Term Papers on Jack Kerouac

Term Paper Title	Jack Kerouac
# of Words	1860
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	7.44

Jack Kerouac

     In the beginning Jack Kerouac lived a wild and exciting life outside the realm of
everyday "normal" American life.  Though On the Road and The Dharma Bums were
Kerouac's only commercial sucesses, he was a man who changed American  literature and
pop-culture.  Kerouac virtually created a life-style devoted to life, art, literature, music,
and poetry.   When his movement grew out of his control, he came to despise it, and died
lonely on the other side of what he once loved and cherished above all else.  But, on the
way he created a style of writing which combined elements of all the great writers, with
speed, common language, real people, and the reality of his life.

     In a public junior high school he began to read feverishly.  In English classes he
flourished, but socially he did not.  Impressed deeply by Mark Twain and Jack London,
Kerouac created his own imaginary world, which he recorded in hand-written
"newspapers."  These led to his first "novel" Jack Kerouac Explores the Merrimack,
which he wrote in a notebook at the age of twelve (Clark, 22).
     Skipping classes at Lowell High School, in Lowell Massachusetts, Kerouac was
exposed to the work of Thomas Wolfe by a fellow student Sammy Sampas.  They
encouraged writing in each other, and Kerouac began writing seriously.  Since the
Kerouacs could not afford college, a local priest suggested he try for a football
scholarship (Clark, 32).  He was offered two; one from Colombia University and the
other from Boston College.
     Kerouac opted for Columbia and first spent one year, by the request of the
university, at the Horace Mann School for Boys.  Here he didn't fit in with the rich prep-
school crowd, but he was exposed to Hemmingway (Clark, 37).  Here, also, in a school
publication his work was first printed (Clark, 39).
     After two years of school at Columbia Kerouac made a decision that would
change his life. He always believed he learned more outside of the classroom than in; and
so after a series of arguments with his coach, he quit the team.  Not long after he dropped
out of school as well.  He served briefly in the navy, and drinking heavily, was discharged
on psychiatric grounds(Clark, 52).   Upon his return home he got a job with as a Merchant
Marine.  When he wasn't working he spent his time with Allen Ginsberg, Lucien Carr,
William S. Burroughs, and Neal Cassady (Jack Kerouac, 1).  His family's disapproval of
his friends led him to a life balancing his friends and family.  This is recorded in The
Town and the City, a novel which Ginsberg's professors got published.
     Not long after Kerouac began making the now famous series of cross-country trips
with Cassady immortalized in On the Road (On the Road).  But it would be seven years
before On the Road would be published (Jack Kerouac, 2).  During these trips Kerouac
made several literary discoveries that changed the American Novel.  First and foremost he
developed a "sketching" style of writing, inspired by an artist friend named Ed White and
the speed of bop music.  Here the main goal was to write on the spot.  This became what
he called "the great moment of discovering my soul," (Clark, 102).
      Later this "sketching" developed into a style of writing unlike any other.  He
would write either on the spot or from memory, but always on many levels; imagination
and reality, psychic and social, poetry and narrative, but always complete honesty.  To
Kerouac this was "the only way to write."  This style is evident first in Visions of Cody,
Kerouac's tribute to Cassady (Clark, 110).
     In 1952 Kerouac lived briefly in Mexico City with Burroughs.  Here he wrote Dr.
Sax, which was considered shocking even by Ginsberg who told Kerouac it would never
be published because it was "so personal, so full of sex language," (Clark, 115).  Later
Kerouac said Ginsberg was mishandling his career and didn't take advantage of the sex
and drug revolution that was sweeping the country in paperbacks(Clark, 117). Ginsberg
w...

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