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KEROUAC: the king of the Beat
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"Let's go.
Where are we going, man?
I don't know, but we gotta go".
On the Road
Bio Kerouac
Biographic
infos
Jack Kerouac [I1] [ES1] defined
himself "the King of the Beat": he was born in Lowell,
Massachussetts, in 1922, of French-Canadian parents.His first language
was a French dialect and his first never-forgotten name was 'Ti Jean
(Petit Jean). His childhood was
typical of a standard American boy and he sought some sort of evasion
from his hard-working middle-class milieu in day-dreams about becoming
a football champion or a great writer. He entered Columbia University,
but abandoned the studies after one year and went back to his home; he
tried several manual jobs, moved restlessly from town to town and was
in the Navy for a small period.
In
1943 he went to New York and joined some young people who, like him,
rebelled against the middle-class way of life.
In
1944 he made the acquaintance of Allen Ginsberg, who was to influence
and remained on of his true friends in the course of his life. Another
important meeting for Kerouac was Neal Cassady 's: Neal's spontaneity,
love for adventure, untamed spirit, made him a kind of hero in Jack's
eyes, who idealized his new friend and portrayed him in his best known
novel as "Dean Moriarty".
In 1947 Kerouac hitch-hiked around
the States, which provided him material for his later writings. In that
year his first novel, The Town and the City, was rejected by
two publishers.
In 1948 he began to work at On the
Road [ES1] ; his restlessness
led him to change his residence continually: first he lived with his
family, then with friends in San Francisco and New York.
In 1950, when The Town and the
City was published, Kerouac was busy working at On the Road, to which he devoted
himself with ardour, trying to convey the spirit of the adventures that
make up the book. Once again Neal Cassady's influence proved very
important: Kerouac found in his friend's endless letters the
spontaneity and the "rhythn" that he considered appropriate for his
book.
As soon as the book was finished, in 1951, the author resumed his
restless moving from place to place, joining various friends. He
suffered of depression, too, owing to his constant financial
difficulties (On the Road was
rejected by various publishers) and became more and more
dependent on alcohol. In this bad period, he found comfort in the study
of Buddhism and in meditation: the novel The Dharma Bums (1958) reflects his
interest in Oriental philosophy.
In 1955 Kerouac obtained a contract with a publisher and consented to
the publication passages from On the
Road in magazines. In 1956, he moved to San Francisco and
lived with Allen Ginsberg, Cassady and Gregory Corso for a while.
The publication of On the Road
in 1957 marked the beginning of his success: the book became a
best seller.
The Subterraneans and The Dharma Bums were published in
1958, and between 1959 and 1960 came out other three novels: Maggie Cassidy, Visions of Cody and Tristessa.
From then on, Kerouac was faced with the difficult side of popularity:
radio and TV interviews, newspaper reports, administering money, were
too much for him. He drank more and more and suffered from
hallucinations; he decided to return to live with his mother. The book Big Sur (1962) contains the
account of his despair and the break down of all his hopes.
His last novel, Pic, was
finished shortly before his death, and published posthumously in 1971.
Kerouac died, in 1969, at the age of 47, of a haemorrhage caused by
drinking and drug abuse.
He was the most outstanding personality of the Beat
Generation, a group of writers with whom he shared the rejection of the
way of life of the Establishment and the longing for freedom from all
kinds of constrictions.
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