Jack Kerouac

Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouack (Lowell, Massachusetts, March 12, 1922-St. Petersburg, Florida, October 21, 1969), better known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist, pioneer of the Beat Generation along with his friends and also writers William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg.

He is recognized for his spontaneous prose. His work covers topics such as Catholic spirituality, "jazz", promiscuity, Buddhism, drugs, poverty, poetry, sexual freedom and travel. He became an underground celebrity and progenitor of the "hippie" movement, despite being against certain radical political ideologies.

Biography

Childhood

Place of birth of Kerouac.

Jack Kerouac was born on March 12, 1922 in Lowell, Massachusetts. His parents were Léo-Alcide Kérouack (1889-1946) and Gabrielle-Ange Lévesque (1895-1973), French-Canadians from the town of St-Hubert-de-Rivière-du-Loup in Quebec, Canada.

There is some confusion surrounding the writer's first and last name due to variations in the spelling of "Kerouac", this because Kerouac claimed to be called "Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac". The reason for this statement seems to be linked to a family legend that claimed that he and his family descended from Baron François Louis Alexandre Lebris de Kerouac. Kerouac's baptismal certificate lists him simply as "Jean Louis Kirouac", the most common spelling of the surname in Quebec. Research has shown that Kerouac's roots do indeed go back to Brittany, France; placing him as a descendant of a middle-class merchant named Urbain-François Le Bihan, who lived in Lanmeur and whose children intermarried with French-Canadians. Kerouac also had different stories about the etymology of his surname, usually associating it with Irish, Breton, or Cornish, UK Celtic roots. In an interview, he claimed that his surname came from the Cornish language, Kernewek, and that his family had come to Brittany fleeing Cornwall. Another version was that the Kerouacs had come to Cornwall fleeing Ireland (b.c.) and that the surname then meant "the language of the house". In another interview, he claimed that his surname was an Irish word meaning "language of water" and that it was related to the surname "Kerwick". Kervoach is the name of a town in Brittany, Lanmeur, near Morlaix.

Kerouac had two siblings: a brother named Gérard and an older sister named Caroline. The writer was called "Little John" by his family during his childhood. Kerouac spoke French until he was six, when he learned English, a language he spoke without confidence until his teens. He was also devoted to his mother, an image of great importance in his life; she was a Catholic, dedicated to instilling a deep faith in her children. Kerouac later claimed that his mother was the only woman he loved. When he was four years old, his nine-year-old older brother Gérard died of rheumatic fever, causing a strong impact on Jack's life. His mother sought solace in faith, while his father abandoned them, taking refuge in drink, gambling, and smoking. Some of his earliest poems were written in French, and in letters written to his friend Allen Ginsberg at the end of his life., expressed his desire to speak his parents' native language again.

Kerouac's third home. He referred to the house as "the sad Beaulieu".

On May 17, 1928, at the age of six, Kerouac made his first confession. As penance he was asked to say a rosary, during which he heard God tell him that he had a good soul, that he would suffer in life and would die in pain and horror, but that in the end he would receive salvation. This experience, along with the vision of the Virgin Mary that his brother had had, (and nuns fawning over him, convinced that he was a saint), set him on the path to adulthood. to a study of Buddhism and a permanent commitment to Christ, solidifying the vision of the world reflected in his work.

Kerouac's athletic abilities as a football running back at Lowell High School earned him scholarships to Boston College, Notre Dame and Columbia University. He entered Columbia University after one year at Horace Mann Preparatory School, where he earned the grades necessary for entrance to Columbia. Kerouac broke his leg during his rookie season, and for a second year he feuded constantly with coach Lou Little, who kept him on the bench. During his college, Kerouac wrote several sports articles for the student newspaper, the Columbia Daily Spectator and joined the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, he also studied at The New School.

Adult Life

When his football career at Columbia ended, Kerouac dropped out of college. He continued to live for a time on New York's Upper West Side with his girlfriend and first wife, Edie Parker. It was during this time that he met people, now famous, with whom he is always associated; the characters that formed the basis 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 the United States Navy in 1943, but served only eight days before being placed on the sick list. According to his medical report, Kerouac said he "asked for aspirin for my headaches and was diagnosed with dementia praecox." The medical examiner reported that the military report was poor, quoting Kerouac: "I can't take it, I like being alone." Two days later he was discharged for psychiatric reasons (he was of & # 34; indifferent character & # 34; with a diagnosis of & # 34; schizoid personality & # 34;).

While serving in the Merchant Marine, Kerouac wrote his first novel, "The Sea Is My Brother. Although it was written in 1942, the book was not published until 2011, 42 years after Kerouac's death and 70 years after it was written. Kerouac described the work as a "simple revolt against society as it is, against inequalities, frustration and self-inflicted agonies." He classified the work as a failure, calling it a "vessel of literature", never actively sought publication of it.

In 1944, Kerouac was arrested as a witness in the murder of David Kammerer, who had been harassing his friend Lucien Carr since his teenage years in St. Louis. It was thanks to Carr that Kerouac got to know Burroughs and Ginsberg. According to Carr, Kammerer's homosexual obsession turned aggressive, prompting him to stab him to death. Carr turned to Kerouac for help and together they dumped the gun into the Hudson River. Then, encouraged by Burroughs, they turned themselves in to the police. Kerouac's father refused to post his bail. Kerouac agreed to marry Edie Parker if her parents would post bail (marriage annulled in 1948). Kerouac and Burroughs collaborated on a novel about the Kammerer murder "And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks". Although the book was not published during his lifetime, an excerpt appeared in 'Word Virus: A William S. Burroughs Reader'. Kerouac wrote about the subject in his novel & # 34; Vanity of Duluoz & # 34;.

Later, he lived with his parents in Ozone Park in Queens, who had also moved to New York. He wrote his first published novel, "The Town and the City," and began the famous On the Road around 1949 while living there. His friends called him "The Wizard of Ozone Park", alluding to Thomas Edison's nickname, "The Wizard of Menlo Park" and the film The Wizard of Oz.

Career, 1950–1957

"The Town and the City" was published in 1950 under the name "John Kerouac" and, despite its respectable reviews, the book sold poorly. Strongly influenced by the reading of Thomas Wolfe, who reflects on the generational epic formula and the contrasts of village life against the multidimensional life of the city. The book was heavily edited by Robert Giroux, with around 400 pages removed.

For the next six years, Kerouac continued to write regularly. Based on earlier drafts and tentatively titled "The Beat Generation" and "Gone On The Road," Kerouac completed what is now known as On the Road in April 1951 while living at 454 West 20th Street in Manhattan with his second wife., Joan Haverty. The book was largely autobiographical, describing her adventures while touring the United States and Mexico in the late 1940s, as well as her relationships with other Beat writers and friends. He completed the first version of the novel during three weeks of spontaneous confessional prose sessions. Kerouac wrote the final draft in 20 days with his wife, Joan, providing her with benzedrine, cigars, pea soup, and cups of coffee. Before beginning, Kerouac cut sheets of tracing paper wide enough for a typewriter and rolled together on a 120-foot-long (36.6 m) roll, allowing you to write continuously without the interruption of reloading pages. The resulting manuscript did not have any pauses between chapters or paragraphs and was much more explicit than the published version. Although categorized as "spontaneous," Kerouac prepared well in advance before beginning to write. In fact, according to his Columbia professor and mentor Mark Van Doren, Jack had sketched out much of the work in his newspapers for several previous years.

Although the work was completed quickly, it took Kerouac a long time to find someone to publish it. Before On The Road was accepted by Viking Press, Kerouac got a job as a "railroad brakeman and fire watchman" (see Desolation Peak in Washington) traveling between the east and west coasts of the United States to earn money, often finding rest and quiet (space needed to write) at his mother's house. During this period he met and befriended Abe Green, a young man who would later introduce him to Herbert Huncke, a Times Square con man and favorite of many Beat writers. During this period of travel, Kerouac wrote what he considers "his life's work," "Vanity of Duluoz."

Publishers rejected On The Road due to its experimental writing style and derisive tone toward minorities and post-war social disenfranchised groups. Many publishers found the idea of publishing a book that contained graphic depictions of drug use and homosexual behavior uneasy that could result in obscenity charges, which later fell on Burroughs and Howl's Naked Lunch Ginsberg's.

According to Kerouac, On the Road was really a story "about two Catholic friends who wander the country in search of God. And they find it. I found it in heaven, on Market Street San Francisco and Dean (Neal) had God sweat on his forehead to the very end. THERE IS NO OTHER WAY OUT FOR THE HOLY MAN: HE MUST SWEAT FOR GOD and once he has found it, God's divinity stands firm forever and should not be talked about." According to his biographer, the historian Douglas Brinkley, On The Road has been misconstrued as a tale of comrades looking for punches, when the most important thing to understand is that Kerouac was an American Catholic author, with virtually every page of his diary sketchy of crucifixes, prayers or appeals to Christ to be forgiven.

In the spring of 1951, Joan Haverty divorced Kerouac while she was pregnant. In February 1952, she gave birth to Kerouac's only daughter, Jan Kerouac, though she refused to acknowledge her until a blood test showed her. confirmed 9 years later. Over the next several years Kerouac continued to write and travel extensively throughout the US and Mexico. He experienced bouts of heavy drinking and depression. During this period, he completed drafts that would become ten more novels, including The Subterraneans, Doctor Sax, Tristessa, and Desolation Angels, chronicling many of the events of these years.

In 1954, Kerouac discovered Dwight Goddard's A Buddhist Bible at the San Jose Bookstore, which marked the beginning of his study of Buddhism. Previously, Kerouac had taken an interest in oriental thought around 1946 when he read "Myths and Symbols in Indian Art"; by Heinrich Zimmer. In 1955 Kerouac wrote a biography of Gautama Buddha, Wake Up: A Life of the Buddha, not published during his lifetime, but until September 2008 by Viking under the name "Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, 1993-1995".

House in Orlando, Florida. Kerouac lived here while writing The Dharma Bums

Kerouac made enemies on both sides of the policy, the right dismissing his association with drugs and sexual debauchery and the left his anti-communism and Catholicism; in 1954 he watched McCarthy Senate hearings while smoking marijuana and supporting the anti-communist Senator, Joseph McCarthy.In & # 34;Desolation Angels & # 34; wrote "At Columbia all they tried to teach us was Marx, as if I cared." (considering Marxism, like Freudism, an illusory tangent).

In January 1957, Allen Ginsberg set him up on a blind date with young writer Joyce Johnson (1935-), who was working on her first novel, Come and Join the Dance (' Come join the dance'). They lived together until October 1958, in her tiny apartment on 68th Street. In September 1957, after being rejected by several publishers, On The Road was finally bought by Viking Press, which demanded major revisions before publication. Many of the more sexually explicit passages were withdrawn and, fearing lawsuits for defamation, pseudonyms were used for the "characters" from the book. These revisions have led to criticism due to the supposed spontaneity of Kerouac's style.

Career, 1957–1969

In July 1957, Kerouac moved into a small house at 1418½ Clouser Avenue in College Park, Orlando, Florida, pending the publication of On The Road. Weeks later, a review of the book by Gilbert Millstein appeared in The New York Times proclaiming Kerouac the voice of a new generation. Kerouac was hailed as a great American writer. His friendship with Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Gregory Corso, among others, became a notable representation of the Beat Generation. The term "Beat Generation" it was invented by Kerouac during a conversation with Herbert Huncke. Huncke uses the term "beat" to describe a person with little money and few prospects. 'I'm beat to my socks,' he had said. Kerouac's fame came as an unmanageable situation that would be his downfall.

Kerouac's novel is often described as the defining work of the post-World War II Beat Generation. Kerouac came to be called "the king of the beat generation," a term he wasn't always comfortable with. Kerouac said, "I'm not a beatnik, I'm a Catholic," showing the reporter a painting of Paul VI and saying, "Do you know who painted that? I."

The success of On The Road brought Kerouac instant fame. His celebrity status led to publishers wanting previously rejected manuscripts.After nine months, he no longer felt safe in public. He was beaten by three men outside the San Remo Café at 189 Bleecker Street in New York City.

Kerouac recounts parts of his experience with Buddhism, as well as some of his adventures with Gary Snyder and other San Francisco poets, in "The Dharma Bums," set in California and Washington and published in 1958 The novel was written in Orlando between November 26 and December 7, 1957. To begin The Dharma Bums, Kerouac wrote on paper ten feet long, so as not to interrupt the flow of paper changes, as he had done with On The Road.

Kerouac was demoralized by criticism of The Dharma Bums from respected Buddhist figures (Zen masters) in America such as Ruth Fuller Sasaki and Alan Watts. He wrote to Snyder, asking for a meeting with D.T. Suzuki, "Even Suzuki was looking at me with narrowed eyes, as if I were some monstrous impostor." He passed up the chance to meet Snyder in California, explaining to Philip Whalen, "I'd be ashamed to face him, Gary, I've gotten decadent and drunk, I don't give a shit." I am no longer a Buddhist" in reaction to his criticism, he quoted part of Abe Green's recitation, Thrasonical Yawning in the Abattoir of the Soul: "a huge angry congregation wanting to bathe, was inundated by the Fountain of Euphoria, and enjoyed the famous light like protozoans." Many consider this to show Kerouac's emotional roller coaster after unprecedented adulation and spiritual demoralization.

Kerouac wrote and narrated a film "Beat" titled Pull My Daisy (1959), directed by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie. It stars the poets Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso, the musician David Amram and the painter Larry Rivers, among others. Its original name was "The Beat Generation", the title was changed at the last moment, when MGM released a film of the same name in July 1959 about 'beatnik' tabloid culture.

CBS Television's series "Route 66" (1960-1964), featuring two young men with no strings attached "on the road" in a Corvette looking for adventure and fueling his travels with seemingly plentiful temporary jobs across the United States, came across as a commercial misappropriation of "On The Road." Even the leads, Buz and Todd, had resemblances to Kerouac and Cassady with Moriarty, respectively. Kerouac felt that he had been ripped off by Stirling Silliphant, creator of "Route 66"; and he wanted to sue, CBS, TV production company Screen Gems and sponsor Chevrolet, but was somehow advised to stop the legal process.

The documentary "Kerouac, The Movie" John Antonelli's (1985) begins and ends with footage of Kerouac reading On the Road and Visions of Cody at the Steve Allen Show, Plymouth in November 1959. Kerouac appears intelligent but shy. "Are you nervous?" Steve Allen asks. "No" says Kerouac, sweating and with noticeable trepidation.

Kerouac developed something of a friendship with scholar Alan Watts (renamed Arthur Wayne in the novel "Big Sur" and Alex Aums in "Desolation Angels"). Kerouac moved to Northport, New York in March 1958, six months after the publication of On The Road to care for his elderly mother Gabrielle and hide from his newfound celebrity status.

In 1965, he met poet Youenn Gwernig in New York and became fast friends. Youenn Gwernig translated his poems from the Breton language into English in order to allow Kerouac to read and understand them: "Meeting Jack Kerouac in 1965 was a turning point. Since I didn't understand Breton he asked me: 'Could you write some of his poems in English, I'd really like to read them...' So I wrote Diri Dir - Stairs of Steel for him, and I kept doing it. That is why I often write my poems in Breton, French and English."

In 1964, Kerouac's older sister died of a heart attack, and in 1966, his mother suffered a paralyzing stroke. In 1968, Neal Cassady died while in Mexico.

In that same year, 1968, he appeared on the television show Firing Line produced and hosted by William F. Buckley, Jr.. The visibly drunk Kerouac spoke of the counterculture in the 1960s, this would be his last appearance on television.

Death

On October 20, 1969, around 11 a.m., Kerouac was sitting in his favorite chair, drinking whiskey and malt liquor, trying to scribble notes for a book about his father's printing press in Lowell, Massachusetts.. He felt sick to his stomach and went to the bathroom. He began to vomit large amounts of blood, and yelled at his wife, "Stella, I'm bleeding." Finally, he was persuaded to go to the hospital and was taken by ambulance to St. Anthony's in St. Petersburg. Blood continued to flow from his mouth and he underwent several transfusions. That night he underwent surgery in an attempt to tie off the broken blood vessels, but his damaged liver prevented clotting. Kerouac passed away at 5:15 the following morning, October 21, 1969, he did not regain consciousness at any time after the operation.

Kerouac tomb at Edson Cemetery.

Her death, at the age of 47, was categorized as internal bleeding (bleeding esophageal varices) caused by cirrhosis, the result of a lifetime of heavy drinking, along with complications from an untreated hernia and a bar fight a few weeks before his death. Kerouac is buried in Edson Cemetery in his hometown of Lowell and was posthumously honored with a Doctor of Letters from the University of Massachusetts Lowell on June 2, 2007.

At the time of his death, Kerouac was living with his third wife, Stella Sampas Kerouac, and his mother, Gabrielle. Kerouac's mother inherited most of his estate and when she died in 1973, Stella inherited the rights to his works under a will supposedly signed by Gabrielle. Family members defied the will, and on July 24, 2009, a judge in Pinellas County, Florida ruled that Gabrielle Kerouac's will was false, arguing that she was physically unable to give her signature on the established date. had no effect on the copyright ownership of Jack's literary works, as in 2004 a Florida Probate Court ruled that "any claim against assets or property inherited or received through the state to Stella Sampas Kerouac, deceased, is disabled by reason of the provisions of Florida Statute §733.710" (1989).

Posthumous editions

In 2007, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the publication of On The Road, Viking issued two new editions: On the Road: The Original Scroll, and On the Road: 50th Anniversary Edition. The most significant edition is the "Scroll", a transcription of the original text written as one long paragraph on sheets of paper bound together as a 120-foot (36,576 m) scroll. The text is more sexually explicit than the one published by Viking in 1957, in addition to using the real names of Kerouac's friends instead of fictitious names. Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay paid $2,430,000 for the "Scroll" original and allowed for an exhibition tour that concluded in late 2009. The book 50th Anniversary Edition is a 40th anniversary reissue under the updated title.

And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, the Kerouac/Burroughs manuscript was first published on November 1, 2008 by Grove Press. in Burroughs compendium, Word Virus.

Les Éditions du Boreal, a Montreal-based publisher, has secured the rights to publish a collection of works titled "La vie est d'hommage," anticipating a spring 2016 release. previously unpublished works in French, including a novel "Sur Le Chemin" and the beginning of "La Nuit est ma femme". The papers will be published in French and translated into English by Professor Jean-Christophe Cloutier of the University of Pennsylvania.

Jobs

Style

Kerouac is considered the father of the Beat movement, although he did not enjoy labeling himself. Kerouac's method was heavily influenced by jazz, especially the Bebop subgenre established by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, among others. Later, Kerouac would include ideas developed by his Buddhist studies influenced by Gary Snyder. His style is commonly classified as "spontaneous prose". Although Kerouac's prose was spontaneous and supposedly unedited, he wrote, primarily, autobiographical novels (or Roman à clef) based on real events in his life and people with whom he interacted.

As the critic Juan Arabia points out: "The setting that surrounds the emergence and outcome of Kerouac's work – is in 1948 when he finished his first novel, La ciudad y el campo – is circumscribed in the rise of rock n' roll, popularized since the 50's in North America. It is the same fusion that sparkles in rock n' roll, that breaks through in Kerouac's very leap. In strictly musical ways, the black and white communities do indeed exchange precise content. In rock n' roll there are borrowings from blues, country western, boogie and jazz. In Undergrounds, for example, the author oscillated between the basic Faulkerian homeland and the land abandoned by the bones of ancient Indians and early Americans: "Hunt explains Kerouac's immigrant history, leaves him at suspended between two categories—he is neither black nor middle-class white American—and renders him incapable of resolving the dissonance between the rhetorics of the time about social class and ethnicity (...) and his feeling of marginality, his feeling that in Ultimately he was a foreigner and an intruder»".

Fragment of On the Road downtown Jack Kerouac Alley.

Many of his books exemplified the spontaneous approach, some examples being On the Road, Visions of Cody, Visions of Gerard, Big Sur, and The Subterraneans. The central characteristics of his writing method were the "ideas of encouragement"; (borrowed from Jazz and Buddhist breathing meditation), improvising words on the inherent structures of mind, language, and without editing a single word (much of his work was edited by Donald Merriam Allen, a major figure in the Generation of the Beat, also edited some of Ginsberg's works). Along with his "idea of encouragement" he eliminated periods, using a long board system, connecting the necessary dots. Phrases between hyphens resemble improvisational licks in jazz. When speaking the words have a certain rhythm, although none of them is premeditated.

Kerouac was a great admirer of Snyder, being heavily influenced by his ideas. The Dharma Bums contains accounts of a mountaineering trip they took together as well as entire paragraphs of letters Snyder sent to Kerouac. While living with Snyder outside Mill Valley, California in 1956, Kerouac worked on a book about him, which he considered calling Visions of Gary (eventually becoming The Dharma Bums). That summer, Kerouac took a job as a fire spotter on Desolation Peak in the North Cascades in Washington, after hearing stories from Snyder and Whalen about of their observation periods. Kerouac described the experience in his novel Desolation Angels.

Kerouac would talk about his method for hours, often drunk, to friends and strangers. Allen Ginsberg, unimpressed at first, would later turn out to be one of his great defenders, and in fact, influenced by the spontaneous prose method reflected in his work & # 34; Howl & # 34;. Around this time Kerouac wrote "The Subterraneans" being constantly approached by Ginsberg and others for a formal explanation of his style. The most concise explanation of his method & # 34; spontaneous prose & # 34; was Belief and Technique for Modern Prose, a list of 30 "essentials".

Some claimed that Kerouac's technique did not produce lively or energetic prose. Truman Capote proclaimed a famous phrase about Kerouac's work: "That's not writing, it's typing" ("That's not writing, that's typing," meaningless writing.) According to Carolyn Cassady, and others who knew him, he used to rewrite and rewrite.

Although Kerouac's work has been published in English, recent research has suggested that, in addition to correspondence and letters to friends and family, he also wrote fictional novels not published in French. A manuscript titled "Sur le Chemin" (En el camino) was discovered in 2008 by journalist Gabriel Anctil. The novel, finished in five days in Mexico in December 1952, is an example of Kerouac's attempts at writing in Joual, a typical dialect of the French Canadian working class of the time. It can be summarized as a form of expression used by ancient and modern patois in French by mixing modern English words. Set in 1935, primarily on the East Coast of America, the 50-page manuscript explores some of the recurring themes of Kerouac's literature through narrative very close, if not identical, to the spoken word. It tells the story of a group of men who decide to meet in New York, including a 13-year-old boy, "Ti-Jean". Ti-Jean and his father Leo (Kerouac's father's real name) leave Boston by car, traveling to help friends looking for a place to stay in the city. The story actually follows two cars and their passengers, one driving to Denver and the other to Boston, until they finally meet at a seedy bar in New York's Chinatown. In it, Kerouac's French is written with little respect for grammar or spelling, often relying on phonetics in order to render an authentic reproduction of his French-Canadian vernacular. The novel begins: Dans l'mois d'Octobre 1935, y'arriva une machine du West, de Denver, sur le chemin pour New York. Dans la machine était Dean Pomeray, a soulon; Dean Pomeray Jr., son ti fils de 9 ans et Rolfe Glendiver, son step son, 24. C'était un vieille Model T Ford, toutes les trois avaient leux yeux attachez sur le chemin dans la nuit à travers la windshield. Although this work has the same title as one of his best English novels, it is rather the original French version of a short text that would later become Old bull in the Bowery (also published once translated into English prose by Kerouac himself). "Sur le Chemin" was his second known French manuscript of his, the first "La nuit est ma Femme"; written in early 1951 and completed a couple of days before the original English version of On The Road began, as revealed by journalist Gabriel Anctil in the Montreal daily Le Devoir.

Influences

Kerouac's early writings, most notably his first novel "The Town and the City" they were more conventional, heavily influenced by Thomas Wolfe. The technique that would later make him famous was heavily influenced by jazz, especially Bebop, and by Buddhism, as well as the famous "Joan Anderson letter" written by Neal Cassady. "The Diamond Sutra" it was the most important Buddhist text to Kerouac, and "probably one of the three or four most influential things he ever read." In 1955, he began an intensive study of this sutra, on a weekly cycle, devoting a day for each of the six Paramitas and the seventh to the final passage in Samadhi. This was the only reading of him on Desolation Peak, hoping he could condition his mind to the void and possibly have a vision.

However, and often ignored, his greatest literary influence may be James Joyce, a work he alludes to far more than any other author. Kerouac held Joyce in high regard, clearly seen in his technique. Regarding On the Road, he wrote in a letter to Ginsberg: 'I can tell you now, I look back on the flood of language. It is like Ulysses and must be treated with the same gravity." In fact, "Old Angles Midnight" has been called "the closest thing to Finnegans Wake in American literature."

Although Jack Kerouac was never enthusiastic about rock, the mainstream of which coincided with the outbreak of his own fame, his works had a major impact on rock culture. Many artists, including The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, The Doors, and many others, credit Kerouac as a significant influence on his art and lifestyle. This is especially true with The Doors members Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek, who cite Jack and his novel On The Road as one of the biggest influences on the band. In their book "Light My Fire: My life with The Doors', Ray Manzarek (keyboardist for the band) wrote "I guess if Jack Kerouac hadn't written On the Road, The Doors would never have existed."

In 1974 the Jack Kerouac School was opened in his honor by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman at Naropa University, a Buddhist university in Boulder, Colorado. The school offers a BA in Writing and Literature, Writing and Poetics, and Creative Writing, as well as a summer writing program.

From 1978 to 1992, Joy Walsh published 28 issues of a Kerouac-dedicated magazine, Moody Street Irregulars.

Kerouac's French Canadian origins inspired, in 1987, Jack Kerouac's Road: A Franco-American Odyssey, a National Film Board of Canada documentary, directed by Acadian poet Herménégilde Chiasson.

In 1987 a song written by Marc Chabot, included in a quite popular album released in Quebec by Richard Séguin, titled "L'ange vagabond", explores some aspects of Kerouacs life. Chabot associates Kerouac's incessant mobility with a search for identity and respect from others, among other themes.

In 1997, the house in Clouser where he wrote The Dharma Bums was purchased by a nonprofit group, "The Jack Kerouac Writers in Residence Project of Orlando, Inc." This group offers aspiring writers the opportunity to live in the same house where Kerouac was inspired, with room and board covered for three months.

In 2007, Kerouac was honored with a posthumous honorary degree from the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

In 2010, during the first weekend of October, the 25th anniversary of the "Lowell Celebrates Kerouac" at Kerouac's birthplace of Lowell, Massachusetts. It offered walking tours, literary seminars, and musical performances focusing on the work of Kerouac and that of the Beat Generation.

In the 2010s there has been an increase in films based on the Beat Generation. Kerouac has been depicted in the films "Howl" and "Kill Your Darlings". A film version of Kerouac's seminal novel On The Road was released internationally in 2012, directed by Walter Salles, produced by Francis Ford Coppola. Independent filmmaker Michael Polish directed "Big Sur," based on the novel, with Jean-Marc Barr as Kerouac. Filming took place in and around Big Sur. The film was released in 2013.

In 2012 it was released, "Whatever Happened to Kerouac?" a remastered DVD of the acclaimed 1986 documentary, including a full-length disc of original interview footage. The extras, called 'The Beat Goes On', will include rare and unseen material from Abbie Hoffman, Timothy Leary, Paul Krassner, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Gary Snyder, Steve Allen, Ann Charters, Michael McClure, Robert Creeley, Herbert Huncke, Carolyn Cassady, Paul Gleason, John Holmes Clellon, Edie Parker Kerouac, Jan Kerouac, William F. Buckley, Jr., and Spike Morissette's father. In June 2013 'American Road', which features a significant section on Kerouac, won Best Documentary at the AMFM Festival in Palm Springs.

Poetry

Despite being best known for his novels, Kerouac also wrote poetry. He wanted to be considered "a poet blowing blue, one Sunday afternoon, at a jazz session. " Many of Kerouac's poems follow his style of spontaneous, uninhibited prose that incorporates elements of jazz and Buddhism. "Mexico City Blues," a collection of poems published in 1959, is composed of 242 choruses with the aforementioned rhythms. In much of his poetry, to achieve a jazzy beat, Kerouac made use of the em dash instead of the period. Several examples of this can be seen on "Mexico City Blues":

Everything

It is ignorant of its emptiness—

anger

Dislikes being reminded of attacks—

(Excerpt from chorus 113)

Other well-known poems by Kerouac, such as "Bowery Blues," incorporate jazz rhythms with Buddhist themes of Samsara, the cycle of life and death, and Samadhi, the concentration of mind's composition Also, following jazz/blues, Kerouac's poetry makes use of repetition and themes such as a sense of loss in life. He also cultivated the haiku, of which he became an important exponent in the West.

Discography

Studio albums

• Poetry for the Beat Generation (with Steve Allen) (1959)
• Blues and Haikus (with Al Cohn and Zoot Sims) (1959)
• Readings by Jack Kerouac on the Beat Generation (1960)

Compilations

• The Jack Kerouac Collection (1990) [Box] (Audio collection on CD, three studio albums)
• Jack Kerouac Reads On the Road (1999)

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