Kerouac, Jack, 1922-1969

<p>Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist of French Canadian ancestry, who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation.</p>

<p>Raised in a French-speaking home in Lowell, Massachusetts, Kerouac “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 over forty years after his death. His first published book was The Town and the City, and he achieved widespread fame and notoriety with his second, On the Road, in 1957. It made him a beat icon, who published twelve more novels during his life, and numerous poetry volumes.</p>

<p>Kerouac is recognized for his style of spontaneous prose. Thematically, his work covers topics such as his Catholic spirituality, jazz, promiscuity, life in New York, Buddhism, drugs, poverty, and travel. He became an underground celebrity and, with other beats, a progenitor of the hippie movement, although he remained antagonistic toward some of its politically radical elements. He has a lasting legacy, greatly influencing many of the cultural icons of the 1960s, including Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and the Doors.</p>

<p>In 1969, at age 47, Kerouac died from an abdominal hemorrhage caused by a lifetime of heavy drinking. Since then, his literary prestige has grown, and several previously unseen works have been published. All of his books are in print today.</p>

<p>Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist of French Canadian ancestry, who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation.</p>

<p>Raised in a French-speaking home in Lowell, Massachusetts, Kerouac “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 over forty years after his death. His first published book was The Town and the City, and he achieved widespread fame and notoriety with his second, On the Road, in 1957. It made him a beat icon, who published twelve more novels during his life, and numerous poetry volumes.</p>

<p>Kerouac is recognized for his style of spontaneous prose. Thematically, his work covers topics such as his Catholic spirituality, jazz, promiscuity, life in New York, Buddhism, drugs, poverty, and travel. He became an underground celebrity and, with other beats, a progenitor of the hippie movement, although he remained antagonistic toward some of its politically radical elements. He has a lasting legacy, greatly influencing many of the cultural icons of the 1960s, including Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and the Doors.</p>

<p>In 1969, at age 47, Kerouac died from an abdominal hemorrhage caused by a lifetime of heavy drinking. Since then, his literary prestige has grown, and several previously unseen works have been published. All of his books are in print today.</p>

<p>Jack Kerouac, born Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac, was born in 1922 in Lowell, Massachusetts to French Canadian parents. Kerouac spent much of his youth engaged in sports and other physical activities. His athletic prowess earned him a football scholarship to Columbia University where he matriculated in 1940, but he left Columbia in the Fall of 1941 after sustaining an injury that left him unable to play football.</p>

<p>Upon leaving the University Kerouac joined the Merchant Marine and later the US Navy, but retained close ties to members of the Columbia community. He lived on Manhattan's Upper West Side with his girlfriend, later first wife, Barnard student Edie Parker and her friend Joan Vollmer. It was through Parker that Kerouac met Columbia students Allen Ginsberg and Lucien Carr and their friends William Burroughs and Herbert Huncke. This group of friends and writers which would later form the nucleus of the Beat Generation, was the inspiration for much of Kerouac's work.</p>

<p>Kerouac married Edie Parker in 1944 and moved with her to her home in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, but their marriage lasted less than a year. Upon the annulment of the marriage, Kerouac returned to New York and his bohemian friends and began to write the novel which would become The Town and the City-- this novel, Kerouac's first, was published in 1950 to mild acclaim.</p>

<p>Kerouac's next novel, On the Road proved to be much more commercially and critically successful. This novel, published in 1957 documents a trip Kerouac took across the US and Northern Mexico with Neal Cassady. This fictionalized account of Kerouac and his friends introduced the beats to America solidified the image of the beatnik with his interest in sexual freedom, jazz, and drug use in the popular imagination.</p>

<p>Though Kerouac's goal had long been to be a writer, the success of On the Road never sat entirely well with its author. Kerouac continued to write his thinly veiled autobiographical novels chronicling his bohemian, literary circle of friends, but in his personal life he began to pull away from the public eye and distance himself from his Beat Generation associated. He moved to Northport, Long Island to care for his aging parents and growing more personally and politically conservative.</p>

<p>Kerouac died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1969.</p>

<p>Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist of French Canadian ancestry, who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation.</p>

<p>Raised in a French-speaking home in Lowell, Massachusetts, Kerouac “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 over forty years after his death. His first published book was The Town and the City, and he achieved widespread fame and notoriety with his second, On the Road, in 1957. It made him a beat icon, who published twelve more novels during his life, and numerous poetry volumes.</p>

<p>Kerouac is recognized for his style of spontaneous prose. Thematically, his work covers topics such as his Catholic spirituality, jazz, promiscuity, life in New York, Buddhism, drugs, poverty, and travel. He became an underground celebrity and, with other beats, a progenitor of the hippie movement, although he remained antagonistic toward some of its politically radical elements. He has a lasting legacy, greatly influencing many of the cultural icons of the 1960s, including Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and the Doors.</p>

<p>In 1969, at age 47, Kerouac died from an abdominal hemorrhage caused by a lifetime of heavy drinking. Since then, his literary prestige has grown, and several previously unseen works have been published. All of his books are in print today.</p>

<p>Service name: John Louis Kerouac</p>
<p>Date of Birth: March 12, 1922</p>
<p>Place of Birth: Lowell, Massachusetts</p>
<p>Father's place of birth: Canada</p>
<p>Mother's place of birth: Canada</p>