Jack Kerouacand the Beat Generation

• The Beatnik movement began in San Francisco in the 1950s and

then spread to New York.

• Its founders were Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac and

William Burroughs.

• By the early 1960s, the romantic anarchism celebrated by the

Beatniks had become the new aesthetics.

• It developed into the hippy movements.

The Beat Generation

• Born into a French-Canadian family.

• He went to Columbia University, but then enlisted with the Merchant

Marine.

• Back in New York, he started to live a Bohemian life.

• When he became famous, he started to drink

heavily and to isolate himself from the people.

• He died alone at the age of 47 in San Francisco.

Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)

• On the Road (1957), his famous Beat novel

• The Subterraneans (1958)

• The Dharma Bums (1958)

• Big Sur (1962)

His Works

The living symbol of the Beat Generation

BEAT

The spontaneous The beatitude of

beat of jazz oriental mysticism

‘Beat’ writing and the unconventional life associated with it became

the symbol of a generation that refused conventional social values and

wanted to express its dissatisfaction by deviating from the accepted

norm.

Kerouac and the Beat Generation

• A sort of romantic anarchism;

• Instinct and spontaneity;

• Friendship and the love of nature;

• With an open-style sort of prose.

His novels expressed:

• A journey through America.

• A celebration of the unconventional lifestyle of the Beat Generation.

• Kerouac experiments with new, freer forms of writing:

the spontaneous, colloquial forms he found in

his travel-mate Neal Cassady’s letters.

• The result was not much appreciated by publishers.

• The novel was published seven years after it was written.

On the Road

• It is narrated by Sal Paradise, a young would-be novelist.

• A college friend has invited him to live with him in San Francisco.

• Sal wants to visit Denver, the home of another of his friends, Dean

Moriarty.

• Sal makes four trips across America.

• He finally goes back to New York, but the end

of the novel remains ambiguous.

The Story