Who Said That?

September 15, 2008

Kerouac opened a million coffee bars and sold a million pairs of Levis to both sexes. Woodstock rises from his pages.

“Remembering Jack Kerouac” by Williams Burroughs

The Kerouac in the quote is Jack (Jean-Louis) Kerouac, an American born of French-Canadian parents in 1922 who engaged friends on a cross-country trip he immortalized in his second novel, On the Road. This seminal beat-generation (a phrase he created) work, written on one long scroll of paper, is considered by many to be the defining work of this era of coffee houses with dark European ambience, jazz punctuated by bongo drums, and lots of great rich coffee and cigarettes. The New York Times’ reviewer Gilbert Milstein referred to the book as “an authentic work of art.” Kerouac, who was surprisingly conservative in his politics and steadfast in his Catholic roots despite a deep interest in Buddhism, surrounded himself with a striking circle of friends including Burroughs, poets Gary Snyder, Gregory Corso, and Allen Ginsberg; Neal Cassady, with whom he took a number of road trips; Lucien Carr and John Cleland, also writers. Although he died at the age of 47 in 1969, Kerouac's On the Road has remained in print for more than 50 years. Ginsberg said, “In his exquisite honesty, Jack had the guts to live his ideas…[he was] a very unique cat – a French Canadian Hinayana Buddhist Beat Catholic savant.”

This discussion has been closed!

FREE WEEKLY NEWSFLASH: To register for SupermarketGuru's weekly updates by email, click here.