The Myth Endures
Jack Kerouac is poised to become the all-time iconic American writer
by Jonah RaskinTools
What is it about Jack Kerouac? Why have generations flocked repeatedly to his landmark On the Road for inspiration ever since it was first published? Why do biographers continue to write books about him? And why have moviemakers always sought to turn his novels into films?
There's no better time than now to answer these questions about the man. Kerouac was born in 1922 and died from internal bleeding in 1969 at the age of 47 in the house he shared with his third wife, Stella, and his mother, Gabrielle, who taught him how to tell a good story.
Fifty-five years after it became a bestseller, On the Road comes to movie screens later this year, when teens flocking to see Kristen Stewart's topless scenes will be exposed to the author anew. A cinematic version of Kerouac's Big Sur is on its way, too, and there's a forthcoming feature film, Kill Your Darlings, about Kerouac and his buddies that stars Jack Huston as Jack Kerouac, and Daniel Radcliffe as Allen Ginsberg.
There's also a new biography out by Kerouac's ex-lover Joyce Johnson titled The Voice Is All (Viking; $32.95), which recounts his evolution as a writer but doesn't tell all about his personal life. Johnson did that already in her memoir, Minor Characters, and in a collection of her correspondence with Kerouac called Door Wide Open. In one of her letters to him, Johnson wrote, "I'm your girl, your mistress, or whatever." She added, "The door is still open always."
Johnson was not the only woman to feel so intensely about him. Even when he was living with Johnson in her New York apartment, he pursued other women. Married three times, with dozens of girlfriends, mistresses and whatever, Kerouac appealed to women because they could see him as the little boy who needed to be rescued from his own worst habits or the handsome lover who promised the wildest nights of uninhibited sex and existential adventures. He also appealed to men, to whom he might seem like an older brother they always wanted to have.
In On the Road, he advertised himself and his friends as saintly outlaws who wouldn't and couldn't stop doing whatever they did. "The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time," he wrote. "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." Kerouac was a roman candle who exploded from too much sex, too much travel, too many illicit drugs, especially speed, and too much writing.
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