Jack Kerouac
1922-1969
Jack
Kerouac was born on March 12, 1922 in Lowell, Mass. His real name was Jean Louis Lebris de Kerouac, but he
shortened it to Jack Kerouac. His
parents were French Canadians. He
actually spoke a French dialect before he learned English.
He was the youngest of three children.
¨
Early ambitions: When he was 11, he wrote his first short novel.
At age 17, he decided to be a writer,
and at age 18, he decided to be an adventurer and “lonesome traveler.”
¨
Columbia University: A football scholarship allowed him to go to Columbia University.
He dropped out after one year though.
He joined the Navy around the time of World War II, and then he was
involved in the Merchant Marine.
¨
Beat movement: Kerouac and one of his friends coined the term “beat generation”
in 1948. The beatniks had a
negative reputation at that time. To
Kerouac, “beat” meant, “trying to love all life, trying to be utterly
sincere with everyone, practicing endurance, kindness, cultivating joy of heart.
How can this be done in our mad modern world of multiplicities and millions?
By practicing a little solitude, going off by yourself once in a while to
store up that most precious of golds: the vibrations of sincerity.”
The beatniks “rejected mainstream society in the 1950s through their
unconventional writings and alternative lifestyles.”
¨
Novels:
His first novel called The Town and the
City was published in 1950
Between the time of his 1st published
novel and his 2nd, he carried many unpublished works in his bag as he traveled around the country.
His 2nd novel, On the
Road, was published in 1957. This
particular road novel made him famous—but he had a hard time responding to the
fame, and as a result, he was drank a lot and was unhappy.
¨
Marriages: Kerouac was married 3 times. His
1st wife was Edie Parker and his 2nd wife was Joan Haverty.
Both of these marriages lasted only a few months.
He and Joan had a daughter named Janet in 1952. His last wife, Stella
Sampas, was living with him when he died.
Kerouac wrote “The
Vanishing American Hobo” in 1959, and it was published in 1960.
Kerouac’s rejection of society, to an extent, can be seen in this work.
He views hoboing as a means of escape from society.
¨
Freedom:
He connects the hobo life to a free life. “There’s nothing nobler than to put up with a few inconveniences
like snakes and dust for the sake of absolute freedom” (2309).
Freedom is what a hobo really yearns for.
¨
Diversity: Kerouac points out that
hoboes come from all walks of life. Benjamin
Franklin, Beethoven, and Einstein are among the people that he defines as
hoboes. He humorously distinguishes
between different classes of hoboes. (see page 2312)
¨
Solitary Life: He also illustrates that hoboes lead solitary lives. “The hobo is
born of pride, having nothing to do with a community but with himself and other
hobos and maybe a dog” (2311). Perhaps Kerouac’s marriages didn’t fully
succeed because he chose this solitary life.
¨
A Changing Society: Kerouac recognized
America as a changing society. “There’s something strange going on, you
can’t even be alone any more in the primitive wilderness” (2314).
Kerouac
noticed the contradictions in society and voiced them in “The Vanishing
American Hobo.”
¨
Camping: For instance, he noticed the camping contradiction. “In America
camping is considered a healthy sport for Boy Scouts but a crime for mature men
who have made it their vocation” (2309). He portrays hoboing as a form of
camping.
¨
Police:
He greatly focused on the ills of policemen as well. “The American hobo has a
hard time hoboing nowadays due to the increase in police surveillance of
highways, railroad yards, sea shores, river bottoms, embankments and the
thousand-and-one hiding holes of industrial night” (2309). He negatively
portrays policemen as thieves of freedom. “Great sinister tax-paid police cars
(1960 models with humorless searchlights) are likely to bear down at any moment
on the hobo in his idealistic lope to freedom and the hills of holy silence and
holy privacy” (2309). He views
the police as having nothing better to do than bother everyone and anyone.
(see page 2313 for more of Kerouac’s criticisms of police)
¨
Media:
Finally, Kerouac criticizes this changing society that has labeled
hoboes. Kerouac criticizes the
media in particular. He says, “newspapers [have] made the hobo to be—the
rapist, the strangler, child-eater” (2310). And he blames “increasing
television stories about the abominableness of strangers” for causing him to
give up his hobo lifestyle in 1956 (2313).
Kerouac’s “The Vanishing American Hobo” parallels his life. Kerouac was an advocate of the hobo lifestyle.
¨
Hitchhiking and traveling: He traveled and hitchhiked around the country a
lot. He wrote about one of his
experiences of trying to reach the desert for a “night’s sweet sleep” (see
page 2313). The police harassed him and continued to ask him where he was going
and why. Clearly, he wanted to be
alone and be free.
¨
Only alternative to hoboing: “sit in a room and get drunk”: (see page 2314) Sadly enough, Kerouac opted for his
alternative to hoboing. He
basically became a hermit and drank at the end of his life. He moved to Long
Island to live with his mother, and then back to Lowell with his mom and 3rd
wife before he moved to St. Petersburg, FL with them.
After having 26 blood transfusions, Kerouac died, at a young age of 47, in St. Petersburg on Oct. 21, 1969 of a hemorrhage.
Sources
The following sources discuss Kerouac’s life and his works in greater detail.
¨ Charters, Ann, ed. The Portable Jack Kerouac. New York: Viking Penguin, 1995.
¨ Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 1999
¨ Miles, Barry. Jack Kerouac King of the Beats: A Portrait. New York: Henry Holt and Company, Inc, 1998.
¨ Nicosia, Gerald. Memory Babe: A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac. Berkeley: Grove Press, Inc, 1983.
The following Kerouac web sites contain a lot of information and neat pictures.
¨ http://www.charm.net/~brooklyn/People/JackKerouac.html
¨ http://edge.net/~dphillip/kerouac.html
¨ http://www.liglobal.com/beat/kerouac
¨ http://www.tijean.freeserve.co.uk