Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road made him one of America’s most famous authors, but the path to that fame was marked by violence, failed marriages, and personal tragedy that followed him until his death. Born in Lowell, Massachusetts in March 1922 to French-Canadian parents, Kerouac did not speak English until he was six years old. At age four, he lost his older brother Gerard to rheumatic fever, a death that shattered his family. His father Leo lost his faith and turned to vices, while his mother Gabrielle clung more tightly to her Catholicism.
Kerouac became deeply attached to his mother, later calling her the only woman he ever loved. Kerouac served in both the United States Merchant Marines and the United States Navy Reserves during World War II, but never left American soil. His military career ended abruptly after just nine days of active duty. After complaining of a headache, he found himself diagnosed with conditions described in antiquated terms such as dementia praecox and schizoid personality.
He reportedly told examiners, “I just can’t stand it. I like to be myself. ”
After briefly attending Columbia University, where he played football, Kerouac left school but remained in New York. There he connected with figures who would become central to the Beat Generation, including his girlfriend Edie Parker, journalist Lucien Carr, and writer William Burroughs.
These connections would soon drag Kerouac into one of the most dramatic episodes of his life. Lucien Carr had grown up in St. Louis, where he first met David Kammerer through a Boy Scout troop that Kammerer led. Despite a nearly 14-year age difference, Kammerer supposedly became obsessed with Carr.
Carr moved frequently from school to school, but Kammerer always followed, and both eventually landed in New York by 1944. In August 1944, Kerouac and Carr decided to book passage on a merchant ship bound for occupied Paris, hoping to arrive in time for the Allies to liberate the city. On August 13th, the two boarded a ship, but a first mate threw them off at the last minute. That night, Kerouac and Carr drank at their favorite haunt.
Kerouac left early and bumped into Kammerer outside, telling him where to find Carr. According to Carr’s account, Kammerer made another unwanted advance that night. When Carr rejected him, Kammerer attacked, and Carr stabbed him with a Boy Scout knife in self-defense. Carr then panicked, weighing the body with rocks and disposing of it in the Hudson River.
Carr spent the night dragging friends into the aftermath. He gave Burroughs Kammerer’s soiled cigarettes to dispose of, and brought the knife to Kerouac, who helped get rid of it. Carr eventually turned himself in. Kerouac was arrested as a material witness, as was Burroughs.
While Burroughs posted bail easily, Kerouac’s father refused to help. Edie Parker offered a solution through her parents, but it came with a condition: Kerouac had to marry her. On August 22nd, 1944, Kerouac married Parker in the presence of two detectives at the municipal building. He spent his wedding night in the Bronx City Prison before his new in-laws posted his bail.
The marriage lasted less than two months before Kerouac returned to New York, leaving Parker behind. She filed to annul the marriage two years later. Less than a year after the killing, Kerouac and Burroughs collaborated on a novel about the incident called And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, written in alternating points of view. The manuscript remained unpublished until long after both men’s deaths.
After being released from both incarceration and marriage, Kerouac settled with his parents in Queens and returned to writing. He published his first novel, The Town and the City, in 1950, but it failed to gain significant recognition. Around the same time, Kerouac met Joan Haverty in Manhattan and invited her to meet his mother. Within two weeks, the two were married.
It was during this marriage that Kerouac completed the first draft of the novel that would make him famous. Kerouac cut tracing paper into strips and taped them together, then reportedly spent three weeks typing without interruption. The result was a long, chapterless, primarily autobiographical manuscript following two young men traveling across America and Mexico. No publisher wanted it.
Eight months into the marriage, Haverty left Kerouac. She was pregnant with his child. Seven months later, she gave birth to a daughter named Jan Kerouac. Jack refused to accept the child as his own and fought Haverty’s child support claim in court.
About nine years after the birth, a blood test proved Jan was his daughter. Kerouac met her only twice in his life. When Viking Press finally published the heavily revised manuscript in 1957, it became On the Road. The novel made Kerouac an instant success and brought his entire circle of Beat friends into the spotlight.
Kerouac hated it. He was touted as the king of the Beats, a title he took great offense to. Despite his association with the counterculture movement, Kerouac remained conservative and traditional in his values. As he told one reporter, “I’m not a Beatnik, I’m a Catholic.
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Within nine months of publication, Kerouac’s life had changed dramatically. He became afraid to appear in public, and with good reason. Outside the San Remo Cafe in New York, three men jumped him and left him badly beaten. The novel also affected those around him.
Kerouac had changed the names of the real people his characters were based on, but most people knew exactly who they were meant to be. When Neal Cassady, the model for the character Dean, was detained for selling marijuana, many believed his notoriety from On the Road contributed. Kerouac’s life began to crumble in the mid-1960s. His sister died suddenly in 1964.
Two years later, his beloved mother suffered a serious stroke that left her with mobility issues. Kerouac married his childhood friend Stella Sampas, who helped care for his mother, but critics questioned the timing of the marriage. On the morning of October 20th, Kerouac began vomiting blood. He was rushed to the hospital, where doctors found a hemorrhage in his esophagus and severe liver damage from years of heavy drinking.
He underwent surgery but never regained consciousness, dying the following morning. Kerouac left nearly everything to his mother. When Gabrielle passed away a few years later, she left everything to Stella Sampas, who had cared for her. Kerouac’s daughter Jan then re-entered the picture, claiming that her grandmother’s will had been forged.
She died before anything came of the claim. Kerouac’s nephew took up the fight, saying his uncle had told him he never wanted his wife or her family to control his work. After decades of litigation, a court ruled that Gabrielle’s will had likely been forged, but nothing else ever came of it.
Much of Kerouac’s work had already been sold, and the Sampas family still controls the rights to it to this day.
