Kerouac jack biography

Jack kerouac last photo

The youngest of three children, he witnessed the premature death of his brother, Gerard, an event that profoundly affected him and later moved him to write Visions of Gerard in As a child, Kerouac attended Catholic and public schools, ultimately receiving a football scholarship to Columbia University in New York City. At one point, Burroughs and Kerouac got into trouble with the law during college for failing to report a murder.

In his sophomore year of college, Jack Kerouac got into a dispute with his football coach and ultimately quit school to join the Merchant Marine. He was soon discharged for being of "indifferent disposition. In he published his first novel, The Town and the City , which earned him moderate respect. But it was his second novel, the wildly experimental On the Road , that proved to be Kerouac's magnum opus.

Based on his adventures with Neal Cassady, his friend from New York, the novel employed a technique that the author called "Spontaneous Prose," influenced by jazz music. The writer's style was giddy and long-winded. He even allowed himself to replace periods with dashes in attempt to imitate the tireless tone of Cassady. Some critics were scornful, though, of Kerouac's loose style.

Truman Capote famously said of Kerouac's prose, "That's not writing, that's typing. Kerouac's curious nature led him to experiment with drugs. He purportedly was particularly fond of Benzedrine, whose properties gave him the maddening bursts of energy needed to write in his signature style. Some of his works also reveal that he was inclined to sexual experimentation, and concerns about his sexuality haunted him throughout life.

Kerouac also grew attached to Buddhism.