Jack Kerouac

Were he still alive, Jack Kerouac would today be celebrating his 95^th birthday.

That seems an unlikely age for someone so free, if not reckless.

Kerouac died in1969 at the age of 47.  Basically, he drank himself to death.  By the time of his death, he had become wildly famous—mostly for his novel On the Road.

Jack married three times and entertained a string of girlfriends.  A long-time girlfriend described Jack Kerouac as “a very odd person.”

Kerouac had what is commonly called “dancing feet.”  He needed to keep moving.  He seemed incapable of staying in one place for very long.  His writing style reflected that.  On the Road was written in a spontaneous fashion on a continuous scroll of paper so Kerouac did not have to feed new sheets of paper into his typewriter as he wrote.  It seems largely a myth that On the Road was written over a drug-fueled three week period of time.  Much more time and craft went into the writing.

Here is my favorite Kerouac quote: “All of life is a foreign country.”

--Mitchell Hegman