haverty, he wrote his most famous work, On the Road, in 1951, but it remained unpublished until 1957, as most were scornful of its sympathy toward minorities. Editors feared crossing the lines of decency with the book’s graphic details of drug usage and homosexual escapades. In those days, obscenity was a criminal offense. Finally, Viking Press agreed to print the book with vast changes from the original manuscript.

The book was a compilation of his memoirs from several road trips, embarked upon with friends, and his enlightenment of what the world was really like through his eyes. It was later awarded a place on Time Magazine’s top 100 best novels from 1923 to 2005. The impact upon other artists of the period was phenomenal. Musician Bob Dylan, years later, stated, “It changed my life the way it changed everyone else’s.”

The notoriety after the book’s release was widespread and hailed Jack, along with Greg Corso, Alan Ginsberg, and William Burroughs, as the “Beat Generation,” those writers of that era who rejected traditional American values, experimented with drugs and other forms of sex, and were highly interested in Eastern religions.

The years pending the book’s release brought Jack a divorce from his second wife, Joan, the birth of a daughter he disclaimed as his own until a blood test proved him the father nine years later, and periods of depression with episodes of heavy drinking and drug use. After he was dubbed the “king of the beat generation,” which he profusely denied, he found the life of the famous unbearable. Within the first year, he was beaten up and his friend, Neal Cassady, was set up and incarcerated for the sale of marijuana. Consequently, Jack feared being in public and began withdrawing from society.

Asked to write a sequel to On the Road, he quickly wrote about his Buddhism experiences in The Dharma Bums, which was published in 1958. The noted figures of American Buddhism were quick to berate him as a phony.

Even though his reputation seemed at odds with his conservative politics, Jack took a stance against all the hippie generation stood for. He supported the Vietnam War and began a friendship with William H. Buckley, the well-known American political commentator.

Jack authored one film, Pull My Daisy, in 1958, but moved back to New York, soon after, to take care of his mother and hide from his hated fame.

His third wife, Stella, and his mother outlived the notorious author, as Jack’s drinking finally caught up with him. He was rushed to the hospital and died the next day from cirrhosis which had caused internal bleeding. He was only 47 years old. It was a tragic ending to a tragic life, but his influence would live on and, indeed, does still today through the many books, movies, websites, and museum displays paying tribute to Jack Kerouac.

For Further Reading on Jack Kerouac:

• Dharma Beat: a website dedicated to the life and works of Kerouac with information on Kerouac events and happenings around the globe.
• American Museum of Beat Art: an online gallery of American beat works complete with indepth information on the artists, poets, and writers of the genre.
• Literary Kicks: The Beat Generation: an indepth look at the Beat Generation.
• 'And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks': A San Francisco Chronicle article about the novel by Kerouac and William S. Burroughs.
• NPR:Kerouac's On The Road: an analytical look at Kerouac's greatest work of literature.

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