The Tools and Process of a Famous Writer: Jack Kerouac

Most of us see Jack Kerouac as the leading beat of that talented beatnik crowd. His groundbreaking work On the Road, about a cross-country road trip, was said to be a celebration of freedom and spontaneity, part of Kerouac's personal myth amid a post-WWII American hedonism. 

It's not that there's more to the story, but what's there is different. And fascinating. A cursory look at Kerouac dispels a few assumptions.

•  On The Road may be regarded as an American masterpiece, but Kerouac was French-Canadian and spoke Joual, a Canadian dialect of French. English was a second language for him. Joyce Johnson, who'd been his partner for a couple years, says if you read his work you'll detect French inflections throughout.

•  He didn't write it as a spontaneous regurgitation of freewheeling thought. Everything was meticulously scrutinized and edited and revised, as if each paragraph was a poem. (As Virginia Woolf scholars might say, it takes a lot of work to make it read like stream-of-consciousness ebb and flow).

•  He didn't like to stop and reload page after page into his typewriter, so he'd tape translucent sheets of vellum together and run it through on a scroll. The finished manuscript for On the Road was 120 feet long. His notebooks are similar: hurried penciled lines filling every bit of white space, where now and then a comment stands out, like when he refers to friend Allen Ginsberg as "a mental screwball."

Kerouac passed away in 1969, age 47, an alcoholic recluse. He had one a child, a daughter he never really got to know (Jan Kerouac also died young). Still fascinating to each new generation, the subject of new documentaries and biographical screenplays, his work continues to influence the young who it view through the prism of their own experiences in a post-9/11 world.

Above: Kerouac, left, with his friend Lucien Carr (father of Caleb Carr, author of The Alienist). Right: The scrolled manuscript for On The Road, typed single-spaced . Towards the end of his life, Kerouac tried in vain to interest actor Marlon Brando in a film version of On The Road. He also considered suing the producers of a TV show ("Route 66") for plagiarism.