"Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life." ~ Jack Kerouac
Novelist and poet Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) was born Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac on this day in Lowell, Massachusetts and wrote with sensitivity and passion. The son of French-speaking immigrants from Quebec, growing up he would jot down ideas in a spiral notebook.
"All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together," he said.
The leader ("Shaman") of the Beat Generation, he sounded his "barbaric yawp." His popularity today is as strong as ever, thanks to his bold work, including the powerful book On the Road (1957) which continues to sell hundreds of thousands of copies yearly. He is a pop culture icon.
"No time for poetry but exactly what is," he observed. The writer became a vagabond across America to see life first-hand and capture the adventure with all the colors of life.
Like an improvisational jazz musician he let the juices of automatic writing flow, "writing whatever comes into your head as it comes, poetry returned to its origin in the bardic child... wham wham the true blue song of man."
The hip inspiration to writers Ken Kesey and Hunter Thompson, actor Marlon Brando, musician Bob Dylan, and others, Kerouac once urged, "Be a crazy dumb saint of your own mind... Have no fear or shame in the dignity of your experience, language, and knowledge."
No matter what, enjoy life's journey.
