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Beat Novelist and Poet
March 12, 1922-October 20, 1969
 Within the first few months that I was in New York I'd lost my interest in the hungry for kicks" hipster vision that Kerouac illustrates so well in his book ON THE ROAD. That book had been like a bible for me. Not anymore, though. I still loved the breathless, dynamic bop poetry phrases that flowed from Jack's pen, but no, that character Moriarty seemed out of place, purposeless -- seemed like a character who inspired idiocy.
-- from CHRONICLES
As a very young man, Bob Dylan responded strongly to Kerouac's ON THE ROAD -- the free flowing, riffing sentences and sense of adventure; the possibilities of using language spontaneously, describing things almost as they are being remembered or experienced. Another attraction that Kerouac's writing might have had for Dylan was that he, like Woody Guthrie, was not only a poet of the road, but also was a writer whose vision of life in the United States contrasted starkly with mainstream portrayals of postwar America. Both dealt with the lives of outsiders, and while many of Guthrie's best known songs are about the plight of workers during the Depression, Kerouac's characters (based on himself and his friends) are broke, semi-rootless hipsters, leading marginal existences and bouncing from one relationship to another.
Jack Kerouac was born in 1922 and grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts. He played football in high school well enough to get an athletic scholarship to Columbia University in 1940, but an injury in his freshman year kept him from playing. Kerouac dropped out of Columbia in his sophomore year. He joined the Navy to be part of the war effort, but he was soon discharged because he could not take the discipline. Kerouac returned to New York, where he met future beat writers William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg through an old girlfriend who was studying art at Columbia.
Kerouac began writing his first novel, THE TOWN AND THE CITY, in 1946 and it was published in 1949, but it was not as big a success as he had hoped. In the spring of 1951, he began writing ON THE ROAD, about his travels with his wild friend Neal Cassady, typing it on a roll of teletype paper in three weeks. It was rejected by a number of publishers, but in 1954, Kerouac found a sympathetic editor at Viking who helped him get the book into manageable form. The book was published to great critical acclaim in 1957, and it became one of the founding texts of the emerging counterculture. In spite of his success, Kerouac was alienated by much of what was going on culturally in the 1960s, and while he continued publishing his life began unraveling in this period. He became reclusive, had increasing problems with alcohol, and eventually moved to Florida to take care of his disabled mother. Kerouac died after a bout of heavy drinking in 1969, at the age of 47.
SELECTED BOOKS
THE TOWN AND THE CITY, 1950
ON THE ROAD, 1957
THE SUBTERRANEANS, 1958
THE DHARMA BUMS, 1958
DOCTOR SAX, 1959
LONESOME TRAVELER, 1960
VISIONS OF GERARD, 1963
DESOLATION ANGELS, 1965
RELATED LINKS
Jack Kerouac Official Web Site
www.jackkerouac.com
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 about other musicians, writers, and artists who have had an impact on Bob Dylan’s music.
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