Editing Jack Kerouac (section)

==Style==
Kerouac is generally considered to be the father of the Beat movement, although he actively disliked such labels. Kerouac's method was heavily influenced by the prolific explosion of
jazz, especially the [[bebop]] genre established by [[Charlie Parker]], [[Dizzy Gillespie]], [[Thelonious Monk]], and others. Later, he included ideas he developed from his [[Buddhism|Buddhist]] studies that began with [[Gary Snyder]]. He often referred to his style as "spontaneous prose".<ref>{{cite book|last1=Hunt|first1=Tim|title=The textuality of soulwork : Jack Kerouac's quest for spontaneous prose|date=2014|publisher=University of Michigan Press |isbn=978-0-472-07216-3}}</ref> Although Kerouac's prose was spontaneous and purportedly without edits, he primarily wrote autobiographical novels (or ''[[roman à clef]]'') based upon actual events from his life and the people with whom he interacted. This approach is reflected also by his plot structure: his narratives were not heavily focused on traditional plot structures. Instead, his works often revolved around a series of episodic encounters, road trips, and personal reflections. The emphasis was on the characters' experiences and the exploration of themes such as freedom, rebellion, and the search for meaning.

[[Image:The air was soft the stars so fine the promise of every cobbled alley so great by Jack Kerouac - Jack Kerouac Alley.jpg|thumb|''On the Road'' excerpt in the center of [[Jack Kerouac Alley]] ]]
Many of his books exemplified this spontaneous approach, including ''On the Road'', ''Visions of Cody'', ''Visions of Gerard'', ''Big Sur'', and ''The Subterraneans''. The central features of this writing method were the ideas of breath (borrowed from jazz and from Buddhist meditation breathing), improvising words over the inherent structures of mind and language, and limited revision. Connected with this idea of breath was the elimination of the [[Full stop|period]], substituting instead a long connecting dash. As such, the phrases occurring between dashes might resemble [[improvisation|improvisational jazz]] licks. When spoken, the words take on a certain musical rhythm and tempo.{{fact|date=January 2024}}

Kerouac greatly admired and was influenced by Gary Snyder. ''[[The Dharma Bums]]'' contains accounts of a mountain climbing trip Kerouac took with Snyder, and includes excerpts of letters from Snyder.<ref>{{harvnb|Suiter| 2002|p=186}}</ref> While living with Snyder outside Mill Valley, California, in 1956, Kerouac worked on a book about him, which he considered calling ''Visions of Gary''.<ref>{{harvnb|Suiter| 2002|p=189}}</ref> (This eventually became ''Dharma Bums'', which Kerouac described as "mostly about [Snyder].")<ref>{{harvnb|Suiter| 2002|p=228}}</ref> That summer, Kerouac took a job as a [[fire lookout]] on [[Desolation Peak (Washington)|Desolation Peak]] in the [[North Cascades]] in Washington, after hearing Snyder's and Whalen's stories of working as fire spotters. Kerouac described the experience in ''Desolation Angels'' and later in "Alone on a Mountaintop" (published in ''[[Lonesome Traveler]]'') and ''The Dharma Bums''.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Oxley |first=Dyer |date=2023-08-29 |title=Fire lookout that author Jack Kerouac wrote about is in danger of burning in Washington state |url=https://www.kuow.org/stories/fire-lookout-that-author-jack-kerouac-wrote-about-is-in-danger-of-burning-in-washington-state |access-date=2024-06-08 |website=KUOW |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=2024-06-02 |title=Jack Kerouac: Alone on a Mountaintop |url=https://www.theculturium.com/jack-kerouac-alone-on-a-mountaintop/ |access-date=2024-06-08 |website=The Culturium |language=en-US}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Wilma |first=David |date=December 18, 2006 |title=Author Jack Kerouac spends 63 days as a fire lookout on Desolation Pe |url=https://www.historylink.org/file/8034 |access-date=2024-06-08 |website=HistoryLink.org}}</ref>

Kerouac would go on for hours, often drunk, to friends and strangers about his method. Allen Ginsberg, initially unimpressed, would later be one of his great proponents, and it was Kerouac's free-flowing prose method that inspired the composition of Ginsberg's poem ''[[Howl (poem)|Howl]]''. It was at about the time of ''The Subterraneans'' that he was encouraged by Ginsberg and others to formally explain his style. Of his expositions of the spontaneous prose method, the most concise was {{cite web |title=Belief and Technique for Modern Prose|url=https://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/kerouac-technique.html}}, a list of 30 "essential" maxims. 

{{quote box
| quote = ... and I shambled after as usual as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because 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, 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 and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"
| source = —''[[On the Road]]''
| align = right
| width = 45%
| fontsize = 12
}}

Some believed that at times Kerouac's writing technique did not produce lively or energetic prose. [[Truman Capote]] said of it, "That's not writing, it's typing".<ref>{{cite book | title = Conversations with Capote | first = Lawrence | last = Grobel | publisher = Da Capo Press | page = 32 | isbn = 0-306-80944-3 | year = 2000 }}</ref> According to [[Carolyn Cassady]] and others, he constantly rewrote and revised his work.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Shea|first1=Andrea|title=Jack Kerouac's Famous Scroll, 'On the Road' Again|website=NPR.org|url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11709924|publisher=NPR|access-date=July 20, 2017|archive-date=July 10, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170710061640/http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11709924|url-status=live}}</ref>

Although the body of Kerouac's work has been published in English, in addition to his poetry and letters to friends and family, he also wrote unpublished works of fiction in French. The existence of his two novels written in French, ''La nuit est ma femme'' and ''Sur le chemin'' was revealed to the general public in a series of articles published by journalist Gabriel Anctil, in the Montreal newspaper Le Devoir in 2007 and 2008.<ref>{{Cite web | url=https://www.ledevoir.com/lire/155613/les-50-ans-d-on-the-road-kerouac-voulait-ecrire-en-francais | title=Kerouac voulait écrire en français|trans-title=Kerouac wanted to write in French|date=September 5, 2007|language=fr|author-first1=Gabriel|author-last1=Anctil|work=Le Devoir}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web | url=https://www.ledevoir.com/lire/156026/kerouac-le-francais-et-le-quebec | title=Kerouac, le français et le Québec| date=September 8, 2007}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web | url=https://www.ledevoir.com/lire/203916/sur-le-chemin |title = Sur le chemin|date = September 4, 2008}}</ref> All these works, including ''La nuit est ma femme'', ''Sur le chemin'', and large sections of ''Maggie Cassidy'' (originally written in French), have now been published together in a volume entitled ''La vie est d'hommage'' (Boréal, 2016) edited by University of Pennsylvania professor Jean-Christophe Cloutier. In 1996, the ''Nouvelle Revue Française'' had already published excerpts and an article on "La nuit est ma femme", and scholar [[Paul Maher Jr.]], in his biography ''Kerouac: His Life and Work'''', ''''' discussed ''Sur le chemin''. The novella, completed in five days in Mexico during December 1952, is a telling example of Kerouac's attempts at writing in his first language, a language he often called Canuck French.

Kerouac refers to this short novel in a letter addressed to Neal Cassady (who is commonly known as the inspiration for the character Dean Moriarty) dated January 10, 1953. The published novel runs over 110 pages, having been reconstituted from six distinct files in the Kerouac archive by Professor Cloutier. Set in 1935, mostly on the East Coast, it explores some of the recurring themes of Kerouac's literature by way of a spoken word narrative. Here, as with most of his French writings, Kerouac writes with little regard for grammar or spelling, often relying on phonetics in order to render an authentic reproduction of the French-Canadian vernacular. Even though this work has the same title as one of his best known English novels, it is the original French version of an incomplete translation that later became ''Old Bull in the Bowery'' (now published in ''The Unknown Kerouac'' from the Library of America).<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.loa.org/news-and-views/1107-forthcoming-from-library-of-america-summer-fall-2016|title=Forthcoming from Library of America: Summer–Fall 2016 {{!}} Library of America|website=www.loa.org|access-date=April 26, 2016|archive-date=May 30, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160530161642/https://www.loa.org/news-and-views/1107-forthcoming-from-library-of-america-summer-fall-2016|url-status=live}}</ref> ''The Unknown Kerouac,'' edited by Todd Tietchen, includes Cloutier's translation of ''La nuit est ma femme'' and the completed translation of ''Sur le Chemin'' under the title ''Old Bull in the Bowery''. ''La nuit est ma femme'' was written in early 1951 and completed a few days or weeks before he began the original English version of ''On the Road'', as many scholars, such as Paul Maher Jr., Joyce Johnson, Hassan Melehy, and Gabriel Anctil<ref>{{Cite web | url=https://www.ledevoir.com/lire/155613/les-50-ans-d-on-the-road-kerouac-voulait-ecrire-en-francais | title=Kerouac voulait écrire en français | date=September 5, 2007 |language=fr}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web | url=https://www.ledevoir.com/lire/156026/kerouac-le-francais-et-le-quebec | title=Kerouac, le français et le Québec | date=September 8, 2007 |language=fr}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web | url=https://www.ledevoir.com/lire/203916/sur-le-chemin |title = Sur le chemin |date = September 4, 2008 |language=fr}}</ref> have pointed out.

=== Influences ===
Kerouac's early writing, particularly his first novel ''The Town and the City'', was more conventional, and bore the strong influence of [[Thomas Wolfe]]. The technique Kerouac developed that later gained him notoriety was heavily influenced by jazz, especially [[Bebop]], and later, Buddhism, as well as the Joan Anderson letter written by Neal Cassady.<ref>{{cite book | last =Cassady | first =Neal | author-link =Neal Cassady | title =The First Third | publisher =Underground Press | year= 1964 | page =387 | oclc =42789161}}</ref> The ''[[Diamond Sutra]]'' was the most important Buddhist text for Kerouac, and "probably one of the three or four most influential things he ever read".<ref>{{harvnb|Suiter| 2002|p=191}}</ref> In 1955, he began an intensive study of this sutra, in a repeating weekly cycle, devoting one day to each of the six [[Pāramitā]]s, and the seventh to the concluding passage on [[Samādhi]]. This was his sole reading on Desolation Peak, and he hoped by this means to condition his mind to [[Śūnyatā|emptiness]], and possibly to have a vision.<ref>{{harvnb|Suiter| 2002|p=210}}</ref>

[[James Joyce]] was also a literary influence on Kerouac and alludes to Joyce's work more than any other author.<ref name="findarticles.com">Begnal, Michael, [https://web.archive.org/web/20111203004051/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3362/is_2_77/ai_n28721379/ "I Dig Joyce": Jack Kerouac and Finnegans Wake], Philological Quarterly, Spring 1998</ref> Kerouac had high esteem for Joyce and he often used Joyce's stream-of-consciousness technique.<ref name="findarticles.com"/><ref name="Encyclopedia of Beat Literature">{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yzVV1Hl1NvAC |title=Encyclopedia of Beat Literature |page=244 |publisher=Infobase Publishing |year=2007 |isbn=9781438109084 }}</ref> Regarding ''On the Road'', he wrote in a letter to Ginsberg, "I can tell you now as I look back on the flood of language. It is like ''[[Ulysses (novel)|Ulysses]]'' and should be treated with the same gravity."<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=N5FN49R58-gC&pg=PT163 |title=Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters |publisher=Penguin |year=2010 |isbn=9781101437131 }}</ref> Additionally, Kerouac admired Joyce's experimental use of language, as seen in his novel ''Visions of Cody'', which uses an unconventional narrative as well as a multiplicity of authorial voices.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Begnal|first1=Michael|title="To be an Irishman Too": Jack Kerouac's Irish Connection|journal=Irish Province of the Society of Jesus|year=2003|volume=92|issue= 368|page=372|ref=71|jstor=30095661}}</ref>