Week 3
The Beat Counterculture
Jack Kerouac
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John Louis Lebris de Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts on March 12 th
1922
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He was born to French Canadian parents and he grew up speaking French rather
than English and made a claim to fellow beat Allan Ginsberg that he wrote from
French in his head
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It has been reported recently that he even began to write On the Road in French
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His parents were devoutly Roman Catholic, a faith which he maintained throughout
his life
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Kerouac was a standout athlete who excelled at baseball, football and track- his
sporting ability gained him scholarships to Horace Main Preparatory school and
then to Columbia University
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A football injury in his first year meant that he rarely played and becoming
disinterested in his studies, he dropped out of Columbia
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In 1943, Kerouac joined the United States Navy but only served eight days of
active duty before being put onto the sick list
Post war life
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After leaving the army, Kerouac settled in the area of New York surrounding Columbia
University where he met the core members of the Beats Literary Movement: Allen
Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Lucien Carr and Neal Cassady
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After Kerouac met Cassady in 1946, they began to make trips back and forth across the
United States which would be the inspiration for On the Road
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“According to legend, Cassady had stolen five hundred cars and been to bed with five
hundred women by the time he was eighteen… More important was his addictive
enthusiasm for life” (Theado)
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Lived on a rooftop in Mexico City, climbed a Californian Mountain with poet Gary
Snyder and spent a summer as a mountain-top fire lookout in Washington
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These memories formed the narrative of On the Road and these figures of the Beats
Movement appear under different names in the novel: Kerouac as Sal Paradise,
Cassady as Dean Moriarty, Allen Ginsberg as Carlo Marx and Williams Burroughs as
Old Bull Lee
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He began writing On the Road in 1951 in “spontaneous prose” .Over three weeks he
wrote a draft of the novel on a 120 feet of teletype paper, it contained no paragraphs or
punctuation
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Publishers rejected it for several years before its publication in 1957
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzCF6hgEfto
Themes
Central theme of the text is that of running away from society and its value set
Escaping the cold war:
• America unified their culture and identity whilst confronting communism
• Idea of America as a police state, blinded by hysteria
• The Beats even joked about the Cold War, “It’s them bad Russians… The Russia’s power mad. She wants to
take our cars from out of our garages” (Ginsberg)
Running away from the conformity of the 1950s:
• ‘Age of conformity’- suburbia, Levittown etc.
• Presents an alternative American dream: challenges the idea of suburbia as the dream as it in fact zaps the
life out of youth culture
• Exploration, possibility of adventure
• The beats wanted to make spontaneity the ultimate virtue (Douglas)
Their response is to travel West and find meaning through travelling- throwback to the colonists and the constant
search for more?
“Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.”
Themes
Another central theme is that of growing up.
Sal Paradise is conflicted between the JOURNEY and the DOMESTIC
• Each journey follows a cyclical pattern: Breaks out of the established routine in
the east, goes through a series of on the road experiences and then tired and weary,
he returns back home
• Other characters in the novel wonder the reasoning for their trips:
Lucile, (Dean’s girlfriend) “No it’s sad and I don’t like it”
Carlo Marx, “What is the meaning of this voyage to New York? What kind of sordid business
are you on now?”
Bull Lee, “You’ll all go flying to the West Coast and come staggering back in search of your
Stone”
The reality of the trip does not match up to expectations
• Sal is repeatedly abandoned by Dean: San Francisco, Mexico, Sal becomes a pawn in the relationship
between Dean and Marylou
Eventually, at the end Sal grows up, realises he does not have the money to relocate to San Francisco and
settles down, Dean is the individual who keeps on travelling