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Kerouac
Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (; March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Of French-Canadian ancestry, Kerouac was raised in a French-speaking home in Lowell, Massachusetts. He "learned English at age six and spoke with a marked accent into his late teens." During World War II, he served in the United States Merchant Marine; he completed his first novel at the time, which was published more than 50 years after his death. His first published book was ''The Town and the City'' (1950), and he achieved widespread fame and notoriety with his second, ''On the Road'', in 1957. It made him a beat icon, and he went on to publish 12 more novels and numerous poetry volumes. Kerouac is recognized for his style of spontaneous prose. Thematically, his work covers topics such as his Catholic spirituality, jazz, travel, promiscuity, life in New Yor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
On The Road
''On the Road'' is a 1957 novel by American writer Jack Kerouac, based on the travels of Kerouac and his friends across the United States. It is considered a defining work of the postwar Beat and Counterculture generations, with its protagonists living life against a backdrop of jazz, poetry, and drug use. The novel is a roman à clef, with many key figures of the Beat movement, such as William S. Burroughs (Old Bull Lee), Allen Ginsberg (Carlo Marx), and Neal Cassady (Dean Moriarty) represented by characters in the book, including Kerouac himself as the narrator Sal Paradise. The idea for ''On the Road'', Kerouac's second novel, was formed during the late 1940s in a series of notebooks, and then typed out on a continuous reel of paper during three weeks in April 1951. It was published by Viking Press in 1957. ''The New York Times'' hailed the book's appearance as "the most beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beat Generation
The Beat Generation was a literary subculture movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-war era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized by Silent Generationers in the 1950s, better known as Beatniks. The central elements of Beat culture are the rejection of standard narrative values, making a spiritual quest, the exploration of American and Eastern religions, the rejection of economic materialism, explicit portrayals of the human condition, experimentation with psychedelic drugs, and sexual liberation and exploration. Allen Ginsberg's ''Howl'' (1956), William S. Burroughs' ''Naked Lunch'' (1959), and Jack Kerouac's ''On the Road'' (1957) are among the best known examples of Beat literature.Charters (1992) ''The Portable Beat Reader''. Both ''Howl'' and ''Naked Lunch'' were the focus of obscenity trials that ultimately helped to liberalize publishing in the United States.Ann Charters, ''int ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Town And The City
''The Town and the City'' is a novel by Jack Kerouac, published by Harcourt Brace in 1950. This was the first major work published by Kerouac, who later became famous for his second novel '' On the Road'' (1957). Like all of Jack Kerouac's major works, ''The Town and the City'' is essentially an autobiographical novel, though less directly so than most of his other works. ''The Town and the City'' was written in a conventional manner over a period of years, and much more novelistic license was taken with this work than after Kerouac's adoption of quickly written " spontaneous prose". ''The Town and the City'' was written before Kerouac had developed his own style, and it is heavily influenced by Thomas Wolfe (even down to the title, reminiscent of Wolfe titles such as ''The Web and the Rock''). The novel is focused on two locations (as suggested by the title): one, the early Beat Generation circle of New York in the late 1940s, the other, the nearly rural small town of Galloway ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jan Kerouac
Janet Michelle "Jan" Kerouac (February 16, 1952 – June 5, 1996) was an American writer and the only child of beat generation author Jack Kerouac and Joan Haverty Kerouac. Early life and career Janet Michelle Kerouac was born a few months after her parents separated. Jack Kerouac met his daughter for the first time when she was ten years old, when he took a blood test to prove or disprove his paternity. Jan only met him once more, when she visited him at his home in Lowell, Massachusetts. In 1964, Jan Kerouac was briefly in a girl group called The Whippets The group, which consisted of Kerouac, Charlotte Rosenthal, and Bibbe Hansen, released one single, "I Want to Talk to You," a song response to the song "I Want to Hold Your Hand." The B-side, "Go Go Go with Ringo," also reflected the Beatlemania of the time. The single did not chart or get much airplay, and the Whippets broke up. Jan Kerouac lived much of her early life in poverty, sometimes turning to prostitution t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Franco American Literature
Franco American literature is a body of work, in English and French, by French-Canadian American authors "who were born in New England...born in Canada, ndspent most of their lives in New England... orthose who only traveled through New England and wrote of their experiences." "Franco-American literature" however, as a term, has also been characterized by novels written by the Great Lakes Region diaspora as well. In a broader sense the term is also used as a handle for those writers of Cajun or French descent, outside of the Quebec émigré literary tradition. Written in English as well as examples of Quebec and New England French, Franco-American literature and its associated literary and cultural movement represent an extension of ''La Survivance'' and Quebec literature among the French-Canadian diaspora in the New England region of the United States. In this literature, folklore, societal values and expressions of otherism are prominent motifs. While some literary figures, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Generation. He vigorously opposed militarism, economic materialism, and sexual repression, and he embodied various aspects of this counterculture with his views on drugs, sex, multiculturalism, hostility to bureaucracy, and openness to Eastern religions. Ginsberg is best known for his poem "Howl", in which he denounced what he saw as the destructive forces of capitalism and conformity in the United States. San Francisco police and US Customs seized "Howl" in 1956, and it attracted widespread publicity in 1957 when it became the subject of an obscenity trial, as it described heterosexual and homosexual sex at a time when sodomy laws made (male) homosexual acts a crime in every state. The poem reflected Ginsberg's own sexuality and his relatio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Dharma Bums
''The Dharma Bums'' is a 1958 novel by Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac. The basis for the novel's semi-fictional accounts are events occurring years after the events of ''On the Road''. The main characters are the narrator Ray Smith, based on Kerouac, and Japhy Ryder, based on the poet and essayist Gary Snyder, who was instrumental in Kerouac's introduction to Buddhism in the mid-1950s. The book concerns duality in Kerouac's life and ideals, examining the relationship of the outdoors, mountaineering, hiking, and hitchhiking through the west US with his "city life" of jazz clubs, poetry readings, and drunken parties. The protagonist's search for a "Buddhist" context to his experiences (and those of others he encounters) recurs throughout the story. Released just one year following the success of his previous novel, ''On the Road, The Dharma Bums'' was another success for Kerouac and became one of his most popular books. The novel would also go on to have a significant influen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Big Sur (novel)
''Big Sur'' is a 1962 novel by Jack Kerouac, written in the fall of 1961 over a ten-day period, with Kerouac typewriting onto a teletype roll. It recounts the events surrounding Kerouac's (here known by the name of his fictional alter-ego Jack Duluoz) three brief sojourns to a cabin in Bixby Canyon, Big Sur, California, owned by Kerouac's friend and Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti; at the same time dealing with his increased drinking and declining mental health. It is Kerouac’s first novel to be fully written following his success in the late 1950’s, and thus departs from his previous fictionalized autobiographical series in that the character Duluoz is shown as a popular, published author; most of Kerouac's previous novels instead portray him as a bohemian traveller. Synopsis The novel depicts Jack Duluoz's mental and physical deterioration in the late 1950s. Despite having found mainstream success with his work, Duluoz is unable to cope with a suddenly demanding public, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Sea Is My Brother
''The Sea Is My Brother'' is a novel by the American author Jack Kerouac, published in 2011. The novel was written in 1942 and remained unpublished throughout Kerouac's lifetime due to his dissatisfaction with it. The plot and its characters are based on Kerouac's experience in United States Merchant Marine during World War II. Kerouac served on the troop transport from July through October 1942 before returning to Columbia University. The ''Dorchester'' would be torpedoed three months after Kerouac's departure with most of the 600-man crew dying including the Four Chaplains. This service inspired him to write ''Sea''. The author, who was 20 years old when ''Sea'' was written, allegedly thought that the book was "a crock f shitas literature", and apparently did not bother to shop it around to publishers. Dawn Ward, editor of the Penguin edition of ''The Sea Is my Brother'', holds that while the novel is not the same as the great work Kerouac produced later in his life, it il ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joan Haverty Kerouac
Joan Haverty Kerouac (1931– May 15, 1990), born Joan Virginia Haverty, was the second wife of writer Jack Kerouac and the author of an autobiography, ''Nobody's Wife: The Smart Aleck and the King of the Beats''. Joan Kerouac's autobiography, which existed only in manuscript form when she died, appeared in book form in 2000 after the Kerouacs' only child, Jan Kerouac, her half-brother, David, and David's brother-in-law John Bowers helped prepare it for publication. Joan Kerouac was born near Albany, New York, and grew up there. At age 19, she moved to Manhattan after befriending Bill Cannastra, a lawyer she met in Provincetown, Massachusetts, while visiting an artists' colony. She remained close to Cannastra until his death in a subway accident in 1950. Later in 1950, Joan met Jack Kerouac in Manhattan. He invited her to his mother's home to meet his mother, Gabrielle Kerouac, and two weeks later Joan and Jack were married. Joan became the model for the character Laura in Jack Ker ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Desolation Angels (novel)
''Desolation Angels'' is a semi-autobiographical novel written by Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac, which makes up part of his Duluoz Legend. It was published in 1965, but was written years earlier, around the time ''On the Road'' was in the process of publication. According to the book's foreword, the opening section of the novel is taken almost directly from the journal he kept when he was a fire lookout on Desolation Peak in the North Cascade mountains of Washington state. Much of the psychological struggle which the novel's protagonist, Jack Duluoz, undergoes in the novel reflects Kerouac's own increasing disenchantment with the Buddhist philosophy with which he had previously been fascinated. Character key All of Kerouac's Duluoz legend's characters were based on others that were present within his life.Sandison, David. ''Jack Kerouac: An Illustrated Biography.'' Chicago: Chicago Review Press. 1999 Kerouac was not particularly conscientious about masking the identi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edie Parker
Edie Kerouac-Parker (September 20, 1922 – October 29, 1993) was the author of the memoir ''You'll Be Okay'', about her life with her first husband, Jack Kerouac, and the early days of the Beat Generation. While an art student under George Grosz at Barnard College, she and fellow Barnard student and friend Joan Vollmer shared an apartment on 118th Street in New York City which came to be frequented by many of the then unknown Beats, among them Vollmer's eventual husband William S. Burroughs, and fellow Columbia students Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg as well as Lucien Carr. Born in Detroit, Parker was raised in Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan. Edie and Jack were married on August 22, 1944 at Manhattan Municipal Building in downtown New York. At the time, Jack was in jail as an accessory after the fact in Lucien Carr's murder of David Kammerer. This event expedited their intention to marry as Jack's father, Leo, refused to bail him out of jail. Jack was released from jail lo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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