Biography of Jack Kerouac
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| Biography of Jack Kerouac |
• Name: Jack Kerouac.
• Born: 12 March 1922, Lowell, Massachusetts, US .
• Father: LEO-Alkide Kerouac.
• Mother: Gabriel-Ange Levesque.
• Wife / Husband: Eddie Parker, Joan Haverty, Stella Sampas.
Early life of Jack Kerouac:
Jack Kerouac was born on March 12, 1922 in Lowell, Massachusetts to French Canadian parents, Léo-Alcide Kerouac (1899–1946) and Gabrielle-Ange Levesque (1895–1973). There is some confusion surrounding his name, partly due to a variation on Kerouac's spelling, and his statement about Kerouac's own name as Jean-Louis LeBris de Kerouac. His reason for that statement seems to be linked to the old family legend that Kerouac descended from Baron François Luis Alexandre LeBris de Kerouac.
Keroek's baptism certificate lists only his name as Jean Louis Kirouac, the most common spelling of the name in Quebec. Research has shown that Kerouac's roots were actually in Brittany, and that he descended from Urbain-François Le Bihan, Sier de Carvouac, a middle-class merchant colonist whose sons were married to French Canadians. Keroek's father Leo was born into a family of potato farmers in the village of Saint-Hubert-de-Riviere-du-Loup, Quebec. There were also various stories on the etymology of Jack's surname, usually tracing it to Irish, Breton, Cornish or other Celtic roots.
In 1940 Kerouac enrolled at Columbia University, where he met two writers who would become lifelong friends: Alan Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs. Along with Kerouac, they are fundamental figures of the literary movement known as the Beat, a term introduced to Kerouac by Herbert Hanke, a Tyr square junkie, petty thief, hustler, and author. It meant "down-and-out" as well as "beatific" and therefore denoted the bottom of existence (from a financial and emotional point of view) as well as the highest, most spiritual high.
Kerouac's childhood and early adulthood were marked by loss: his brother Gerrard died in 1926 at the age of nine. Kerouac's childhood friend Sebastian Sampas died in 1944 and his father Leo died in 1946. In a death promise to Leo, Kerouac vows to take care of his mother, Gabriel, affectionately known as Memere. Kerouac was married three times: Eddie Parker (1944); For Joan Haverty (1951), with whom she had a daughter, Jan Mitchell; And Stella Sampas (1966), sister of Sebastian, who died in Angio, Italy during World War II.
Two of Kerouac's favorite childhood pastimes were reading and playing. He devoured all 10-percent fiction magazines available in local stores, and he also excelled in football, basketball and track. Although Kerouac dreamed of becoming a novelist and writing a "great American novel", it was not a game, writing, Kierouk was seen as the ticket to a secure future. With the onset of the Great Depression, the Kerouac family suffered from financial difficulties, and turned to alcohol and gambling to cope with Kerouac's father.
His mother took a job at a local shoe factory to boost family income, but in 1936, the Merrimack River flooded its banks and destroyed Leo Kerouac's print shop, forcing him to spoil liquor and the family Was sent into a spiral of condemnation in poverty. Kerouac, who until that time, a star back on the Lowell High School football team, saw football as a ticket to college scholarships, which in turn could allow him to get a good job and save his family's finances .
When On the Road was published in 1957, Kerouac became instantly famous and the spokesperson of the Beat Generation, young people of the 1950s and 1960s, resented the values of the middle class. Kerouac often appeared drunk, and interviews with him usually turned into arguments. In 1958 he wrote a follow-up to The Burma Lims, On the Road. He then stopped writing for four years. By 1960 he was an alcoholic and suffered a nervous breakdown. Kerouac died of massive abdominal bleeding on October 21, 1969, with a pad in his lap and a pen in his hand. He was buried with the rest of his family near Lowell.
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