Line #8 Creator/JackKerouac


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/3c4e393f3382186086be540d64c8dd63.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:The Wizard of Ozone Park.]]
3	->''"I want to work in revelations, not just spin silly tales for money. I want to fish as deep down as possible into my own subconscious in the belief that once that far down, everyone will understand because they are the same that far down."''
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5	Jean-Louis "Jack" Kerouac (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969) was an American writer associated with Creator/TheBeatGeneration and best known for writing ''Literature/OnTheRoad'', an autobiographical novel describing Kerouac's travels with Neal Cassady. He also wrote ''The Dharma Bums'', which details his adventures with fellow writer Gary Snyder.
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7	Kerouac had a fascinating life. Born into a close-knit Catholic family of French descent who'd emigrated to Lowell, Massachusetts from UsefulNotes/{{Quebec}}, this important figure of literature in the English language came to the language rather late: his family spoke the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joual Joual]] dialect of French, he didn't learn English until he was six, and wasn't confident speaking English until high school (it was noted that he had a heavy accent in his teen years).[[note]]Other important English literature writers who came to the language late include Creator/JosephConrad and Creator/VladimirNabokov[[/note]] He also wrote a few short stories in his native tongue, which have received increased attention since it was discovered that Kerouac had originally planned to write ''On the Road'' in French and actually produced an abortive manuscript of it before producing the famous version.
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9	He attended Columbia University on a football scholarship, but later dropped out, and it was at Columbia where he first met fellow Beat notable Creator/AllenGinsberg. After stints in the Naval Reserve and Merchant Marine he settled in UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity and struggled to establish a writing career, with his first published novel, 1950's ''The Town and the City'' (credited to John Kerouac) being a bit of an AcclaimedFlop. ''On the Road'', which he wrote in 1951, was rejected by numerous publishers before Viking Press finally agreed to publish an edited version in 1957. Released to acclaim and controversy, Kerouac became a major name overnight, hailed as the figurehead of the Beat movement. Maintaining a prodigious output while sustaining a reputation as a cult figure, Kerouac never quite replicated the popular success of ''On the Road'', and his tumultuous personal life eventually took its toll on him. Despite being a countercultural hero, he was critical of the hippie movement in TheSixties, and personally fell out with many of his Beat colleagues. He died at age 47 of an internal hemorrhage, aggravated by his lifelong alcohol usage.
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11	Kerouac was a ''huge'' influence on writers and musicians who came of age in TheFifties and TheSixties.
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13	"Home I'll Never Be" and "On The Road" were both adapted to song by Music/TomWaits on his album ''Music/OrphansBrawlersBawlersAndBastards''.
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15	!!Works by Jack Kerouac with their own pages:
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17	* ''Literature/OnTheRoad'' (1957)
18	* ''Film/PullMyDaisy'' (1959) -- short film based on Kerouac's play ''Beat Generation''; Kerouac wrote the screenplay and starred
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20	!!Other works by Jack Kerouac provide examples of:
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22	* ArtisticLicenseReligion: A few major figures in American Buddhism criticized ''The Dharma Bums'' for what they felt was Kerouac's superficial understanding of the religion. Kerouac's friends Philip Whalen -- a Zen monk -- and Gary Snyder -- his mentor in Buddhism -- disagreed (though the latter had [[WallOfText other criticisms]] of the book.)
23	* AuthorAppeal: ''The Dharma Bums'' is the product of Kerouac's profound fascination with Buddhism in his early career.
24	* AuthorAvatar: Pretty much every protagonist in everything Kerouac ever published. Sal Paradise from ''Literature/OnTheRoad'' is Kerouac. Kerouac uses avatars in virtually all of his novels, although for legal reasons, the names are changed from book to book. As a result, in ''The Dharma Bums'', Kerouac is named Ray Smith, and in ''The Subterraneans'', he is named Leo Percepied. Virtually every other character is these books is a thinly-disguised avatar of one of Kerouac's friends or some prominent Beat Generation figure as well.
25	* BeigeProse: Most of the books not written in his spontaneous prose style end up being this.
26	* ChristianityIsCatholic: Despite his famed dabblings in other lifestyles, Kerouac always considered himself fundamentally Catholic, and his biographers note that his work is steeped in Catholicism. Keruoac even said that ''On the Road'' "was really a story about two Catholic buddies roaming the country in search of God. And we found him."
27	* DarkerAndEdgier: ''And The Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks'' is a gritty, violent, visceral true crime novel, a stark contrast to his earlier, more romantic literary efforts. In general, this is true of all of his books from ''Desolation Angels'' onward.
28	* FoodPorn: It's not unusual to find long, effusive paragraphs of Jack fantasizing about food. Eggs and coffee appear to be his favorite.
29	* GreenEyedMonster: Towards Gore Vidal, as expressed by the character Arial Lavalina in ''The Subterraneans''
30	* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: Inverted; Almost all of the characters in Kerouac's books were thinly-veiled versions of his friends and acquaintances, many of whom became famous authors and cultural figures in their own right. Reading his books in retrospect becomes a who's-who of major figures in 60s literature.
31	* PerspectiveFlip: ''And The Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks'' is written this way, alternating perspectives between the two main characters every chapter.
32	* PoliticallyIncorrectHero: The word choice of Kerouac's protagonist-narrators is characteristically...less than sensitive. This is especially true of Jack Duluoz, who features in several of his novels.
33	* RealDreamsAreWeirder: ''Book of Dreams'' is more or less just a published dream journal. The result is 200 pages worth of MindScrew.
34	* RomanAClef: The vast majority of Kerouac's novels are simply retellings of things that happened to him and the other Beat writers, with the names changed (and some parts taken out, as the first draft of ''Literature/OnTheRoad'' reveals). ''On The Road'' and ''Visions of Cody'' focus on his best friend Neal Cassady, ''The Dharma Bums'' is about his adventures with Gary Snyder, ''And The Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks'' (written with Creator/WilliamSBurroughs) was about a mutual friend who murdered a lover, and so forth. It became so well-known that the publisher insisted he use different character names in each book to prevent legal trouble for anyone involved, but [[http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1385865 they can still be decoded easily]].
35	* SpellMyNameWithAnS: Owing to a complicated immigration history, Jack's name has been variously spelled Kerouack, Kirouac, and Kerouac. The latter was his preferred spelling, which stuck due to it being the spelling he published under.
36	* WallOfText: The result of Kerouac's signature "spontaneous prose" writing style, where he would just write continuously on a scroll of paper without any pause for hours at a time, fueled by coffee and amphetamines. Using this method, he could produce full-length novels in a couple of days at most, but they were virtually unreadable before an editor got a hold of them.
37	* WriteWhoYouKnow: Kerouac insisted that he didn't write novels, he wrote " true life stories simply about what happened to people I knew." This actually caused some problems for his friends, given the sometimes scandalous nature of the stories he told.

Context Creator / JackKerouac