Born on March 12, 1922, in Lowell, Massachusetts, Jack Kerouac's writing career began in the 1940s, but didn't meet with commercial success until 1957, when On the Road was published. The book became an American classic that defined the Beat Generation. Kerouac died on October 21, 1969, from an abdominal hemorrhage, at age 47.
Early Life
Famed writer Jack Kerouac was born Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac on March 12, 1922, in Lowell, Massachusetts. A thriving mill town in the mid-19th century, Lowell had become, by the time of Jack Kerouac's birth, a down-and-out burg where unemployment and heavy drinking prevailed. Kerouac's parents, Leo and Gabrielle, were immigrants from Quebec, Canada; Kerouac learned to speak French at home before he learned English at school. Leo Kerouac owned his own print shop, Spotlight Print, in downtown Lowell, and Gabrielle Kerouac, known to her children as Memere, was a homemaker. Kerouac later described the family's home life: "My father comes home from his printing shop and undoes his tie and removes [his] 1920s vest, and sits himself down at hamburger and boiled potatoes and bread and butter, and with the kiddies and the good wife."
Jack Kerouac endured a childhood tragedy in the summer of 1926, when his beloved older brother Gerard died of rheumatic fever at the age of 9. Drowning in grief, the Kerouac family embraced their Catholic faith more deeply. Kerouac's writing is full of vivid memories of attending church as a child: "From the open door of the church warm and golden light swarmed out on the snow. The sound of the organ and singing could be heard."
Kerouac's two favorite childhood pastimes were reading and sports. He devoured all the 10-cent fiction magazines available at the local stores, and he also excelled at football, basketball and track. Although Kerouac dreamed of becoming a novelist and writing the "great American novel," it was sports, not writing, that Kerouac viewed as his ticket to a secure future. With the onset of the Great Depression, the Kerouac family suffered from financial difficulties, and Kerouac's father turned to alcohol and gambling to cope. His mother took a job at a local shoe factory to boost the family income, but, in 1936, the Merrimack River flooded its banks and destroyed Leo Kerouac's print shop, sending him into a spiral of worsening alcoholism and condemning the family to poverty. Kerouac, who was, by that time, a star running back on the Lowell High School football team, saw football as his ticket to a college scholarship, which in turn might allow him to secure a good job and save his family's finances.
Upon graduating from high school in 1939, Kerouac received a football scholarship to Columbia University, but first he had to attend a year of preparatory school at the Horace Mann School for Boys in Brooklyn. So, at the age of 17, Kerouac packed his bags and moved to New York City, where he was immediately awed by the limitless new experiences of big city life. Of the many wonderful new things Kerouac discovered in New York, and perhaps the most influential on his life, was jazz. He described the feeling of walking past a jazz club in Harlem: "Outside, in the street, the sudden music which comes from the nitespot fills you with yearning for some intangible joy—and you feel that it can only be found within the smoky confines of the place." It was also during his year at Horace Mann that Kerouac first began writing seriously. He worked as a reporter for the Horace Mann Record, and published short stories in the school's literary magazine, the Horace Mann Quarterly.
The following year, in 1940, Kerouac began his freshman year as a football player and aspiring writer at Columbia University. However, he broke his leg in one of his first games and was relegated to the sidelines for the rest of the season. Although his leg had healed, Kerouac's coach refused to let him play the next year, and Kerouac impulsively quit the team and dropped out of
A deluxe edition of Kerouac's 1958 classic
Published just one year after On The Road, this is the story of two men enganged in a passionate search for Dharma or truth. Their major adventure is the pursuit of the Zen Way, which takes them climbing into the High Sierras to seek the lesson of solitude.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
"是谁开了这个残忍的玩笑,让人们不得不像老鼠一样,在旷野上疲于奔命?" "难道上帝已经疯了不成?难道他就像个印第安无赖一样,是个反反复复的给予者?他给了 你一片菜园,却又让土变硬变干,然后引来大洪水,让你一切的血汗白流。求求你告诉我 答案,大师兄,不要含糊其辞:...
评分昨天晚上读完了前段时间买回来的《达摩流浪者》。 从具有禅宗意味的书名就能略想书中内容的一二,凯鲁亚克这个垮掉一代的领军人物的代表作《在路上》倒是借过又退回,终没有阅读,却先读下这冠名为续篇的一本。 我回想起高三备考的阶段,因为什么,我们把课桌都拖到教...
评分“颠覆平庸”四个字印得比《达摩流浪者》的书名还大,叹口气,拆去腰封,置于案上,任纵一苇之所如。遂想起达摩来。谁谓河广,一苇杭之;菩提达摩Bodhi Dharma这一渡,竟暗合了《诗经•卫风》中的“河广”。杰克•凯鲁亚克多年以后便扒火车在美利坚广袤的国土上穿行多时,...
评分只有在这样的生命面前,才能体会到自己过的是何其一种贩夫走卒的生活, 所谓生命的价值绝不等于有多少的钱,住多好的房子,在多高级的都市里过着多他妈“上等人”的生活。看着达摩流浪者,我明白,这是一个已经过去的时代一群已经逝去的圣灵。 我不确定今天是否还有贾菲这...
评分杰克·凯鲁亚克只活了47岁,1950至1957年是他一生中最有价值的年代。整整七年,他与尼尔·卡萨迪一起上路,与加里·斯奈德探寻生命的意义,用独特的自发式写作原始地记录生活。在他的文字里,真实与非真实的界限模糊到几近于无。他的生活就是在路上。而他数量庞杂的作品,简...
好喜欢,读爬山的描写时,快乐的感同身受要飞起来。
评分这本书最大的功劳是给我科普了寒山.........我觉得这位老人家最大的特色倒不是他的诗歌,而是.......他是个和尚吧......
评分The time I spent with The Dharma Bums was the most spiritual period so far, I wake up, meditate, smoke a little bit, for some time really feel the void of life, and eventually took the meditation class when finishing up the book. Kerouac is different from other pure writings I love. He doesn't analyze, but just sense and appreciate. Thank you Jack.
评分O ever youthful, O ever JiaoQing
评分Dr. Love...
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