Happy Birthday Jack Kerouac

Today is Jack Kerouac's birthday. Had he not drank himself to death at the age of 47, he'd be 94 today.

Kerouac made his mark in literature back in the fifties. His book, On the Road, inspired millions of imitators and launched a new movement in literature. He may not have been the best or most talented of the Beats, but he is by far the most famous, aside from Allen Ginsberg.

What makes Kerouac different, sets him apart from the rest of the Beats, is how dangerous he was, especially to the movement to which he gave name.

On the Road was published in the fifties, when America was perhaps at it's height of conservatism. On the Road, a biographical account of Kerouac's trips across America, where he explored jazz dens and smoked reefer across the border in Mexico, gave the underground currents that buzzed across the great wide states of America, a voice. It opened the eyes of people who had perhaps never even conceived there were other possibilities than those set before them by their parents. It was this voice that made Kerouac the King of the Beat Generation.

This is all great stuff for a kid living in a small town, waiting for their chance to see what's out there on the horizon. The basic theme, I found, was to dig life, to dig the ups and downs, and to realize its all one beautiful journey.

It took Kerouac ten years to write and get his book of “spontaneous prose” published. It coincided with the rise in Jazz and Bebop, of which Kerouac incorporated into his prose. He wrote with a beat in his head, which gave the Beat Generation its name. Had Kerouac never written another book, he would have been a mere footnote in history, if that. But he did. After the success of On the Road, his publisher wanted more of the same. It's what happens when an artist becomes successful. The ones who made money off them, want more. So he churned out more experiences, the best of which was The Dharma Bums. His books all follow the same characters, and it was his idea to incorporate them into one large story, called The Vanity of Duluoz.

Kerouac had many critics, and even today, he is often dismissed as anything more than a fad or an adolescent's vision of what a writer should be. Truman Capote famously said of Kerouac, “That's not writing, that's typing.”

What these critics fail to see, is that while his prose breaks so many literary rules, often sending a single sentence trampling across several pages, is that there is a beat Kerouac is working too, and if read aloud, as evidenced in his Steve Allen performance, it creates something new. Something that had never been done before.

And while Kerouac, as a man, should be nobody's idol, his work will last forever, drunken warts and all.

So, here's to you Jack. Happy Birthday.