Kerouac Jack

This Wednesday coming up marks the 40th anniversary of the death of the legendary writer, Jack Kerouac. When thought of the beat generation comes to mind, the name Jack Kerouac is simultaneously mentioned, as is the mention of his generational and career defining novel, On the Road.

Kerouac had an inventive new writing style that was influenced by the boom of the Jazz era, and also by the letters of another well thought of beatnik, Neal Cassady. It is known as spontaneous prose.

In an NPR article written in September, 2002, the author tells of Kerouac’s 3 week explosion of a creative stream of energy that was fueled by benzedrine and coffee.

While Jack once argued that coffee and inspiration were the only things that fueled his burst of spontaneous prose, it was his reputation that hinted at his drug use. However, Kerouac’s reputation was somewhat misleading.

The NPR article also goes on to quote Douglas Brinkley, a Kerouac scholar, as saying that part of his fame was “predicated on the notion that he was an antiestablishment writer” and that he believes that this did a disservice to Kerouac’s message.

Brinkley goes on to describe On the Road as a “valentine to the United States.”

Former Kerouac girlfriend, Joyce Johnson, said of On the Road’s publication that “Jack went to bed obscure and woke up famous.”

It was the instantaneous fame and the mislead conceptions of his personality and his writing that eventually turned Kerouac toward a downward spiral of alcohol and benzedrine addiction.

Carolyn Cassady, former wife of Neal Cassady, who also had a close relationship with Jack Kerouac, goes on to tell in an interview that Jack told her that he was going to “drink himself to death.”

While the fame got the best of Kerouac’s mind, his lasting legacy is more prevalent now than it was in his day. His style has become increasingly studied and his works continue to sell. In fact, the continuous scroll on which he wrote On the Road sold for a reported $2.4 million to the owner of the Indianapolis Colts in 2001.

Kerouac wrote the way great jazz musicians blew into the horn. His words flowed free from his mind to the paper, creating poetry in the form of prose. His belief and motto was, “First thought, best thought.”

His writing style became influential to up and coming writers that followed. As an aspiring writer myself, I have also taken influence from this form of free writing and have found it rejuvenating as I learn to break away and distance myself from the conventional writing learned in early in life.

After reading On the Road, I felt as though I traveled across the country, that I had seen things that I have never actually seen. As Kerouac said (as mentioned by Brinkley), “Anybody can make Paris holy, but I can make Topeka holy.”

Below you can listen to Johnny Depp read a spoken word passage from one of Kerouac's works...

Sources

Npr.com. (2002, Sept. 9). Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/patc/ontheroad/.

Orr-Ewing, Will. (2007). Carolyn Cassady. Retrieved from http://www.notesfromtheunderground.co.uk/on-the-road.html.