On the Road

The Beat Generation & Jack Kerouac

The Beats

• A small group of friends turned into a movement– Jack Kerouac– Allen Ginsberg– Neal Cassady–William S.

Burroughs– John Clellon

Holmes

The Beats

• Started in uptown Manhattan in the mid-1940s

• Migrated to San Francisco and picked up other like-minded friends

The Beat Generation

• “If today’s Generation X” (or “Gen Y” or whatever it’s called) is like Woodstock, the Beat Generation was like a small dark tavern at two in the morning, with a bunch of old jazz musicians jamming on stage and Jack Kerouac buying rounds at the bar.”

The Beat Generation

• “The so-called Beat Generation was a whole bunch of people, of all different nationalities, who came to the conclusion that society sucked.”

The Beat Generation

• “Beat”: bad, ruined, spent – defeat, resignation, disappointment

• Young men who “came of age” during World War II but couldn’t fit in as clean-cut soldiers or professional businessmen

• They had to struggle to survive – and couldn’t sit still

The Beat Generation

• “Beat”: beatific, holy, sacred

• Kerouac was a devout Catholic and wanted to capture the “secret holiness” of the downtrodden

Jack Kerouac

• Born Jean-Louis Kerouac on March 12, 1922

• Spoke joual, a French dialect, before learning English

• Youngest of three children

Jack Kerouac

• Won a football scholarship to Columbia University in New York

• Fought with the coach• Dropped out and

joined the military• Took cross-country

trips with Neal Cassady and started working on his novel

Jack Kerouac & On the Road

• Wrote about his trips – Exactly as they happened– Without pausing to edit,

fictionalize, or even think– With no paragraph marks– In stream-of-consciousness

style

• Myths:– Presented his manuscript on a

single roll of unbroken paper, 120-feet long

– In three weeks

• Faced seven years of rejection prior to publication

Jack Kerouac & On the Road

• Achieved sudden celebrity: “Jack went to bed obscure and woke up famous”

• Encountered spiritual and moral decline

• Developed a severe drinking habit

• Moved back to Long Island to live with his mother

• Died on October 21, 1969

On the Road

• “If you read On the Road, it’s a valentine to the United States. All this is pure poetry almost a boy’s love for his country that’s just gushing in its adjectives and descriptions. You know, Kerouac used to say, ‘Anybody can make Paris holy, but I can make Topeka holy.’”

On the Road

• Gave a voice to a rising, dissatisfied fringe of the young generation of the late 1940s and early 1950s

• A cast of restless, idealistic youth who yearn for something more than the bland conformity of a generally prosperous society

On the Road

• Colorful characters:– Jack Kerouac = Sal

Paradise– Neal Cassady =

Dean Moriarty (an “archetypal American Man”

– Allen Ginsberg = Carlo Marx

–William Burroughs = Bull Lee