Jack Kerouac

The Literary Exploration of Kerouac

"With the coming of Dean Moriarty began the part of my life you could call my life on the Road"(Kerouac 1). That was a quote from Jack Kerouac's book On The Road. His life on the road referred to in the novel On The Road is also referring to Jack Kerouac's quest in life to find the true purpose for living and a new lifestyle. Jack Kerouac's works were certainly an important part of American literature (Novels 193; Goldstein 61).

Jack Kerouac's date of birth was March 12, 1922. He originally lived in Lowell, Massachusetts. Jack Kerouac's ancestry was French-Canadian. When his family was together, they spoke a French-Canadian language called Joual. Kerouac was often called TiJean, which meant Petite Jean. He was the youngest of two other children. One of his brothers, named Gerard, died when Jack was 5 from rheumatic fever (Peterson 15, Jack 1).

Jack went to St. Louis French Parochial School when he was at the age of six. A priest named Morissette suggested to Kerouac to get an athletic scholarship and go to a College in New York City if he wanted to become a writer. Using his football scholarship, his high school was Horace Mann School for Boys. He was too poor to go to his graduation, so he had to stand out of the building and hear what he could. Also using his football scholarship, he attended Columbia University. He broke his leg in the first football season while playing. He wasn't permitted to play during his second season, and he left Columbia University. He was a seaman for a while, and he used his earnings from that to go back to Columbia University. He left the University again and returned to Lowell after that in a short period of time (Peterson 15).

In March 1943, he did not pass a medical test to become a Naval Pilot. He tried some Naval training though, and he did not like it. He was honorably discharged later because of his "indifferent character" (Peterson 15-16).

After he took another seaman trip, he had an apartment in New York. He made friends with Allen Ginsburg, William Burroughs, and Neal Cassidy. He married a woman named Edie Parker (Peterson 15-16).

Jack Kerouac made a new way of looking at being beat, giving it a positive meaning. He did this by taking it from the word beatific, meaning joyful or divine. He did this while beginning the beat era. He wrote many novels other than On The Road: such as The Town and the City, Maggie Cassidy, Doctor Sax, and many more amounting to a total of 30 novels. His life also became filled with promiscuous sex (with sometimes even men) and drugs. His life ended October 21, 1969 from liver failure resulting from alcoholism (Peterson 15-16).

In 1948-1949, beat actually began to have a decent meaning to it. The word beat was first used by poor black people. James Campbell describes beat at the time meaning depression, poorness, and being set outside by society. Later though, this became a term white people often used in describing a particular way of living. William Burroughs refers to being beat as being passive. Jack Kerouac, on the other hand, defined the lifestyle of being beat, a beat generation. This generation was a generation of jazz lovers, stoners, benzedrine uses, and other types of counter cultural people. John Clellon Holmes was a novice writer around 1947 like Kerouac. He wrote down a lot of what Kerouac has said when he knew him. Kerouac described the his new style and way of looking at life as being "a sort of furtiveness...a kind of beatness" (Campbell 451). The beat style was a style of cool; it was meant to be a self-protection from the ever-belligerent world. Kerouac and Holmes were both heavily interested in jazz; they often went to parties in Harlem where much of the original jazz and blues was heard.. Kerouac recognized that his ideas came from black culture (Campbell 451).

Jack Kerouac used his writing mechanism as a jazz musician would play his saxophone, bass, piano, trumpet, or anything else. It resembled the style of jazz called bebop, which was very intense and quick. When he wrote pieces of work, he did it very much like a musician would write music. Phillip Whalen claims that Jack Kerouac was the fastest typist he had ever known. In the book The Subterraneans, Kerouac wrote very colorful paragraphs. It was an attempt at righting a novel completely based on bebop. The Subterraneans was a book that was white man's art that originated in black man's art. He wrote in the same way a jazz musician would choose notes. Ironically, Jack Kerouac, and possibly the other beat writers (William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Gregory Corso) did not read any writing works by negros even though this was a period in which the work of negros had been noticed (Campbell 451).

Jack Kerouac made a new style of writing called spontaneous prose. It was a style that involves tiring and unremitting writing that was only made for a first draft, and then write a final draft which would be the peak for the writer. Also, when Kerouac became older, he started changing his style towards a deep romanticism that held the themes of disbelief, contumely, and artfulness (Douglas 21).

Douglas H. King claims that Jack Kerouac's writings are highly similar to those of F. Scott Fitzgerald and claims that hardly anyone has recognized this. King points out that On The Road and The Great Gatsby have many similar writing structures. Both books begin with each character breaking up with a long-time lover: for On The Road, it was the main character's wife, and in The Great Gatsby, it was a woman who the main character was engaged to. In both books, the main characters speak of a beginning: in On The Road the main character claims his life on the road truly began when he met Dean Moriary. For the main character in The Great Gatsby, his summer story really didn't start until he had dinner with the Tom Buchanans. The endings for both of the novels have the main characters being in deep thought about the country of The United States of America. Both characters have a place for relaxation of the mind. The main character of On The Road's place of mind relaxation is a pier, while the main character of The Great Gatsby chooses the beach as a place to relax his mind. The two novels have strong themes of manifest destiny in them. Both of the books though, say The United States of America is still somewhat incomplete. America is not incomplete as far territorial boundaries though, but incomplete ideally. They also both talk about how the country of The United States of America must find the genuine America with in the people in the country (King 209).

Jack Kerouac's book On The Road has often been described as a quest for spiritual freedom. The characters in On The Road actually