Janet Michele Kerouac

Background

Mrs. Kerouac was born in Albany, New York, United States, on February 16, 1952. She was the daughter of Jack Kerouac and Joan Haverty Kerouac.

Career

Jan Kerouac held many jobs, including waitress, cannery worker, and cartographers’ assistant. She traveled extensively across the United States and abroad, taking jobs along the way. She wrote two books under the name Jan Kerouac, including Trainsong, in which she detailed her experiences while traveling. Her other book, Baby Driver: A Story about Myself, was published in 1981 and is considered an autobiographical novel about her childhood m Manhattan’s Lower East Side. She was working on Parrot Fever at the time of her death.

Encouraged by Mrs. Kerouac biographer Gerald Nicosia, she entered into a lawsuit in the 1990s that proposed the will of Jack's mother, Gabrielle Kerouac, was a forgery, in the hope winning could expand her legal rights to her father's works and physical property. Eventually a court ruled that the will was indeed a forgery, although in practical terms this ruling changed nothing concerning control of the Mr. Kerouac estate.

On June 5, 1996, Jan Kerouac died in Albuquerque, New Mexico a day after her spleen was removed. She had suffered kidney failure five years earlier and was on dialysis.

Achievements

• Jan Kerouac is an important writer of the later Beat Movement. She is known as an author of three novels: Baby Driver (1981), Trainsong (1988), Parrot Fever (1992–1993).

Works

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  • Trainsong

    (Poems and reminiscences accompany the author's chronicle ...)

  • Baby Driver: A Story About Myself

    (Just as Jack Kerouac captured the beat of the '50s, his d...)

  • Parrot fever: Excerpts from a novel
  • Baby Driver: A Story About Myself

Connections

Father:

Jack Kerouac

Mother:

Joan Haverty Kerouac

References

• Historical Dictionary of the Beat Movement The Beat Movement was and is a literary and arts movement, the most radical and innovative of the 20th century, and because it was so open to new ideas of poetics and aesthetics, it has adapted from decade to decade. The history of the Beat Movement is still being written in the early years of the 21st century. Unlike other kinds of literary and artistic the Beat Movement is self-perpetuating. After the 1950s generation, a new generation arose in the 1960s led by writers such as Diane Wakowski, Anne Waldman, and poets from the East Side Scene. In the 1970s and 1980s writers from the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church and contributors to World magazine continued the movement. The 1980s and 1990s Language Movement saw itself as an outgrowth and progression of previous Beat aesthetics. Today poets and writers in San Francisco still gather at City Lights Bookstore and in Boulder at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and continue the movement. It is now a postmodern movement and probably would be unrecognizable to the earliest Beats. It may even be in the process of finally shedding the name Beat. But the Movement continues. The Historical Dictionary of the Beat Movement covers the movements history through a chronology, an introductory essay, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 700 cross-referenced entries on significant people, themes, critical issues, and the most significant novels, poems, and volumes of poetry and prose that have formed the Beat canon. This book is a vital reference tool for any researcher interested in learning more about the Beat Movement.
• Jan Kerouac: A Life in Memory Jan Kerouac: A Life in Memory on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers.