Jack Kerouac

So you think you know Jack Kerouac, "Father of the Beats," author of the Fifties seminal novel/memoir On the Road?  So did I. San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood was ground zero for the Beat Generation.

Maynard G. Krebs

Gilligan

Beatniks, as we called them,  were an oddity that my father made fun of, that main stream media mocked. Are you old enough to remember Maynard G. Krebs on TV's Dobie Gillis? If you are, you know what I mean. Smoke-filled coffee houses filled with grim wastrels in
goatees and berets spouting incomprehensible poetry, right? Not a very pretty picture. Even poor old Bob Denver got tired of the beatnik persona, upgrading to Gilligan on that eponymous castaway island...



San Francisco columnist Herb Caen dubbed the Beats "beatniks" in the era of the Soviet Sputnik as a way to paint the budding counter-culture movement with a Red brush. Beats like Kerouac hated the term and never used it.

His real name was Jean-Louis Kerouac, born to French Canadian ex-patriots in Lowell, Massachusetts. He was a football star who broke his leg playing for Columbia University, ending his athletic career. Jack turned his energies to the literary movement blossoming in New York City alongside fellow Columbia students Allen Ginsberg and Lucien Carr. Ginsberg introduced him to other soon-to-be-famous writers such as William S. Burroughs and Gregory Corso.  Allen Ginsberg also introduced Kerouac to bad boy icon Neal Cassady and they all fled to San Francisco.

Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac

Kerouac and Cassady would develop one of the most famous "bromances" in American literary culture. Their travels and sexcapades of the late Forties were fictionalized by Kerouac many times over, but most significantly in 1957's On the Road; Kerouac portrays himself as Sal Paradise and Cassady as Dean Moriarity. Earlier this year, a movie version of On the Road was released with great critical reviews but only modest commercial success. I thought it was wonderful. Kirsten Dunst and Kristen Stewart are the love interests (and in this movie, Kristen Stewart actually can act:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZhM-AcCzNU&feature=player_detailpage

I was researching the back story for the protagonist in my own novel when I first began to seriously consider the Beat generation and their effect on American culture. My attitude began to melt in the face of the incredible strength, creativity and life stories of these real-life characters. Iconic literary works emerged  from this group of outcasts who were trying to carve out a place in post-war American society for alternative thinkers. Through the Red Scare McCarthy Era and the conformity of Eisenhower's America they persisted to live, love and write about their march to the beats of many different drummers.

Earlier this afternoon, I convinced my wife and another couple to catch the finale of the Carmel Film Festival. The film was the cinematic depiction of Jack Kerouac's novel Big Sur. It was interesting, disturbing, stimulating, upsetting and enlightening.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irzMIbx_0Oc&feature=player_embedded

Jack Kerouac, like his pal Neal Cassady, had personal demons that he attempted to drown in alcohol and other drugs. Neither man survived the attempt; Neal died at 42 in 1968, Jack Kerouac died the following year at the age of 47. Their lives were truncated by self-destructive tendencies, leaving behind a trail of broken hearts and shattered dreams. Yet many from around the world are still haunted by the legacy of Jack Kerouac and his fellow Beats. Books are written, movies are produced, college students read his books, and San Francisco has memorialized him with a street paved in literary quotations.

The next time you are in San Francisco, take a stroll down to the intersection of Columbus and Broadway, where North Beach. meets Chinatown. You'll be standing in front of City Lights Bookstore, Kerouac's favorite haunt in San Francisco, a true icon of that or any other era. Walk through the crowded stacks on three floors of eclectic books. You'll see the Beat Museum across the street to the east, and two of Kerouac's famously favorite watering holes, just across Jack Kerouac Street, Tosca and Vesuvio. Step on in and have a drink in Jack's memory. Say a toast to those writers who have given their all in the name of their craft; their words live on.

Jean-Louis "Jack" Kerouac 1922~1969