Jean Louis Kerouac was born March 12, 1922 in Lowell, Massachusetts to French - Canadian parents. Jean grew up speaking a virtually unwritten French dialect call Joual until he went to school and was forced to speak English. Kerouac never became comfortable with the English language and always translated his thoughts from Joual to English before speaking. Kerouac always felt like a minority in this country and referred to himself as blancs negres. However, by KerouacÕs senior year in high school he fit the All - American image. He was an athlete, good student and considered handsome by all
Kerouac went to Columbia University in New York on a football scholarship. While attending Columbia Kerouac became friends with Allen Ginsberg and Herbert Huncke, a drug addict/ con man who hung out at Times Square and coined the phrase Beat and William Burroughs, who took his younger friends under his wing and introduced them to a lifestyle of drugs, sex and hitchhiking. Around the time Kerouac dropped out of Columbia he befriended a young man named Neal Cassidy.
With friends firmly established his cast of characters was complete. Kerouac established his art as a writer by writing about his days with the other Godfathers of Beat. Kerouac served sporadically in the Navy and the Merchant Marines in WWII; however, he had a problem with discipline and didnÕt last. Kerouac tried to present a certain image of his work. He wanted people to believe that his writing was all about spontaneity and getting it right the first time.
KerouacÕs main inspiration for his books was his travels. Especially with Neal Cassady who was the prototype to dean moriarty in On the Road and Cody Pomeray in Visions of Cody. Together the two traveled across the country. Kerouac met many strangers who became bit characters in books. During his travels he met and immortalized three women in three separate books. A Mexican migrant worker Terry from On the Road, a hip black woman Alene Lee who was the prototype for Mardou Fox in Subterraneans, and a Mexican prostitute in Tristessa. Although Kerouac loved women, he married three times and had a daughter by his second wife, Jan Kerouac, a writer like her father who inherited his reckless nature and died young like her father. Kerouac never admitted to having a child and saw his daughter once when she was a teenager.
Although Kerouac was always known to be a mamas boy, toward the end of his life he became bitter and raved against Beatniks, Hippies, Jews, and Communists as the sources of the decline of the United States. However, by the time he ranted and raved about the very groups he inspired he had long felt bruised and abused. Kerouac had been devastated by all the publicity he had received after On the Road. Another thorn in his side was his mistaken identity as the character Dean Moriarty the immoral leader in On the Road, who was in fact modeled after Neal Cassidy. Kerouac was the model for Sal Paradise the laid back observer who followed at the heels of Dean. Kerouac was also unprepared for the harsh criticism he received for his non-On the Road books.