Jack Kerouac

The King of the Bums

As all true Kerouac afficionados know, Jack was born as Jean Louis Kerouac on March 12, 1922 in Lowell, Massachussets. He learned to speak French from his Canadian parents and grew up active and athletic. He must have been at least an adequate student in secondary school since he won a football scholarship to Columbia University. His heart, though, really wasn't into sports; instead he wanted to be a writer. Of course, then (as now) Columbia was a good place to study for a literary career, but Jack wasn't really interested in taking classes either. Soon he dropped out - or was expelled - and remained in New York where he spent a lot of time drinking, partying, and talking about literature.

Of course, ever since December 7, 1941 - when Jack was nineteen - there had been a war on. With his athletic ability and near perfect health, there was no way Jack could avoid the draft. In any case, he was and remained a man of traditional patriotic values, and he enlisted in the Navy. He soon discovered he was as ill-fitted for the armed services as he was for college, and he managed to get himself diagnosed as schizophrenic. When that didn't get him an immediate discharge, he ran naked across the parade ground shouting "Geronimo!" just as a group of high level officers were passing through. Soon he was back in New York City.

Of course, aspiring authors do have to eat, and Jack landed the somewhat literary job of writing script outlines for Columbia pictures. The work wasn't steady, though, and he joined the merchant marines. The merchant service was a good place for someone of Jack's temperament to serve his country, and it was not necessarily safer than combat since merchant ships of belligerent powers are considered legitimate wartime targets. But Jack managed, not only to survive, but to get by.

It was around this time that Jack took up with a young lady named Edie Parker. When he was on shore, he and Edie - ah - "kept company" as it was - and Edie's dad thought they should get married. But that was too mainstream for Jack and his literary friends, many of whom also kept company with various young ladies. The ladies, we must add, were the ones who had the steadier jobs and usually paid the rent. Most of Jack's own buddies were his acquaintances from Columbia. These included William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and the rather feckless, Lucien Carr.

It was Lucien that first got Jack's name in print, although not really like Jack would have wanted. On a hot August night in 1944, Lucien, his friend David Kammerer, and some others had been drinking at a local bar. The oft-told story is Lucien went out to get a breath of fresh air. He walked over to Riverside Park, and David came along. Fired by liquor, David suddenly professed his passion for Lucien, and somewhat paradoxically threatened to kill him. He then threw himself upon the slighter man. The attack scared Lucien so bad he pulled out his pocket knife (the usual story is it was his old Boy Scout knife), and before either of them knew what happened, David was laying silent, still, and quite lifeless.

Lucien panicked. He removed David's shoelaces and bound him up. After stuffing stones gathered from the river's side into David's pockets, Lucien rolled hs friend down the bank and into the Hudson.

The official story outlined here, inevitably the one you read, has recently been called into question. But at this late date it's not likely anything new will ever be learned. Be that as it may, we do known Lucien went to Bill Burroughs and then to Jack for advice. Both told him to turn himself in. Lucien did so a couple of days later

But New York's finest hadn't heard anything about dead people floating down the Hudson River and didn't believe him. But when David finally surfaced a few days later, rather the worse for wear, the men of law realized the baby faced kid from Columbia hadn't been joking. During the meantime, Jack had helped Lucien get rid of the knife and so became an accessory after the fact. Both Jack and Bill Burroughs were arrested along with Lucien.

Edie decided to stand by her man. Naturally this meant bailing him out. But since she, like Jack, was usually broke, she went to her pappy. Daddy agreed to spring Jack, but only, he said, if Edie and Jack got married. So following a brief jailhouse ceremony, the money was forwarded and Jack got out. Jack and Edie stayed married, oh, maybe a few months.

Although Jack or Bill never had to go to court, Lucien wasn't so lucky. He was slapped with a maximum of twenty years. This might seem a pretty stiff sentence for self-defense followed by a panic attack. But it was understood that if Lucien was a good boy, he might be out in as little as a year. He served nineteen months and when Lucien was out, the war was over. He became an editor for United Press International, stayed friends with Jack, and retired in 1993.

Jack spent the next several years bumming around, sponging off his friends, and eventually writing his pièce de résistance, the iconic On the Road. Officially the book is one of the most important and influential books of the Twentieth Century. Some, though, have seen it as infantile, pretentious, and just plain poorly written. But of course, de rebus litteris, just as de rebus gustibus, non est disputandum.

Stories abound about the writing of On the Road. Again the usual telling (sigh) is the manuscript was typed without editing in nearly non-stop marathon sessions on a continuous roll of teletype paper with a little help caffeine and amphetamines - the latter a favorite drug of the Beats. The veracity of the story, though, is debated since now we read the original manuscript - recently sold at auction - is taped together from separate sheets. So we deduce 1) Jack typed the manuscript, cut the roll into bits and taped them back together, 2) cut the roll into bits, typed the manuscript, and taped the sheets back together, or 3) typed the manuscript on separate sheets and taped them together. Either that or he did something else.

In 1950, Jack again married, this time to Joan Haverty. This marriage, too, was brief - very brief - and Jack left Joan before their daughter, Jan, was born. Jan met her father only once or twice, and in general Jack had nothing to do with her. So while Jack lived off the royalties of On the Road, enjoying a life if not of great wealth, then one of ease, and was wined and dined and interviewed as a major living author, Jan spent most of her early life destitute, on the road and on the streets.

Jan finally obtained financial stability when she was paid a portion of her father's royalties. She herself published two novels, both of which were well received, if not best sellers. Her health, though, was never good, and following five years of dialysis and immediately after an operation, she died at the age of 44. So although Jack may very well merit the sobriquet as the "King of the Beats", but if we consider his dealings with Jan, we can honestly dub him the "King of the Bums", a title mostly likely with which he would not have quarreled.

As Jack recedes into history, his reputation continues to soar, and in many quarters he has now achived near deification. Some readers, though, pick up his books and wonder why the heck the Emperor of the Beat Generation doesn't put on some clothes. Perhaps like many authors Jack's most famous works are simply not his best works. Some of his poems, though, - particularly his haikus - are actually quite good, but it is hard to find profound wisdom in Jack's television interviews, at least one of which was nothing more than a pathetic, drunken slobbering.

Jack finally retired to Florida to live with his mother and his third wife Stella. Unlike many of the Beat Generation, as the now mythological 1960's rolled in, Jack did not adopt leftish politics becoming in vogue, nor did he morph along with many of the other Beats into the growing hippie movement. When asked, he voiced mainstream and even conservative American politics, and he always supported the Vietnam War. Addicted to alcohol and drinking near constantly, on October 20, 1969 and at the age of 47, Jack was struck by a stomach hemorrhage as - once more the story goes - he watched the "Galloping Gourmet" on television. He died the next day.

References

Jack Kerouac: King of the Beats, Barry Miles, Henry Holt (1998). A good biography by perhaps the major chronicler of the lives of the Beat Generation. An objective biography that doesn't hide Jack's foibles.

Ginsberg: A Biography, Barry Miles, Virgin Books (2001). The biography of Allen Ginsberg is in two editions. The first (1989) issued while Allen was still alive and the second (listed here) was after Allen died. There is a lot about the early years of the Beat Generation and about Jack. Naturally there's more about Allen who was one of the longer lived of the Beats.

"Lucien Carr: Fallen Angel of the Beat Poets, Later an Unflappable News Editor with United Press", Eric Homberger, The Guardian, (Feb. 9, 2005). Lucien's obituary which voices some doubt that the story of Lucien and David is as straightforward as usually depicted. As of this writing, there is an online version at http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2005/feb/09/guardianobituaries.pressandpublishing.

"Jan Kerouac, 44, the Novelist And Daughter of a Beat Icon", The New York Times, (June 8, 1996), Section 1, Page 12. Obituary of Jan Kerouac. Again on line (at least at present) at http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/08/arts/jan-kerouac-44-the-novelist-and-daughter-of-a-beat-icon.html

"Carving up the cult of Kerouac", Edward Helmore, the Independent (July 11, 1998). As paper newspapers rapidly fade into the cyberether, once more this article is online at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19980711/ai_n14177514

Firing Line, September 3, 1968. William F. Buckley, Host. The intellectual conservative with the fluttering eyelids interviewed Jack Kerouac, Ed Sanders (writer and member of the musical group the Fugs), and sociology professor Lewis Yablonski about the hippies. Probably one of the most ineffectual interviews Bill ever conducted, considerably hindered by Jack showing up completely potted. The physical effects of alcohol are evident. Jack interrupts the other speakers with incomprehensible asides (at one time it sounds like he gives a Bronx cheer to something Ed said) and had to have questions repeated and explained to him because he kept lapsing into an alcoholic stupor while the others talked. Probably one of the last - if not the last - time Jack appeared in public, and he had only a little more than a year to live.