Jack Kerouac | Guy Portman's Blog

Happy Birthday Jack Kerouac

Mar 11 2016

birthday cake

As it is Jack Kerouac’s birthday today (he would have been 94) I am dedicating this week’s post to the iconic author.

Jack Kerouac(March 12th 1922 – October 21st 1969)

Notable works: On the Road, The Dharma Bums, Big Sur, The Town and the City

Novelist, poet and artist Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1922 to French Canadian parents. Alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg he was one of the pioneers of the Beat Generation. Today Kerouac is best remembered for his spontaneous prose style. Themes in his work include jazz, Buddhism, drugs, poverty, promiscuity and above all travel.

A notoriously heavy drinker, Kerouac’s favourite drink was said to be Margarita. He wrote in his book, Big Sur, ‘Don’t drink to get drunk. Drink to enjoy life.’ His drinking led to his premature death aged 47 from internal bleeding.

Here are some interesting facts about Jack Kerouac:

According to Kerouac he was born Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac.

He was a high school athletics star (sprinter and hurdler) and college football player (running back).

Kerouac has been compared to James Dean because of the rebellious nature of his work and his Hollywood good looks.

Kerouac is buried at Edson Cemetery in his hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts.

Kerouac’s most famous work, On the Road, was written on a 120-foot piece of continuous scroll over a 3 week period in April 1951. It was not published until 1957. Here is a picture of the original manuscript.

Manuscript

I have read 2 of Kerouac’s books, On the Road and Maggie Cassidy. Although On the Road is his seminal work, I preferred Maggie Cassidy. Click on the links to read my reviews.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac – The defining text of The Beat Generation is a largely autobiographical account of the author’s adventures in America and Mexico. The story follows restless protagonist Sal’s various road trips…(More)

Maggie Cassidy by Jack Kerouac – Set in the close-knit working-class French-Canadian community of Lowell, Massachusetts, Maggie Cassidy is a semi-autobiographical account of Kerouac’s adolescence. The story is recounted through the teenage mind…(More)

Here are 2 good Jack Kerouac quotes:

‘Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.’ — On the Road

‘Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.’ — Jack Kerouac

4 Famous Male Writers’ Writing Styles

Feb 20 2015

Every author has his/her own distinctive writing style. My own evolving writing style utilises dry humour, satirical observations and concise prose.

This week’s blog post is dedicated to 4 famous writers’ writing styles:

James Joyce

(February 2nd 1882 – January 13th 1941)

Notable works: Ulysses, Finnegans Wake, A, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Ireland’s most famous author is remembered as being one of the most influential writers of the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century. Joyce embraced an experimental, stream of consciousness writing style. His seminal work Ulysses contains more vocabulary words (30,030) than the entire Shakespearean canon of 38 plays.

The former poet took his experimental style a step further with his final book, Finnegan’s Wake (1939). Written in Paris over a period of 17 years, Finnegan’s Wake utilises a stream of consciousness style, idiosyncratic language and literary allusions. The book is regarded as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language.

William S. Burroughs

(February 5th 1914 – August 2nd 1997)

Notable works: Junkie, Queer, The Soft Machine, The Naked Lunch.

William S. Burroughs was at the forefront of the Beat generation, influencing the likes of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. His often-controversial works (c.f. drugs and homosexuality) include 18 novels, in addition to a number of novellas and short stories, many of which are semi-autobiographical in nature. Burroughs’s writing is characterised as being sardonic, dark, humorous and confessional.

Burroughs was the pioneer of the collage technique, which entails cutting up text with a pair of scissors and then rearranging it to create new text. His seminal work, the non-linear and highly controversial Naked Lunch was created in this manner.

Click on the links to read my reviews of Junky and Queer.

Ernest Hemingway

(July 21st 1899 – July 2nd 1961)

Notable works: The Sun Also Rises, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Old Man & the Sea.

Ernest Hemingway won The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1953) and The Nobel Prize in Literature (1954). Hemingway embraced the minimalist style of writing that he had been required to use when he had been a journalist. This style, known as The Iceberg Theory (Theory of Omission), utilised short, terse sentences, which was in stark contrast to the ornate prose of the literati of the time. It is this simple and direct writing style that has endeared Hemingway to so many readers down the years.

Click here to read my review of The Old Man and the Sea.

Jack Kerouac

(March 12th 1922 – October 21st 1969)

Notable works: On the Road, The Dharma Bums, Big Sur.

American novelist, poet and artist Jack Kerouac was a member of the Beat Generation. Kerouac primarily wrote autobiographical novels. His most famous book, On the Road, is set against a backdrop of poetry, jazz and drug use. It was the defining work of the post-war Beat Generation.

Kerouac typed On The Road over a period of 3 weeks in the spring of 1951, on a 3-inch thick, 120-foot long scroll. Through attempting to omit periods from his work and improvising words he created his own innovative, spontaneous prose writing style – a style that was influenced by Jazz music and Bebop.

Click on the links to read my reviews of Maggie Cassidy and On The Road.

5 Famous Bilingual Authors

Oct 10 2014

I never cease to be impressed by authors who write in more than one language. This week’s blog post is dedicated to 5 such authors.

Samuel Beckett

(13th April 1906 – 22nd December 1989)

Irish born avant-garde novelist, playwright and poet Samuel Beckett is regarded as one of the most influential writers of the 20th Century. His accolades include having won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969. Beckett was a skilled linguist, who studied English, French and Italian at Trinity College, Dublin, and went on to live most of his adult life in Paris.

After the War Beckett published mostly in French, including arguably his most famous work, En attendant Godot (1953). With the exception of Molloy, Beckett translated all of his works from French to English himself.

Joseph Conrad

(3rd December 1857 – 3rd August 1924)

Remembered as one of the greatest English language novelists of all time, the Polish born Conrad did not learn to speak English until he was in his twenties. Though Conrad never completed his schooling he was also well versed in German, Greek and Latin, in addition to speaking fluent French.

Conrad’s career in the merchant navy led to him moving to England, where he embarked on his writing career. In 1899 his seminal work Hearts of Darkness was published, a book that is regarded as one of the most important works of the 20th Century.

Vladimir Nabokov

(22nd April 1899 – 2nd July 1977)

The Saint Petersburg born Nabokov was brought up speaking French and English, in addition to his native Russian. Nabokov’s first nine novels were written in Russian, but it is his later English language efforts that he is best remembered for. His most famous work, Lolita, is considered to be one of the greatest and most controversial novels ever written. Lolita is one of Modern Library’s 100 best novels of the 20th Century. In 1967, twelve years after he had written Lolita, Nabokov translated it into Russian.

Click here to read my review of Lolita.

Jack Kerouac

(12th March 1922 – 21st October 1969)

American novelist and poet Jack Kerouac primarily wrote autobiographical novels in a spontaneous prose style. His most famous book, On the Road, set against a backdrop of poetry, jazz and drug use, was the defining work of the postwar Beat Generation.

It has only recently been discovered that the young Kerouac initially began writing in Quebecois French, the language he has been brought up speaking by his French-Canadian parents. Kerouac went on to write poetry in French, in addition to two novels, which remain unpublished.

Click on the links to read my reviews of On the Road and Maggie Cassidy.

Nancy Huston

(Born: 16th September 1953)

Canadian born essayist and novelist Nancy Huston is a prolific author, who has published over 45 books comprising both fiction and non-fiction. Huston, who writes primarily in French, translates her own works into English. Her most famous book to date, Les variations Goldberg (1981), won the Prix Contrepoint prize. Huston is also more than capable of writing in English. Her critically acclaimed novel Plainsong (1993) was initially written in English and then self-translated into French.

Please note that I am currently overseas, and have only limited internet access. As a result it may take me a while to reply to any comments.

Alcoholic Authors III

Oct 04 2013

As my Alcoholic Authors series has proven to be fairly popular here is a further instalment.

Dorothy Parker

(August 22nd 1893 – June 7th 1967)

Notable works: Enough Rope, Sunset Gun, A Star is Born.

American writer and poet Dorothy Parker was renowned for her sardonic wit and writing abilities. Parker sold her first poem to Vanity Fair in 1914 and went on to have an incredibly successful career, which saw her publish books, short-stories, screenplays and poetry. Her achievements include being a script writer for the Academy Award nominated film, A Star is Born.

A lifelong heavy drinker, Parker suffered from bouts of acute depression, even attempting suicide on several occasions. In later years as a direct result of her habit she was to suffer declining health. There has been much speculation as to why she drunk so heavily, perhaps it was a result of a traumatic childhood – her mother died when she was a small child, or her failed marriages and affairs; the author was married three times, twice to the same man.

Parker once famously said about her favourite drink martini:

“I like to have a martini,

Two at the very most.

After three I’m under the table,

After four I’m under my host.”

Little has been documented about Parker’s drinking habits, this may be in part due to the often isolated nature of her consumption, but also because as a woman her alcohol excess was never glorified.

Jack Kerouac

(March 12th 1922 – October 21st 1969)

Notable works: On the Road, The Dharma Bums, Big Sur.

American novelist, writer, poet and artist Jack Kerouac was a member of the Beat Generation that also included William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. Kerouac primarily wrote autobiographical novels in a spontaneous prose style. His most famous book, On the Road, set against a backdrop of poetry, jazz and drug use was the defining work of the postwar Beat Generation.

Kerouac was a very heavy drinker, who particularly enjoyed Margaritas, having developed a taste for them during one of his trips to Mexico. The author was acutely aware of his drinking problem, often expressing a desire to quit or at least moderate his habit. In his book, Big Sur, Kerouac eloquently explained the nature of alcoholism. He once said, ‘Don’t drink to get drunk. Drink to enjoy life.’

In later years Kerouac’s alcohol consumption increased as he found himself feeling isolated from the burgeoning counter-culture movement that he had reluctantly started. On October 20th 1969, Kerouac was rushed to hospital with abdominal pain. He died the following day from an internal hemorrhage caused by cirrhosis of the liver, caused by a lifetime of alcohol excess; he was forty-seven years old. The author’s legacy is that he will always be remembered as a literary pioneer and an integral part of the Beat Generation.

I am currently in Munich at the annual Oktoberfest beer festival. It seems likely that the alcohol theme will continue next week when I plan to recount my time there.

Click here to read Part 2 of Alcoholic Authors.