Justine Barbe's presentation

Jack Kerouac

I) Jack Kerouac

II) The Beat Generation

III) On the road

I) Jack Kerouac was born in 1922, in Lowell, in Massachusetts.

In 1940, he went to Colombia University. It was an unhappy period for him and he dropped his scholarship.

In 1941, he went back to Lowell. He worked for a local newspaper before to have a job in merchant navy.

In 1942, he went to New York. He met Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, famous American authors. With them and other novelists and poets, he formed the Beat Generation.

  

II) The Beat Generation's term was made-up by Kerouac. It appeared for the first time in 1952, in the New York Times.

The Beat Generation is in the American literary tradition. Its authors were the descendants of Thoreau, Emerson and Whitman, with the themes of the social contestation, the solitary quest and the contact with nature.

The works of the Beat Generation talk about liberty, liberalization of habits, drugs, alcohol and sex.

The Beat Generation was also influenced by jazz music. Kerouac said that he was a Jazz poet.

III) On the road, the Jack Kerouac’s novel, is the Beat Generation’s symbol.

In 1947, Kerouac met Neal Cassady. He travelled with him across the United-States, until 1950. He told his experience in On the road.

In the novel, Kerouac is Sal Paradise and Cassady is Dean Moriarty.

The three long trips of the two authors:

In 1947 (red trip):

The start was New York and the two men went to

Chicago

Des Moines

Denver

San Francisco

Los Angeles

and they returned to New York

In 1949 (blue trip):

The start was always New York and the two main visited towns were

New Orleans

and Los Angeles

In 1950 (green trip):

Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady travelled from

New York

reach to Mexico

This novel is about liberty and personal quest. It describes many sensations. Jack Kerouac wrote it in three weeks, on a paper roll of 36 meters. So, his prose is spontaneous and frantic, with jazz rhythm.

In the text, there weren’t chapters and paragraphs.

So, the novel wasn’t conformed for the publishers.

In 1957, a publisher accepted the text, but he imposed a new version, with a more conventional form. He censured also sex and drugs scenes.

It's only in 2007 that the original scroll was published.

So, Jack Kerouac is the most famous author of the Beat generation.

Many people know On the road but Kerouac wrote also 21 novels, 11 poems collections and many other texts.

To conclude, Jack Kerouac died in 1969, at 47. At the end of his life, he broke his relations with the Beat Generation. But when he died, Allen Ginsberg was profoundly sad. He lost his best friend and the Unites-States lost a major author.