Editing Jack Kerouac (section)

===Early life and adolescence===
[[File:Jack Kerouac's birthplace, 9 Lupine Road, Lowell MA.jpg|thumb|Jack Kerouac's birthplace, 9 Lupine Road, 2nd floor, West Centralville, Lowell, Massachusetts|alt=]]
Kerouac was born on March 12, 1922, in Lowell, Massachusetts, to French Canadian parents, Léo-Alcide Kéroack and Gabrielle-Ange Lévesque.<ref>Ann Charters, Samuel Charters, ''Brother-Souls: John Clellon Holmes, Jack Kerouac, and the Beat Generation'', University Press of Mississippi, 2010, p. 113</ref>

There is some confusion surrounding his name, partly because of variations on the spelling of ''Kerouac'', and because of Kerouac's own statement of his name as ''Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac''. His reason for that statement seems to be linked to an old family legend that the Kerouacs had descended from Baron François Louis Alexandre Lebris de Kerouac. Kerouac's baptism certificate lists his name simply as ''Jean Louis Kirouac'', the most common spelling of the name in Quebec.<ref name="autogenerated1983">{{harvnb|Nicosia|1994}}</ref> Kerouac's roots were indeed in [[Brittany]], and he was descended from a middle-class merchant colonist, Urbain-François Le Bihan, Sieur de [[Lanmeur|Kervoac]], whose sons married French Canadians.<ref name="dagier ; Quéméner"/><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.genealogie.org/famille/kirouac/PlaquesCOMM_AN.htm|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120222185908/http://www.genealogie.org/famille/kirouac/PlaquesCOMM_AN.htm|title=genealogie.org|archive-date=February 22, 2012}}</ref>

Kerouac's father Leo had been born into a family of potato farmers in the village of [[Saint-Hubert-de-Rivière-du-Loup, Quebec]]. Jack also had various stories on the etymology of his surname, usually tracing it to Irish, [[Breton language|Breton]], [[Cornish language|Cornish]], or other [[Celtic languages|Celtic]] roots. In one interview he claimed it was from the name of the Cornish language (''Kernewek''), and that the Kerouacs had fled from Cornwall to Brittany.<ref>[[Alan M Kent]], ''Celtic Cornwall: Nation, Tradition, Invention.'' Halsgrove, 2012</ref> Another version was that the Kerouacs had come to Cornwall from Ireland before the time of Christ and the name meant "language of the house".<ref>Michael J. Dittman, Jack Kerouac: A Biography, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004</ref> In still another interview he said it was an Irish word for "language of the water" and related to ''Kerwick''.<ref>{{cite web|author=Berrigan, Ted |author-link=Ted Berrigan |url=http://www.parisreview.com/media/4260_KEROUAC.pdf |title=The Art of Fiction No. 43: Jack Kerouac, pg. 49 |work=[[The Paris Review]] |year=1968 |access-date=May 14, 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080528025958/http://www.parisreview.com/media/4260_KEROUAC.pdf |archive-date=May 28, 2008 |url-status=dead }}</ref> Kerouac, derived from ''Kervoach'', is the name of a town in Brittany in [[Lanmeur]], near [[Morlaix]].<ref name="dagier ; Quéméner">{{harvnb|Dagier|2009}}</ref>
[[Image:Jack Kerouac's 3rd home, 34 Beaulieu.jpg|thumb|left|His third of several homes growing up in the West Centralville section of Lowell]]
Jack Kerouac later referred to 34 Beaulieu Street as "sad Beaulieu". The Kerouac family was living there in 1926 when Jack's older brother Gerard died of [[rheumatic fever]], aged nine. This deeply affected four-year-old Jack, who later said Gerard followed him in life as a guardian angel. This is the Gerard of Kerouac's novel ''[[Visions of Gerard]]''. He had one other sibling, an older sister named Caroline. Kerouac was referred to as Ti Jean or little John around the house during his childhood.<ref name="autogenerated1983"/>

Kerouac spoke French with his family and began learning English at school, around age six; he began speaking it confidently in his late teens.<ref>{{cite book |last=Herlihy-Mera |first=Jeffrey |title=After American Studies: Rethinking the Legacies of Transnational Exceptionalism |year=2018 |url=https://www.academia.edu/34217614 |location=New York |publisher=Routledge |page=64 |isbn=978-1-138-05405-9 |access-date=November 26, 2020 |archive-date=October 25, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211025161000/https://www.academia.edu/34217614 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Sandison|1999}}</ref> He was a serious child who was devoted to his mother, who played an important role in his life. She was a devout [[Catholic Church|Catholic]], who instilled this deep faith into both her sons.<ref name="culturewars.com">Fellows, Mark [http://www.culturewars.com/CultureWars/1999/kerouac.html The Apocalypse of Jack Kerouac: Meditations on the 30th Anniversary of his Death] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120227101435/http://www.culturewars.com/CultureWars/1999/kerouac.html |date=February 27, 2012 }}, ''Culture Wars'', November 1999.</ref> He later said she was the only woman he ever loved.<ref name="beatmuseum.org">{{cite web |url=http://www.beatmuseum.org/kerouac/jackkerouac.html |title=Jack Kerouac – bio and links |publisher=Beatmuseum.org |access-date=April 23, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120322094757/http://www.beatmuseum.org/kerouac/jackkerouac.html |archive-date=March 22, 2012 |url-status=dead }}</ref> After Gerard died, his mother sought solace in her faith, while his father abandoned it, wallowing in drinking, gambling, and smoking.<ref name="culturewars.com"/>

Some of Kerouac's poetry was written in French, and in letters written to friend [[Allen Ginsberg]] towards the end of his life, he expressed a desire to speak his parents' native tongue again. In 2016, a whole volume of previously unpublished works originally written in French by Kerouac was published as ''La vie est d'hommage''.<ref>{{cite news|work = Le Devoir | language = fr| url = https://www.ledevoir.com/lire/467010/l-autre-kerouac | access-date = April 13, 2019 | date= April 2, 2016 | title = L'autre Kerouac| first = Christian |last= Desmeules}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.editionsboreal.qc.ca/catalogue/livres/vie-est-hommage-2490.html|title=La vie est d'hommage|website=Éditions Boréal|access-date=April 26, 2016|language=fr|archive-date=May 2, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160502190039/http://www.editionsboreal.qc.ca/catalogue/livres/vie-est-hommage-2490.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

On May 17, 1928, while six years old, Kerouac made his first [[Confession (religion)|Confession]].<ref name="books.google.com">{{cite book |last=Amburn |first=Ellis |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bN0PJn6VCNIC |title=Subterranean Kerouac: The Hidden Life of Jack Kerouac |pages=13–14 |publisher=MacMillan |year=1999 |isbn=9780312206772 }}</ref> For [[penance]], he was told to say a [[rosary]], during which he heard God tell him that he had a good soul, that he would suffer in life and die in pain and horror, but would in the end receive salvation.<ref name="books.google.com"/> This experience, along with his dying brother's vision of the [[Mary (mother of Jesus)|Virgin Mary]] (as the nuns fawned over him, convinced he was a saint), combined with a later study of Buddhism and an ongoing commitment to Christ, solidified the worldview which informed his work.<ref name="books.google.com"/>

Kerouac once told [[Ted Berrigan]], in an interview for ''[[The Paris Review]]'', of an incident in the 1940s in which his mother and father were walking together in a Jewish neighborhood on the [[Lower East Side]] of New York. He recalled "a whole bunch of rabbis walking arm in arm&nbsp;... teedah- teedah – teedah&nbsp;... and they wouldn't part for this Christian man and his wife, so my father went POOM! and knocked a rabbi right in the gutter."<ref>{{harvnb|Miles|1998|p=8}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Berrigan|1968|p=14}}</ref> Leo, after the death of his child, also treated a priest with similar contempt, angrily throwing him out of the house despite his invitation from Gabrielle.<ref name="culturewars.com"/>

Kerouac was a capable athlete in football and wrestling. Kerouac's skills as running back in football for [[Lowell High School (Massachusetts)|Lowell High School]] earned him scholarship offers from [[Boston College]], [[University of Notre Dame|Notre Dame]], and [[Columbia University]], where he enrolled in 1940.<ref name="SmithThoreau">{{cite journal |last1=Smith |first1=Richard |author1-link=Richard Smith (public historian) |title='A model for the world': Jack Kerouac and Henry Thoreau |journal=Thoreau Society Bulletin |date=2022 |volume=318 |pages=1–2 |quote=exposure to Thoreau caused Kerouac to consider abandoning his scholarship and college education and 'living in the woods like Thoreau.'}}</ref> 

From around this time, Kerouac's journal includes an ambitious "Immediate Reading List," a wide-ranging list that includes sacred texts from India and China as well as a note to read "[[Ralph Waldo Emerson|Emerson]] and [[Henry David Thoreau|Thoreau]] (again)."<ref name="SmithThoreau"/>

He spent a year at [[Horace Mann School]], where he befriended Seymour Wyse, an Englishman whom he later featured as a character, under the pseudonym 'Lionel Smart', in several of Kerouac's books. He also cites Wyse as the person who introduced him to the new styles of jazz, including [[Bebop|bop]].<ref>{{cite web |last1=Moore |first1=Dave |title=Kerouac — "My really best friend…" an interview with Seymour Wyse by Dave Moore |url=https://www.emptymirrorbooks.com/beat/seymour-wyse-interview |website=www.emptymirrorbooks.com |date=July 16, 2012 |access-date=March 23, 2021 |archive-date=March 5, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210305112415/https://www.emptymirrorbooks.com/beat/seymour-wyse-interview |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Seymour Wyse: friend of Jack Kerouac |url=http://kilburnwesthampstead.blogspot.com/2020/12/seymour-wyse-friend-of-jack-kerouac.html |website=www.kilburnwesthampstead.blogspot.com |access-date=March 23, 2021 |archive-date=January 28, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210128202443/http://kilburnwesthampstead.blogspot.com/2020/12/seymour-wyse-friend-of-jack-kerouac.html |url-status=live }}</ref> After his year at Horace Mann, Kerouac earned the requisite grades for entry to Columbia. Kerouac broke a leg playing football during his freshman season, and during an abbreviated second year he argued constantly with coach [[Lou Little]], who kept him benched. While at Columbia, Kerouac wrote several sports articles for the student newspaper, the ''[[Columbia Daily Spectator]]'', and joined the [[Phi Gamma Delta]] fraternity.<ref>{{cite web|title=Phi Gamma Delta|url=http://www.wikicu.com/Phi_Gamma_Delta|publisher=Wiki CU|access-date=July 19, 2011|archive-date=September 30, 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110930172657/http://www.wikicu.com/Phi_Gamma_Delta|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|first1=Bill|last1=Morgan|title=The Beat Generation in New York: A Walking Tour of Jack Kerouac's City| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-nt1xVR4SrAC&pg=PA8|location=San Francisco, California|publisher=City Lights Books| access-date=July 23, 2011| isbn=978-0872863255| year=1997}}</ref> He was a resident of [[Wallach Hall|Livingston Hall]] and [[Hartley Hall]], where other Beat Generation figures lived.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Maher|first=Paul|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=U0_Lr0fl3qcC&dq=hartley+hall+jack+kerouac&pg=PA68|title=Kerouac: The Definitive Biography|date=2004|publisher=Taylor Trade Publications|isbn=978-0-87833-305-9|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|last=Krajicek|first=David J.|date=April 5, 2012|title=Where Death Shaped the Beats|language=en-US|newspaper=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/06/books/columbia-u-haunts-of-lucien-carr-and-the-beats.html|access-date=January 20, 2022|issn=0362-4331|archive-date=March 19, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180319063350/http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/06/books/columbia-u-haunts-of-lucien-carr-and-the-beats.html|url-status=live}}</ref> He also studied at [[The New School]].<ref name=hpo>{{cite web|last=Johnson|first=Joyce|title=How the 'Beat Generation' Got Away from Kerouac|url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joycejohnson/how-the-beat-generation-g_b_1958500.html|work=HuffPost|date=November 11, 2012|access-date=December 7, 2012|archive-date=October 15, 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121015073342/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joycejohnson/how-the-beat-generation-g_b_1958500.html|url-status=live}}</ref>