The Backstory: Jack Kerouac: On the Road With a Brilliant Disaster

unable to save himself. That's next on the backstory. The backstory is back. We know him as the brilliant author Jack Kerouac, But he was born Jean Louis le Brie de Kiroac Love that on March twelfth, nineteen twenty two, in Lowell, Massachusetts. His parents were French Canadian immigrants. This great American author actually grew up speaking French, learning English when he started school. Believe it or not, this creative

offbeat guy wasn't some odd dreamy kid. By high school, Jack was a football star, snagging a scholarship to Columbia University in New York City. Picture it a really handsome, ambitious teenage football player pounding the pavement of Upper Manhattan in the nineteen forties. Problem is, ambition isn't always coupled with dedication. That's where the offbeat Kerouac shows up. He just couldn't stick with it. He broke his leg in his freshman year, Okay, not his fault, but the next

year he constantly clashed with his football coach. He was benched most of that season. So Jack decided, I'm gonna drop out of Columbia. Sure, So next he floated through odd jobs all over Manhattan. He wrote constantly, and he fell in with kind of a wild crew. They would later be called the core of the Beach Generation. His pals and included Alan Ginsburg, william S Burrows, and Lucian Carr, all defining the counterculture. They partied, philosophized, got arrested, slept around,

and wrote poetry until dawn. But then one event changed everything. Jack Kerouac was arrested as an accessory to a murder committed by Lucian Carr. It was nineteen forty four, and Carr claimed a guy named David Kamerer had been stalking him for years. Finally they were walking in Manhattan's Riverside Park. Late one night, Carr said Camerer made another aggressive sexual come on to him. He said Camerer began to overpower him, so he pulled out his boy scout knife and stabbed him. Well,

it killed him, He panics, what do I do? He ties Camera's hands and feet together, and then, after weighing the body down with Rocks, dumps him in the nearby Hudson River. Probably not a great choice, now what Carr goes to the apartment of his pal Burrows and asked for help, but Burrows tells him to get a lawyer and turn himself in. Next, he goes to Kerouac, who helps him dispose of the knife in some of his clothing. Then the pair goes to a movie. Sure. Finally, Carr

goes to his mother. She tells him go to the DA immediately and turn yourself in, which he does. What's next, Well, Burrows Andac are both hauled in by the cops as well. They spend a few days in jail, arrested as material witnesses. Burrow's dad posts his bail, but Jack's shocked father refuses to help. Now it gets dicier since Jack doesn't have the hundred bucks to get himself out of jail. He needs a plan. He turns to the parents of his girlfriend,

Edie Parker. Edie has a trust fund, and Jack asks the family if she can access a little bit of bail money for him. Oddly, the parents say sure, as long as you marry her first. Wow. Great parents with detectives sirrving his witnesses, the pair gets married at the municipal building and then Edie springs him from jail. They wind up moving to Edie's hometown, Gross Pointe, Michigan, although

four years later the marriage is annulled. As for Lucian car coming from money, having a top notch lawyer who claims that Camerer was obsessed and pressuring young Lucian, who was straight, for gay sex, the court system goes easy on him, as did the press. The New York Daily News referred to it as an honored killing. A later account of the trial in Carr's obituary many years later gives a similar view, saying central to Carr's defense was that he was not gay and that Camerer, an older,

obsessive stalker, threatened sexual violence. Once the story of a predatory homosexual was presented in court, Carr became a victim and the murder was framed as an honored killing. There was no one in court to question the story or offer a different version of the relationship. Carr gets to plead guilty to first to go manslaughter. He gets one to twenty years, but he's released after just two years.

He goes on to a long successful career in journalism, and in fact, his son, calib Car was the noted author of the best seller The Alienist. For his part, Karroac struggled, but he wrote constantly on everything from napkins and coffee shops to stolen typewriters. Despite his alcohol and

drug addiction, he eventually found his voice. It was nineteen fifty one and fueled by Benzadorian and endless coffee, Jack sat down at a typewriter, probably a stolen With over three frenzied weeks, he pounded out his classic On the Road. He typed the whole thing on a single massive scroll of tape together paper, no form, just pure stream of consciousness, like no paragraphs. Nothing on the Road was based on

real road trips Kaak took with a pal. He kept no notes, just stored all the experiences in his brilliant head. The book captured the hunger of postwar kids looking for freedom, experience, and something authentic. Interesting. Sidebar, Even though his most famous book is all about a road trip, Jack Kerouac never learned to drive in his life anyway. He submitted the book, but publishers just didn't get it. They rejected On the

Road over and over and over. It remained unpublished for six long years, during which Jack spiraled further into poverty and depression, as well as addiction. When On the Road finally hit shelves in nineteen fifty seven, it exploded. Critics said it was the most beautifully executed, the clearest, and most important utterance of its generation. Jack became an overnight legend. Just one problem. Fame crushed him. He hated being labeled

King of the Beats. He hated the early hippies who followed him around like he was some kind of prophet. He hated interviews where people wanted him to be this wild, drunken poet, even though by then that's pretty much exactly what he was. Jack drank even more heavily, wildly. He'd wander into bars, recite poems to total strangers, pick fights, drink himself into a stupor, and friends like Alan Ginsburg tried to help him, but he was a runaway train. However,

he kept writing. Books poured out of him, The Dharma Bums about his experience with Buddhism, Desolation Angels about his job as a fire lookout on a remote mountaintop, and Big sur which was basically a devastating account of his mental and physical collapse. He also wrote for magazines and for all kinds of published journals. His writing became more raw, sadder, and more fragmented. He was chronicling his own breakdown as it happened. For a time, he seriously considered becoming a

Buddhist monk. He lived with his mom well into adulthood, obsessively protective of her. He married three times, once for money, once impulsively, and once out of loneliness. Jack Kerouac died on October twenty first, nineteen sixty nine. He was just forty seven years old. Cause of death internal bleeding from a lifetime of alcohol abuse. He died broke, living in Saint Petersburg, Florida, with his mom and his third wife. But here's the thing, Jack Kerouac's legacy isn't his sad ending.

It's the energy he captured, the yearning, the music of movement. When you read On the Road or the Dharma Bombs, you can feel that urgent heartbeat, that refusal to settle for a normal life when there's a whole, vast world out there. As he wrote on the Road, 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. Jack Kerouac taught

us that the search matters even when the road ends badly. Again, I want to thank backstory listener nine one one Grail for suggesting this amazing dive into Jack Kirouac. Really interesting. I hope you're enjoying the backstory with Patty Steele. Please leave a review and follow or subscribe for free to get new episodes delivered automatically, and also feel free to DM me if you too have a story you'd like me to cover. Like nine one one Grail on Facebook

It's Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele. The Backstory is a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the Elvis Durand Group, and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Feel free to reach out to me with comments and even story suggestions on Instagram at Real Patty Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele.

Thanks for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele. The pieces of history you didn't know you needed to know.