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Jack Kerouac
1922–1969 · 47 years Tier II
The Lowell halfback who learned English at six and kept the accent
French was the language of the house on Beaulieu Street. He did not begin English until school, at about six, or speak it with confidence until his late teens. His father Leo came from potato farmers at Saint-Hubert-de-Rivière-du-Loup in Quebec. In 1926 his older brother Gerard died of rheumatic fever at nine, and the four-year-old took from it a conviction that Gerard walked beside him for the rest of his life. Their mother went further into the Catholic Church afterward. Their father went into drinking and gambling and threw a priest out of the house. What got the son out of Lowell was football: scholarship offers from Boston College, Notre Dame and Columbia, where he enrolled in 1940, broke a leg, fought with the coach, and quit the team.
He dropped out and stayed in New York. He shipped as a merchant mariner from July to October 1942, wrote a first novel aboard, called it a crock, and never published it. The Navy Reserve took eight days to discharge him in 1943, on the grounds of indifferent character and a schizoid personality. In 1944 he was held as a material witness after Lucien Carr killed David Kammerer. His father would not post bail, so he married Edie Parker for hers. Robert Giroux cut 400 pages out of The Town and the City, published in 1950 as by John Kerouac, and it sold almost nothing. In April 1951, at 454 West 20th Street, he cut tracing paper into strips, taped them into a roll 120 feet long, and fed it through a typewriter. Viking published On the Road in 1957.
The spontaneity was partly a claim. His Columbia mentor Mark Van Doren said he had outlined much of the book in journals over several preceding years, and he wrote a novella in French, La nuit est ma femme, weeks before the English draft. Viking then required revisions, cut the explicit passages, and replaced the real names with pseudonyms for fear of libel. He never held a driver's license. Cassady drove, and Kerouac learned at 34. The fame, when it came, was worse than the obscurity. Within nine months he no longer felt safe in public, and three men beat him outside the San Remo Cafe on Bleecker Street. He watched the 1954 McCarthy hearings stoned and rooting for McCarthy, backed Taft and later Goldwater, despised the hippies, and told a reporter he was not a beatnik but a Catholic.
On the morning of October 20, 1969, in St. Petersburg, Florida, working on a book about his father's print shop, he began vomiting blood. Bleeding esophageal varices, cirrhosis, transfusions, surgery, a liver too damaged to let his blood clot. He died at 5:15 the next morning, aged 47, and was buried at Edson Cemetery, Lowell. His estate was worth 91 dollars. By 1998 it was worth 10 million, and his family and the executor of his dead daughter's estate were in court over it. Jim Irsay paid 2.43 million dollars for the original scroll and sent it on tour, and Viking printed its unexpurgated text in 2007. John Sampas held the executorship until 2017, when his son took it over.
Lifespan
Jack Kerouac's life against the full span of the corpus.
Notable works
-
The Town and the City
book
Published as John Kerouac after Robert Giroux cut some 400 pages 1950 -
On the Road
book
Drafted in April 1951 on a 120-foot roll of taped tracing paper 1957 -
The Dharma Bums
book
Typed in Orlando between November 26 and December 7, 1957, on a ten-foot roll 1958 -
Mexico City Blues
book
242 choruses built on jazz rhythm 1959 -
Pull My Daisy
film
Written and narrated by Kerouac, directed by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie 1959 -
Big Sur
book
The Bixby Canyon cabin and the drinking 1962
Life in brief
with age at each point- 1926 aged ~4 His brother Gerard dies of rheumatic fever at nine Kerouac was four, and said afterward that Gerard stayed beside him.
- 1940 aged ~18 Enters Columbia on a football scholarship He broke a leg in his freshman season, quarrelled with coach Lou Little, and quit.
- 1943 aged ~21 Discharged from the Navy Reserve after eight days of active duty The finding was indifferent character with a diagnosis of schizoid personality.
- August 22, 1944 aged 22 Marries Edie Parker in the Municipal Building to raise bail He was held as a material witness in the killing of David Kammerer. Two detectives witnessed it.
- April 1951 aged 29 Types On the Road on a taped roll 120 feet long No chapter or paragraph breaks. Joan Haverty supplied the coffee, the pea soup and the benzedrine.
- 1957 aged ~35 Viking publishes On the Road after six years of rejections Gilbert Millstein's New York Times review made him famous within weeks.
- March 1958 aged 35 Buys a house in Northport and moves in with his mother They stayed on Long Island six years, moving twice.
- 1968 aged ~46 Appears on Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. His last television appearance. He had split with Ginsberg that year.
- October 21, 1969 aged 47 Dies in St. Petersburg at 47 Bleeding esophageal varices caused by cirrhosis. He had begun vomiting blood the previous morning.
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