Posted on 03/11/2022 9:09:02 AM PST by Borges
LOWELL — Jack Kerouac was born March 12, 1922, and Lowell’s native son would go on to inspire the Beat Generation.
To officially mark the life and legacy of Kerouac’s work, three federal lawmakers are introducing a resolution to remember Kerouac in advance of his 100th birthday on Saturday. U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan, D-Third, of Westford, will shepherd the resolution in the House. Democrat Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren will sponsor the resolution in the Senate.
In an interview Wednesday, Trahan said the Mill City can be seen throughout Kerouac’s writings. She recalls Kerouac’s description of the St. Jean Baptiste Church as “the ponderous chartreuse cathedral of the slums.”
Located on Merrimack Street, St. Jean Baptiste Church is where Kerouac attended Mass as a child and where his funeral was held in 1969. The site is now eyed as the location for a museum celebrating Kerouac.
“I think anyone who grows up in Lowell can tell you just how much of an institution Jack Kerouac is, not just because he was born and raised there before going on to do great things,” Trahan said. “I think it’s because like many of us, he loved Lowell personally and that love never faded, even as his work grew to nationwide acclaim.”
As a student at Lowell High School, Trahan remembers her first introduction to Kerouac’s work. She said his writing started with how he viewed the world around him and how a large part of his identity was centered around Lowell.
Kerouac was the son of French-Canadian immigrants, his father born into a family of potato farmers. Historians at UMass Lowell estimate 31,000 French-Canadian immigrants came to Lowell to work in the textile mills between 1860 and 1890.
Farmers in Canada had no roads to get produce to market, the British royal family owned much of the farmland, existing farms were divided and salaries in the factories were lower than in the United States.
“He carried his accent with them into his late teens. He would go on to not only serve our country during World War II, but also hone his skills as a prolific novelist that would eventually lead to his leadership of the Beat Generation movement,” Trahan said. “I think like previous efforts to commemorate his many contributions, this resolution is as much about honoring Jack Kerouac on what would be his 100th birthday as it is about honoring our city and our community.”
For Markey, the Kerouac resolution is important because it recognizes the “cultural force” the author was.
“Massachusetts has always been at the forefront of the social and literary movements of our time, and as leader of the Beat Generation literary movement, Jack Kerouac is one of our most shining examples. His influence reaches from his hometown of Lowell, Mass. around the globe, and I’m proud to join Congresswoman Trahan and Sen. Warren in honoring his legacy,” Markey said in a statement.
After dropping out of Columbia University, where he played on a football scholarship, Kerouac would briefly cover sports for The Sun in 1941. He would go on to serve as a Merchant Marine during World War II, receiving an honorable discharge.
In a statement, Warren highlighted Kerouac’s military service and how his work inspired a movement.
“Jack Kerouac bravely served our nation during World War II and helped ignite a literary and social movement through his work, and he never lost touch of his local Lowell, Mass. roots,” Warren said. “I’m glad to support this resolution with Congresswoman Lori Trahan and Sen. Markey for his 100th birthday.”
The call for a congressional resolution builds on the lawmakers’ efforts last year to create a commemorative Kerouac stamp. The stamp is currently under review by the U.S. Postal Service’s Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee.
Additionally, the resolution comes as a year of events celebrating Kerouac take place, hosted by the Jack Kerouac Estate and Kerouac @ 100 Committee.
“Visions of Kerouac” opens March 18 at the Boott Cotton Mills Gallery and will be open from noon to 5 p.m. daily through April 15.
The exhibit sees the return of the 120-foot, original scroll of Kerouac’s novel “On the Road” to Lowell. According to his estate, the scroll is “one of the most extraordinary and highly valued manuscripts in American literary history.” The scroll will be on loan from Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay’s private collection of Americana relics.
Because reading the $1.5 trillion budget bill would be a waste of time.
Devastating, but accurate critique, by Capote.
There’s a YouTube clip of Kerouac on the old Steve Allen show, reading a passage from “On the Road” while Allen noodled jazz riffs on the piano. During the interview portion, Kerouac seemed very shy, almost fragile, not like a wild man or revolutionary social critic.
“ Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk — real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road
” honor the guy who writes the traffic signs”
Or maybe the writers of all the wit and wisdom that shows up on cereal boxes?
“The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great, that I thought I was in a dream.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road: The Original Scroll
I will have to reserve judgement since I have not read any of Kerouac’s work, but my sense from a distance is that he catered to narcissism and nihilism in a big way and is thus a suitable idol for the left.
For being such a devout Catholic, he put a lot of effort into promoting eastern religions as “hip,” turning young, impressionable skulls full of mush away from Christ.
Thanks. It reads so much like non-fiction that you forget the ‘names were changed to protect the innocent.’
Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?
Back in the day, I loved On the Road. It was what I needed.
Many, many years ago, the poet Allen Ginsberg taught me a lesson. He told me his fellow Beat Jack Kerouac’s novel “On the Road” was misunderstood.
It was in St. Louis in 1982. I was teaching a class on the Beats at Saint Louis University. Ginsberg had come to do a reading at nearby Washington University. We talked afterward. Ginsberg asked what my students thought of “On the Road,” which helped push the Beats to prominence when it published 60 years ago this month. I told him they saw it as a manifesto for hippies. Ginsberg grimaced. “Jack wasn’t like that,” he said. “That’s not what he wrote.” He reminded me Kerouac had supported Richard Nixon and considered conservative William F. Buckley Jr. a hero.
Ginsberg urged me, gently, to read the book again without preconceived notions. I did. I reread the book afresh – and learned a valuable lesson about trusting labels. When “On the Road” first came out, the novel was touted and damned as a celebration of hedonism. The characters’ frenzied flights across the country, their seemingly casual liaisons and their constant carousing led many readers to believe, for good or ill, that the book was a siren call for a new era of licentiousness.
In truth, rather than being a harbinger of an unrestrained coming epoch, “On the Road” was an elegy for a vanishing America, an America in which small, forgotten places still mattered, along with the people who did not always hike the beaten paths. It was an ode to an America fading from sight in the rearview mirror as we Americans raced forward to a more materialistic future, our foot flooring the gas pedal. It also was a book of longing.
The characters within the book – representations of Kerouac, Ginsberg and their fellow Beats – rejected the more malleable cohesion of “community” in favor of the tighter ties of tribalism. They sought bonds that transcended politics, personal background or geography. That hunger to connect at a deeper level than transient concerns is what tied together French-Canadian Catholic conservative Kerouac, Jewish radical Ginsberg and libertarian Midwestern trust funder William S. Burroughs.
There’s a lesson there that’s just as valid today as it was in the 1950s. But “On the Road” also was a writer’s book, an exploration of the writer’s eternal quest, the search for meaning, the hunt for significance. Its most famous passage comes early in the book: “But then they danced down the street like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!’”
When I first read those words, the fireworks dominated my attention, the sheer combustible energy of the syllables popping along in rhythm to a pyrotechnic crescendo. On rereading, though, the phrase that took hold of me was the one that began, “I shambled after…” There is no better, tighter description of what writers do – of why we do what we do. We shamble after the people, the things, the moments that interest us in the hopes that something – something that matters – will be revealed. We write not just to teach but to learn.
As such, writing well – writing true – is an act of faith. That’s what Ginsberg was telling me all those years ago. His friend wrote “On the Road” not to start a riotous party, but as a kind of spiritual offering, a way to find his way in a troubling world. Many times since we had that conversation those long years ago, I’ve silently thanked Allen Ginsberg for his counsel not to let others do my thinking for me – and for prodding me to reconsider a book that came to mean much more to me than it otherwise would have. Ginsberg’s lesson was a valuable one. But then he, like his friend, was a good teacher.
John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism, host of “No Limits” WFYI 90.1 Indianapolis and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.
Alan Watts had a lot more to do with popularizing Eastern Religion back then. Probably easy to conflate him with the Beats of the same era.
That’s a heck of a post.
That’s a fascinating understanding of Kerouac and On The Road
We pull down statues of heros and leaders and plan to use an old church as a monument to Kerouac?
“That’s a fascinating understanding of Kerouac and On The Road”
I’d read a similar piece about Kerouac years ago so I knew to look for one. I’ve managed to find the original essay by Mark Fellows, it’s even more in depth and I’ll post the link here:
https://culturewarsmagazine.com/CultureWars/1999/kerouac.html
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