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.
“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,...
评分早晨站在阳台很久,阳光大好,北京少见的蓝天白云,眯着眼,一年到头也不过见早晨的太阳三四次面而已。昨夜喝的酒精已经积蓄到脑袋上,一夜半梦半醒,眉毛拧在一起。我再也不是那随时能糟蹋自己颓废小青年儿了。 弄了一杯铁观音,听着王娟的歌,黑皮继续在桌下睡的死去活来。...
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...
评分《达摩流浪者》,这是一本我偷来的书。某个上午它出现在朋友的书架上,然后秘密进入了我的背包里。我花了一上午时间把它看完,然后在两年里一次一次地重读它。台湾人梁永安的翻译绝非完美,正好相反,已经有许多人对我、或对着浩瀚的网络,抱怨其中的错误和大段的漏译。但...
评分“他们全都是禅疯子;会写一些突然想到的、莫名其妙的诗;会把永恒自由的意象带给所有的人和所有的生灵。” 谁都想不到,“垮掉的一代”中的几位圣贤,会给若干年后中国青年亚文化带来如此巨大的冲击和影响。甚至有那么一段时间,边缘文化青年们张口凯鲁亚克闭口巴勒斯,伟大...
军训十几天里闲着无聊,之前临走时居然随身带了企鹅版达摩流浪者,单词并不简单,因为读过中文版,还算流畅。读英文书,终究感受不到汉字组合的优美,不仅阅读速度慢,而且骨子里的扞格之处难以磨灭。
评分literally SHIT
评分naive
评分Still young, and weep
评分这本书改变了我的某些生活方式。
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