Kerouac

Jack Kerouac

     – a free spirit of the Beat Generation

 By

B.D. Adams ©2014

 

There was an article on the Yahoo! home page last week that said a letter was discovered, which was thought destroyed decades ago. According to ancient knowledge, this letter had inspired Jack Kerouac’s writing style. It was found in an attic, garage or someplace just as cryptic. With my affected brain (due to my stroke), I began to remember this long-term memory item about him and how he inspired me, as a young American girl of the mid to late 1960s.

 Jack Kerouac was born in 1922 in Lowell, MA, to French/Canadian parents. By American standards, Kerouac’s family was … standard. His mother was a devout Catholic and his father drank (especially after the death of his older son) and swore, but provided for his family. They were small farmers in Massachusetts, but that ended when they moved to Ozone Park, NY, with Jack when he went to college.

 He was a good student and entered Columbia University, where he played football until he fractured his tibia. He wrote articles for the student newspaper, Columbia Daily Spectator. Then, Kerouac tried to be a good American (WW2 was in its beginning) and entered the Navy. The military was not for him, too many rules and not enough play-time. He was deemed as a radical misfit and was honorably discharged on psychiatric grounds. However, being a good American, he did join the Merchant Marines. For personal reasons, he was forced to quit this endeavor, after several tours, because some of the more highly ranked seamen were into homosexual activity. That was not Jack’s idea of serving his country.

 Once he met other writers/seekers, his Beat Generation awakened him to experiment with drugs and sex. The search of what life really meant in the 1940s and 1950s and 1960s! This group was the forerunner of the Hippy Experience.

 When he really began to write, Kerouac wrote about his travels across the United States with his good friend, Neal Cassady, who was the author of the lost 18 page letter; The Joan Anderson Letter, 1955. Most writers, like Faulkner and Steinbeck, dealt with religion, politics and love, as did Jack. Thomas Wolfe’s writings influenced Jack. Wolfe’s trek cross-country probably inspired Jack’s jaunt in the “Magic Bus” with Neal and other travelers.

 Human nature was his genre, but he took his meanings to different levels of humanity, more mind-expanding. His early writings were deemed sellable, but his fertile mind needed to unleash his spontaneous style with his life experiences. He became the icon for the Beat Generation! Beatniks! You know, hanging in Greenwich Village or San Francisco coffee houses/bars, beret-wearing-poetry-loving groups who would applaud by finger snapping instead of loud hand-clapping.

Unfortunately, as with other renowned writers, alcohol and drugs were his stimuli, as well as his down fall. Edgar Allen Poe, so it was assumed, drank himself into an early grave (there were a few other diagnoses). Jack was known to drink to excess all of his adult life.

 Granted, Kerouac lived in many places, but when I learned that I would be living near one of Kerouac’s “watering holes” (a tavern in Grosse Pointe, MI), I felt a bit better about moving to Detroit. My husband, at the time, wanted to move from Alexandria, VA, (Poe was from Baltimore) back to his home state, Michigan. We moved from Poe to Kerouac. What a difference.

 I had read once that Jack was not that keen on the Detroit way. As it went, I had the same reaction to living in Detroit. I lived there, but he merely visited with his first wife; her home of Grosse Pointe, just east of Detroit on the shores of Lake St. Clair. That city was stylish, but was too influenced by the bigger city. Detroit was not conducive to the creative mind for men or women. In the late 1980s, when I resided there, the attitudes were still back in the 1950s (when Kerouac was there). We were not a fans of Detroit.

 There have been other people, as writers or as truth seekers, who have emulated Kerouac. However, he was unique, one of a kind. My former employer, D.R. Goff, was one of these “truth-seekers^x1,” as was I. To my thinking, D.R. was more like Hunter S. Thompson in many ways, other than like Kerouac.

Jack died in 1969 (when I was 19) when he was 47 in St. Petersburg, FL. His death was attributed to his drinking. He had married three wives and fathered only one child (of which he was aware); a daughter, Jan Kerouac, a writer in her own right. She died young like her father.

 I was a young, teenaged girl when I first heard of Jack Kerouac. In my young, inexperienced mind, I tried to understand, to believe his realities, his writings. As with other teenagers of the time, I was forbade by my parents to read Kerouac. No Kerouac!

 When I grew-up, though, I did the reading. I never pushed myself into a drug-hazed reality like Kerouac and the other Beats. I had my hippy experiences, but I was always cognizant of my life. I never lost my grip. Too bad for Jack and the others who slipped away.

 Since, I cannot hitch-hike anymore or take off spontaneously, to wherever, my writing has been of memories I have had and what my inventive mind conjures up Through reading and conver-sations with others, I continue to search for America. When I did experience the freedom of hitch-hiking, either by myself or with a companion, it was easier to breathe.

 Kerouac had many quotes, but this one has stayed with me:

                     Live, travel, adventure, bless and don’t be sorry.

 

^{x1 – D.R. Goff and I never hitch-hiked together, in any actual or biblical form.}