person1950s-1969

Jack Kerouac

Disciplines:

Summary

American novelist who wrote On the Road — the defining novel of the Beat Generation — and developed spontaneous prose as a literary method.

Core Contribution

On the Road: the definitive Beat text — cross-country America, jazz, spontaneity, the rejection of bourgeois stability. Spontaneous prose: a method of writing without revision, following the rhythm of breath and thought. The Dharma Bums: Buddhism, hiking, and Beat spirituality.

Key Spikes & Highlights

On the Road was written (or at least drafted) in a three-week burst on a single 120-foot scroll of paper — the scroll was sold at auction in 2001 for $2.4 million.
Became a conservative Catholic later in life, alienated from the counterculture he had helped create, and died of alcoholism at 47.

Notable Works & Achievements

On the Road

The Dharma Bums

Visions of Cody

Historical Influences

Walt Whitman Thomas Wolfe D.T. Suzuki

Intellectual Lineage

Beat Generation American Modernism

Contemporaries & Peers

Allen Ginsberg William S. Burroughs

Minds Influenced

Counterculture Road Trip Literature

Intellectual Posterity

Beat Literature Counterculture

Discussing

Jack Kerouac

Ask anything about Jack Kerouac — their ideas, influences, contradictions, legacy.

person1950s-1969

Jack Kerouac

Disciplines:

literature

Summary

American novelist who wrote On the Road — the defining novel of the Beat Generation — and developed spontaneous prose as a literary method.

Core Contribution

Key Spikes & Highlights

On the Road was written (or at least drafted) in a three-week burst on a single 120-foot scroll of paper — the scroll was sold at auction in 2001 for $2.4 million.
Became a conservative Catholic later in life, alienated from the counterculture he had helped create, and died of alcoholism at 47.

Notable Works & Achievements

On the Road

The Dharma Bums

Visions of Cody

Historical Influences

Walt Whitman Thomas Wolfe D.T. Suzuki

Intellectual Lineage

Beat Generation American Modernism

Contemporaries & Peers

Allen Ginsberg William S. Burroughs

Minds Influenced

Counterculture Road Trip Literature

Intellectual Posterity

Beat Literature Counterculture

Discussing

Jack Kerouac

Ask anything about Jack Kerouac — their ideas, influences, contradictions, legacy.