“where are we going, man?” “i don’t know but we gotta go.” jack kerouac (1922-1969) jack...

“Where are we going, man?” “I don’t know but we gotta go.”

Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)Jack Kerouac

• Born in Lowel, Massachusetts in 1922.

• Educated at Columbia University.

• At the end of WWII, he began travelling across the States.

1. Life

Jack Kerouac

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Jack Kerouac.

• In New York he met the intellectual Neal Cassidy, the poet Allen Ginsberg and the novelist William Borroughs.

• After his hitch-hiking across America with Cassidy, he wrote the novel On The Road (1957).

Jack Kerouac

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Jack Kerouac.

1. Life

• Frightened by his popularity, he became more and more addicted to alcohol.

• His novel Big Sur (1962) contains an account of the disintegration of all his hopes.

• He died in 1969 at the age of forty-seven.

Jack Kerouac

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Jack Kerouac.

1. Life

• Invented by Kerouac in 1948.

• Introduced to the public by an article on “New York Times Magazine”.

• Beat =

1. tired reaction against capitalism and Puritan middle-class values.

2. beatific Kerouac’s reverence for certain aspects of Catholicism and Buddhism.

Jack Kerouac

2. The term “Beat Generation”

A beatnik rock’n’roll compilation

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• Suffix -nik borrowed from Sputnik, a Russian satellite.

• Their main features: illegal way of life, acting on first impulses.

• They advocated escapism and

created underground culture.

Jack Kerouac

3. The beatniks...

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A group of Beatniks, 1950s.

• Spiritual and sexual liberation.

• Liberation from censorship.

• Decriminalization of the use of marijuana.

• The evolution of rhythm and blues into rock and roll.

Jack Kerouac

4. ...and their influence upon artistic movements

The Hip, a 1986 book about the Beat Generation

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• The spread of ecological consciousness.

• Attention to a “second religiousness”.

• Respect for land and indigenous peoples and creatures “The Earth is an Indian thing”.

Jack Kerouac

The Hip, a 1986 book about the Beat Generation

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4. ...and their influence upon artistic movements

“Because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones

who are mad to live, (..) the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like

spiders across the stars”

Jack Kerouac

5. On the Road

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A contemporary edition of On the Road.

• Story of a friendship.

• Diary-like account of Kerouac’s

wanderings across North America.

• It lacks a central plot episodic

structure.

• Theme of the journey an escape

from the town and from one’s own past.

Jack Kerouac

6. On the Road: structure

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A contemporary edition of On the Road.

Jack Kerouac

• Sal (the narrator) stands for Kerouac

himself.

• Dean stands for Kerouac’s friend Neal

Cassidy.

• Sal and Dean are linked to the same

restlessness.

• They keep on moving without a fixed

goal.

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A contemporary edition of On the Road.

6. On the Road: structure

• A fictionalised Neal Cassidy.

• He lives for “kicks” moments of intense experience and

pleasure.

• He is the symbol of the attempt to live every moment with

intensity.

“Ahead of him was the ragged and ecstatic joy of pure being”

Jack Kerouac

7. On the Road: Dean Moriarty, the protagonist

Neil Cassidy and Jack Kerouac

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• Spontaneous and episodic.

• Natural explosion of feelings and thoughts.

• Unsophisticated language, defined “hip talk”.

• Vital, authentic, alive and individual language.

• Opposite to conventional language.

• Break with the impersonality of the artist.

Jack Kerouac

8. On the Road: style and language

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