41. kerouac
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“Where are we going, man?” “I don’t know but we gotta go.”
Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)Jack Kerouac
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• Born in Lowel, Massachusetts in 1922.
• Educated at Columbia University.
• At the end of WWII, he began travelling across the States.
1. Life
Jack Kerouac
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Jack Kerouac.
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• In New York he met the intellectual Neal Cassidy, the poet Allen Ginsberg and the novelist William Borroughs.
• After his hitch-hiking across America with Cassidy, he wrote the novel On The Road (1957).
Jack Kerouac
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Jack Kerouac.
1. Life
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• Frightened by his popularity, he became more and more addicted to alcohol.
• His novel Big Sur (1962) contains an account of the disintegration of all his hopes.
• He died in 1969 at the age of forty-seven.
Jack Kerouac
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Jack Kerouac.
1. Life
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• Invented by Kerouac in 1948.
• Introduced to the public by an article on “New York Times Magazine”.
• Beat =
1. tired reaction against capitalism and Puritan middle-class values.
2. beatific Kerouac’s reverence for certain aspects of Catholicism and Buddhism.
Jack Kerouac
2. The term “Beat Generation”
A beatnik rock’n’roll compilation
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• Suffix -nik borrowed from Sputnik, a Russian satellite.
• Their main features: illegal way of life, acting on first impulses.
• They advocated escapism and
created underground culture.
Jack Kerouac
3. The beatniks...
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A group of Beatniks, 1950s.
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• Spiritual and sexual liberation.
• Liberation from censorship.
• Decriminalization of the use of marijuana.
• The evolution of rhythm and blues into rock and roll.
Jack Kerouac
4. ...and their influence upon artistic movements
The Hip, a 1986 book about the Beat Generation
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• The spread of ecological consciousness.
• Attention to a “second religiousness”.
• Respect for land and indigenous peoples and creatures “The Earth is an Indian thing”.
Jack Kerouac
The Hip, a 1986 book about the Beat Generation
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4. ...and their influence upon artistic movements
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“Because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones
who are mad to live, (..) the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like
spiders across the stars”
Jack Kerouac
5. On the Road
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A contemporary edition of On the Road.
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• Story of a friendship.
• Diary-like account of Kerouac’s
wanderings across North America.
• It lacks a central plot episodic
structure.
• Theme of the journey an escape
from the town and from one’s own past.
Jack Kerouac
6. On the Road: structure
Only Connect ... New Directions
A contemporary edition of On the Road.
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Jack Kerouac
• Sal (the narrator) stands for Kerouac
himself.
• Dean stands for Kerouac’s friend Neal
Cassidy.
• Sal and Dean are linked to the same
restlessness.
• They keep on moving without a fixed
goal.
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A contemporary edition of On the Road.
6. On the Road: structure
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• A fictionalised Neal Cassidy.
• He lives for “kicks” moments of intense experience and
pleasure.
• He is the symbol of the attempt to live every moment with
intensity.
“Ahead of him was the ragged and ecstatic joy of pure being”
Jack Kerouac
7. On the Road: Dean Moriarty, the protagonist
Neil Cassidy and Jack Kerouac
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• Spontaneous and episodic.
• Natural explosion of feelings and thoughts.
• Unsophisticated language, defined “hip talk”.
• Vital, authentic, alive and individual language.
• Opposite to conventional language.
• Break with the impersonality of the artist.
Jack Kerouac
8. On the Road: style and language
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