2. Jack Kerouac was
born in
Lowell,Massachusetts
, in 1922.
He was educated by
jesuit brothers in
Lowell, where he was
taught to make sense
of guilt and repress
sexuality. At first he
spoke only french but
in the end he
succeceded in
speaking English.
LIFE
"I had a wonderful childhood, my father was
a printer in Lowell, Mass., spent day and
night running through fields and along the
banks of the river “
Jack Kerouac
3. He wrote his first novel ‘’THE
COP ON THE BEAT’’ when he
was only 11.
He decided to become a
writer at the age of
seventeen and developed his
own writing style, which he
called ‘’spontaneous prose’’.
In 1940 he attended the
Columbia University without
receiving a degree because
he left the studies.
4. In 1944 he met Lucien Carr, who introduced
him to William Burroughs and Allen
Ginsberg, with whom he created the
original core of the Beat generation. The
most important meeting for his life he had
in 1946, when he met Neal Cassady, a
young man who had had the experience of
the reformatory and literary interests, who
became for Kerouac the symbol of true
marginalization and the source of literary
inspiration.
5. BEAT GENERATION
The term ‘’Beat Generation’’ was invented
by Kerouac in 1948 and introduced to the
general public in 1952 when one of
Kerouac’s friends wrote an article ‘This Is
The Beat Generation’ for the New York
Times Magazine. The original word ‘beat’
means ‘tired, dissatisfied’.
In fact the Beats were a group of young
people who reacted against the spread of
capitalism and puritanical standards
middle-class values of US society. But the
word ‘beat’ has a second meaning :
‘beatific’ or sacred and holy. Kerouac
explained many times that by describing his
generation as beat he was trying to capture
the secret holiness of the oppressed.
Beat generation was different from Lost
Generation of 1920’s because Beats were
not lost but they were searching for
answers to all life’s questions.
6. In 1942 he authored his first
novel , ‘’ The Sea is My
Brother’’ published in 2011,
42 years after Kerouac’s
death. In 1944 he was
arrested as a material
witness in the murder of
David Kammerer, who had
been stalking Kerouac’s
friend Lucien Carr. He wrote
about the killing in his novel
‘’ Vanity of Duluoz’’.
7. . He chronicled
parts of his own
experience with
Buddhism in The
Dharma Bums.
Kerouac also
wrote and
narrated a Beat
movie titled Pull
My Daisy.
8. The CBS Television series ROUTE
66, featuring two young men on
the road in a Corvette seeking
adventure and fueling their
travels by apparently plentiful
temporary jobs in the various U.S.
locales, gave the impression of
being a commercially sanitized
misappropriation of Kerouac’s ‘’
On The Road’’. In 1968 he
appeared on the television show
Firing Line, he was drunk and
started talking about the 1960s
counterculture in what would be
his last appearance on television.
In 1969 at the age 47, he died
from internal bleeding due to
long-standing abuse of alcohol
and drugs.
9.
10. ON THE ROAD is an
autobiographical novel
and it was written in
1951 and published in
1957 by Viking Press. In
1998, the Modern library
ranked ON THE ROAD
55th on its list of the 100
best English-language
novels of the 20th
century.
11. The novel contains five parts ,
three of them describing road
trips.
The narrative takes place in the
years 1947 to 1950 and marks a
specific era in jazz history. The
novel is largely autobiographical,
Sal being the alter ego of the
author and Dean standing for
Neal Cassady. Kerouac provides
not only the story of a literary
journey but also that of an
intense internal quest and a
pursuit of freedom and self-
determination.
12. The first section describes Sal’s first
trip to San Francisco. His life
changes when he meets Dean
Moriarity.
Dean Moriarty , Neal Cassady, lives
in Denver and whose lifestyle is in
contrast with the bourgeois
conception of the necessity of
having a fixed work, a good degree
and responsibility. Dean has only an
interest for a full life, made of
countless experiences and wants to
know the immensity of the North
American continent, the thrill of
sex, jazz music, the heated
discussions with friends, under the
influence of 'Alcohol and
Benzedrine.
Part 1
13. In part 2 we talk about
the history of the travels
of Sal and Dean, from
Christmas 1948 to
February 1949.
Part 2
14. The third part describes Sal’s permanence in
Denver and in New york. Then he decides
to reach Dean in Denver.
After a long car ride, he finally finds Dean in
Denver, Colorado, and he leads with him ,
for about two years, a nomadic life. Sal
realizes that with the passing of time the
anxiety of his friend, which leads him to
experience all that may be new and
forbidden, is due to its inability to adapt to
society.
Sal, after every trip, feels worse and wants
to start over, to have a fixed place and a job.
He comes back to New York and begins to
attend the college and to lead a normal life
but after reviewing Dean, who instead of
stopping after each attempt to travel again,
he decides to leave.
Part3
15. The fourth part talks
about the meeting
between Sal and Dean
in the summer of 1950,
Sal's trip to Denver, the
trip with Dean in
Mexico, where the
break occurs between
Sal and Dean.
Part4
16. The fifth part is about
Sal’s last trip from
Mexico City to New
York, in autumn 1950,
Sal’s meeting in Laredo
with Laura, Joan
Haverty, who became
Kerouac’s second wife.
Part5
17. From the stilistic point of
view,Kerouac’s work represents
an important novelty in the
international literature. He starts a
new style :’’ the spontaneous
prose’’. According to him writing
means expressing whatever comes
into the mind: a thought, an idea,
a scene or an episode, ordered as
the mind recalls. The
unsophisticated language used in
this novel has been defined ‘HIP
TALK’(which is ‘street
language’).It is characterized by its
immediancy and its rapid
flow,similar to that of jazz music.
Thestyle
18. •TRAVEL AS SELF-DISCOVERY: the protagonist
leaves everything and starts his travel for searching
himself, but in the end he realizes that he doesn’t
need to travel to discover himself, but just look inside.
•FRIENDSHIP: Sal finds out that his friendship to
Dean goes beyond the surface reality. He lives a sort
of mystical friendship which will never die even when
Dean leaves him dying in City of New Mexico.
•REJECTION OF AUTHORITY:the life that Sal and
Dean want to live is one that rejects all notions of
authority and rule. During their travels they are
always observed by the police, but when they arrive
in New Mexico they find a large measure of freedom;
THE MAIN THEMES
19. ON THE ROAD portrays the story of a fierce
personal quest for meaning and belonging.
This comes at an interesting point in the
American history when conformity was praised
and outsiders were suspect. The Beat
Generation arose out of a time of intense
conflict, both internally and externally. In this
period U.S.A. were engaged to fight against
comunism and the Sovietic forces. People were
living a suffocating atmosphere and believed
that there would have been a new bloody war.
The historical context influenced the literary
one. As a result the literature became a great
instrument of protest. For this reason
Kerouac’s literary production inspired
movements such as antimilitarism against the
Vietnam war, Hippy, peace movements and
those of May ‘68.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
20. "My work as one big book like
that of Proust, only that my
memories are written from
time to time. Because of the
objections of my first editors I
could serve the same people's
names in each book. chapters
that are not the whole work I
call it The Legend of Duluoz
seen through the eyes of poor
Ti Jean (me), otherwise
known as Jack Duluoz »
(Jack Kerouac, 1962)
21. Kerouac wanted to make a
movie from the book and
proposed to Marlon Brando
to work with him but in the
end it all came to nothing.
The shooting of a film
adaptation have started in
August 4,2010 directed by
Walter Salles. The movie will
be shown in the competition
at Cannes 2012. It will be
released the 5th of october in
the italian cinemas.
CURIOSITIES
