Jack Kerouac's Travels

Known as the Father of the Beat Generation , Jack Kerouac was one of the most popular writers in the 1950s. His books and beliefs influenced a generation of Americans to take the road, opening the path to a spiritual awakening which climaxed in the 1960s. Together with Ginsberg's Howl , Kerouac's On the Road formed the Bible of the Beat Generation, elevating American literature to new heights.

Kerouac was born Jean Louise Kerouac in Lowell, Massachusetts on March 12, 1922. His parents were Léo-Alcide Kerouac and Gabrielle-Ange Lévesque, Quebec-born French Canadians who had immigrated to New England looking for work. Kerouac had an older sister, Caroline, and an older brother, Gérard, who died of rheumatic fever when Kerouac was nine years old. Gérard's death was the subject of Kerouac's 1963 novel Visions of Gerard . 

Based on his athletic abilities, Kerouac was offered scholarships from a few prestigious colleges and he ended up going to Colombia University. When his football career at Columbia ended, Kerouac dropped out. Living with his girlfriend, Edie Parker, on New York City's Upper East Side, Kerouac began meeting the early members of the Beat Generation: Allen Ginsberg , Neal Cassady , William S. Burroughs , John Clellon Holmes, and Herbert Hunke. Ginsberg, in particular, was very taken with Kerouac, and although they did fool around for some time, Kerouac never returned Ginsberg's affections.   

In 1942, Kerouac joined the United States Merchant Marine and a year later, he joined the United States Navy. During World War II, he was found to be of “indifferent character” with a diagnosis of “schizoid personality” resulting in an honorable discharge from service. In 1944, he was arrested as a material witness in the murder of David Kammerer. Kammerer had been stalking Kerouac's friend Lucien Carr since Carr was a teenager in St. Louis. After Carr killed Kammerer in self-defense, he asked Kerouac to help dispose of the evidence. On Burroughs' advice, they turned themselves in. After Parker posted his bail, Kerouac married her. Then, he and Burroughs went on to pen And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks , a novel about the killing. Kerouac also wrote his own novel about the murder, Vanity of Duluoz .

Shortly after he married Parker, Kerouac separated from her and returned to the Colombia area with Burroughs and Ginsberg. The three of them lived together in an apartment, and it was there that Kerouac became addicted to Benzedrine, a stimulant. In 1945, he was admitted to Queens VA Hospital where he was diagnosed with thrombophlebitis. For a while, he lived with his mother and father, who had been diagnosed with stomach cancer, in Ozone Park, Queens .   

His father lost his battle with stomach cancer, and by then, Kerouac's marriage to Edie Parker had been annulled. Kerouac and his mother moved to Richmond Hill , and in 1948, he wrote his first novel, The Town and the City . Depressed after completing the novel, Kerouac decided to go on a road trip. He and Neal Cassady took to the road in the winter of 1948, and stayed in New York for a while before they really began their travels . Most of their time in New York City was spent drinking at bars and bumming. He particularly liked The White Horse Tavern on 567 Hudson St, but he also made regular visits to the Saint Patrick's Cathedral on 5th Ave. and 49th St., where he was particularly enamored by the stained glass window.   

With little money, they often resorted to stealing and cheating to get by. On January 19, 1949, Kerouac, Cassady, Cassady's ex-wife Luanne and a man named Al Hinkle took off for San Francisco. Kerouac began taking notes for On the Road during this road trip. When they arrived at Miles City, Montana , Kerouac had an epiphany, writing in his diary, "In a drugstore window I saw a book on sale -- so beautiful! ' Yellowstone Red,' is a story of a man in the early days of the valley, & his tribulations & triumphs. Is this not better reading in Miles City than the Iliad? -- their own epic?"

The group then headed to New Orleans . They made a pit-stop in Algiers, Louisiana , where Burroughs tried to tell Kerouac that the trip – and Cassady – was a bad idea. Their encounter made it into On the Road , but Kerouac ignored his mentor and continued on to San Francisco .   

Once there, Cassady ditched the group and returned to his wife. Kerouac went to stay at his mother's home in Denver. In late 1950, Kerouac married a girl named Joan Haverty despite knowing her for only a few weeks. It was during this marriage that the current version of On the Road was completed in April 1951, and on February 16, 1952, Joan gave birth to their daughter Janet Michelle. However, Kerouac was a rather poor father as he denied paternity and refused to make child support payments. He saw his daughter only twice in his life, at ages 9 and 15.   

It was also in 1952 that Kerouac visited Cassady back in San Francisco, where he began an affair with Cassady's wife, Carolyn. He tried to convince her to elope to Mexico but ended up returning to his mother's Denver home again. He did end up going to Mexico, but it was only for a brief visit to see Burroughs. Then, he again returned to Denver and started to write.   

Kerouac seemed to find his faith in Denver where he embraced Buddhism , meditated, and studied, swearing off sex and alcohol. In 1954, he again visited Neal and Carolyn Cassady but left after an argument concerning marijuana. Instead, he turned to Ginsberg for company and taught his friend about Buddhism. In 1955, he returned to San Francisco to join other Beat artists, and the group immersed themselves in writing, philosophy, and art.   

After begin rejected by countless publishers, Kerouac's big break came in 1957 when Viking Press bought On the Road on the condition that the more sexually explicit passages be removed. The book was published on September 5, 1957. In addition to his book being published, Kerouac had an affair with Joyce Johnson. Johnson wrote about Kerouac in her memoirs, Minor Characters , and the book earned her a National Book Critics Circle Award.   

When On the Road became a best-seller, publishers demanded a sequel, so Kerouac began The Dharma Bums , a part-fictional story modeled after his experiences with Buddhism as well as his adventures with Gary Snyder and other San Francisco-area poets. Unfortunately, the book, published in 1958, garnered criticism from Ruth Fuller Sasaki and Alan Watts, respected figures in the American field of Buddhism. The experience was so upsetting for Kerouac that he told Philip Whalen, “I'm not a Buddhist anymore.”   

In 1959, Doctor Sax , Mexico City Blues: 242 Choruses , and Maggie Cassidy were published. The following year, he published Tristessa , Lonesome Traveler and The Scripture of the Golden Eternity .

Kerouac would go on to narrate a couple of movies and publish more books. In 1966, he married the sister of a childhood friend, Stella Sampas, and he stayed with his mother to care for her.   

Kerouac passed away on October 21, 1969 at St. Anthony's Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida, a day after being rushed to the hospital because of stomach pains. Kerouac died of internal hemorrhage that occurred because he had cirrhosis, the result of a lifetime of alcohol abuse. He's buried in his home town of Lowell and honored posthumously with a Doctor of Letters from University of Massachusetts Lowell on June 2, 2007.