Jack Kerouac has become one of those larger than life characters from American literature. Like Ernest Hemingway and Walt Whitman before him, Kerouac's mythic status as a road-weary traveler and writer of spontaneous, explosive prose is the reason readers are still drawn to his work.
Of course, the real Jack Kerouac was quite the opposite. Although he truly believed in an America that's only discovered on society's fringes, and tried to express this by writing in a prose style that mimicked jazz music's improvisational techniques, he was still a self-conscious writer who worried about what people thought of him and who methodically mapped out every word he wrote, constantly self-editing and re-writing as he went along. While Kerouac's fans thought of him as an independent man who was just out for kicks, Kerouac's reality was that he longed to settle down, own a ranch in Colorado, and marry a perfectly submissive and quiet wife who would bake and clean for him. At the same time, Kerouac was trying to come to terms with his Catholic past and his changing spiritual views that eventually led him to Buddhism (and, later, back to Christianity).
In Jack Kerouac's American Journey, Paul Maher, Jr. shows how a young man with grand ideas tries to seek out meaning in an America that became increasingly meaningless to him. Along the way, Kerouac decides that he must write the perfect modern American picaresque that would rival anything his heroes Mark Twain and Thomas Wolfe ever wrote; in On The Road, Kerouac takes his adventures and desires to new territories and American experiences and creates the perfect novel to express the yearning Americans felt at the time.
Maher's well-researched book about Jack Kerouac's journey as he wrote and published On The Road begins with a young Kerouac attending classes at Columbia University, when he meets his lifelong friends and literary confidantes Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs. At the time, Kerouac was obsessed with writers like Thomas Wolfe and Fyodor Dostoevsky who inspired him to keep writing. Kerouac sees in these writers and friends that life is lived best on the fringes of society, or, as Sal Paradise puts it in On The Road, life is lived best with "the mad ones ... desirous of everything at the same time."
Article comments
1 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
Maher's debunking of sorts, revealing "a man who was a careful recorder of his life....explain[ing] that the crazy spontaneity of Kerouac's life is more of a front than anything else" belies to an extent Truman Capote's famous criticism that "that's not writing, that's typing."
Great review, well written (and typed, incidentally).
2 - Natalie Bennett
This article has been selected for syndication to Advance.net , which is affiliated with newspapers around the United States, and to Boston.com. Nice work!
3 - bliffle
Good article! I'm still a fan of Kerouac, but I thought this article was refreshing, interesting and provocative.
60 years later most people don't understand or comprehend how unusual and daring Kerouacs adventures were in 1947. Nothing, then, was as easy as it is today. People waited months to make a brief long-distance call to someone in another state. An auto trip across the state lines was a great adventure. Not having a regular job was a big risk. Most 'ordinary' people had very little discretionary money. It was a different time and Kerouac lead a very different life and wrote well about it.
4 - Kevin Eagan
Thanks, Natalie! Great to see it's been picked up.
5 - Paul Maher Jr.
Kevin ---
Thanks for the perceptive commentary on my book. It's always nice to see that people can pick on what one is striving to communicate in a piece of writing.
Best wishes, Paul Maher Jr.
6 - Kevin Eagan
Paul,
Thanks for reading, and thanks for you excellent research on Kerouac! Much appreciated.
Best,
Kevin E.
7 - Dr. Larry Myers
Yes thank you for sharing your terrific concepts & informed perspectives. I have The Jack Kerouac Society in NYC & am hoping to galvanize Kerouac-ians in this important 1/2 century celebration.
Dr Larry Myers
PS Keroauc will outlast James Dean as his output was more prolific & more varied!
8 - Paul Maher Jr.
Thanks Dr. Myers, keep me informed about your Kerouac Society. [Personal contact info deleted]
Thanks!
Paul Maher Jr.