Collapsed traveler -- Remembering Jack Kerouac

Author: Gifford
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2000-09-01
Features: This book is about a person who is a victim of literary pragmatism. In people's memory, Jack Kerouac is the epitome of the "Beat Generation." However, the "Beat Generation" was not a generation at all. This label was invented as a self-explanatory article in response to a journalist's question, but it was accepted at face value. Kerouac had already used the phrase in his article "The Beat Jazz" (1995) before the typescript of On the Road was printed, and his friend John Holmes also depicted a similar world in his novel GO. Holmes wrote a topical commentary on this new generation for The New York Times and Esquire, crafted in the style that readers of those publications would expect. Kerouac was a writer whose belated success depended on a new prose technique, which he applied to a solid, ancient genre—a young man's varied adventures. Kerouac's misfortune lies in the fact that his fame—unrelated to his literary status, which itself is something yet to be determined—has more to do with the characters and events he depicted than with the way he depicted them. This book aims to provide a framework for an initial interpretation of Kerouac, who successfully gave us a monumental work, but in the form of a trade paperback. The two authors of this book were born during or shortly after World War II, and they found the theme for this book through reading Kerouac's works. In his writings, they strove to find the motivation to explore Kerouac's life.