WRITER

Jack Kerouac

1922 - 1969

Photo of Jack Kerouac

Icon of person Jack Kerouac

Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (; March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Of French-Canadian ancestry, Kerouac was raised in a French-speaking home in Lowell, Massachusetts. He "learned English at age six and spoke with a marked accent into his late teens." During World War II, he served in the United States Merchant Marine; he completed his first novel at the time, which was published more than 40 years after his death. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Jack Kerouac has received more than 8,087,795 page views. His biography is available in 73 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 72 in 2019). Jack Kerouac is the 454th most popular writer (down from 318th in 2019), the 442nd most popular biography from United States (down from 299th in 2019) and the 43rd most popular American Writer.

Jack Kerouac is most famous for his novel On the Road, which documents a cross-country trip he took with Neal Cassady in the late 1940s.

Memorability Metrics

  • 8.1M

    Page Views (PV)

  • 67.57

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 73

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 5.09

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 5.39

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Notable Works

The Dharma Bums
1950
On the Road
Beat generation
Love, jazz and excitement! These are all part of Sal Paradise's adventures "on the road" with his wild friend Dean Moriarty and other crazy companions as they travel together across the USA. One of the most famous American books of the century, On the Road has been made into a wonderful film that really captures the atmosphere of the "Beat Generation"..
19573 / 5
Doctor Sax
1959
The Subterraneans
1958
Desolation angels
1965
Big Sur
Beat generation
1962
On The Road
Beat generation, Fiction, Autobiographical fiction
Described as everything from a "last gasp" of romantic fiction to a founding text of the Beat Generation movement, this story amounts to a nonfiction novel (as critics were later to describe some works). Unpublished writer buddies wander from coast to coast in search of whatever they find, eager for experience. Kerouac's spokesman is Sal Paradise (himself) and real-life friend Neal Casady appears as Dean Moriarty.
1957
The Dharma Bums
American fiction (fictional works by one author), Beat generation, Fiction
The Dharma Bums is a 1958 novel by Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac. The basis for the novel's semi-fictional accounts are events occurring years after the events of On the Road. The main characters are the narrator Ray Smith, based on Kerouac, and Japhy Ryder, based on the poet and essayist Gary Snyder, who was instrumental in Kerouac's introduction to Buddhism in the mid-1950s. The book concerns duality in Kerouac's life and ideals, examining the relationship of the outdoors, mountaineering, hiking, and hitchhiking through the west US with his "city life" of jazz clubs, poetry readings, and drunken parties. The protagonist's search for a "Buddhist" context to his experiences (and those of others he encounters) recurs throughout the story. The book had a significant influence on the Hippie counterculture of the 1960s.
1950
Big Sur
Alcoholic psychoses, Beat generation, Fiction
*Big Sur* is a novel written by *Jack Kerouac*, that was published in 1962. The books perspective is told from Kerouac's alter ego *Jack Dulouz*. The novel describes Kerouac's frustration that he has with his fame of being a writer, and how he goes to his friends cabin on Big Sur to get away from the madness of every day existence. The novel also describes Kerouac's mental state of being, and his struggles with alcohol. *Big Sur* is a book for any man, women, and possibly animal who has an unhealthy obsession with the beat generation.
1962
Lonesome Traveler
American fiction (fictional works by one author), Beat Generation, Fiction
1960
Les Souterrains
Beat Generation, Fiction, Fiction in English
The Subterraneans is a 1958 novella by Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac. It is a semi-fictional account of his short romance with an African American woman named Alene Lee (1931-1991) in New York in 1953. In the novel she is renamed "Mardou Fox," and described as a carefree spirit who frequents the jazz clubs and bars of the budding Beat scene of San Francisco. Other well-known personalities and friends from the author's life also appear thinly disguised in the novel. The character Frank Carmody is based on William Burroughs, and Adam Moorad on Allen Ginsberg. Even Gore Vidal appears as successful novelist Arial Lavalina. Kerouac's alter ego is named Leo Percepied, and his long-time friend Neal Cassady is mentioned only in passing as Leroy.
1958
Dr Sax
Beat generation, Fiction in English, Fiction
Doctor Sax (Doctor Sax: Faust Part Three) is a novel by Jack Kerouac published in 1959. Kerouac wrote it in 1952 while living with William S. Burroughs in Mexico City. The novel was written quickly in the improvisatory style Kerouac called “spontaneous prose.” In a letter to Allen Ginsberg dated May 18, 1952, Kerouac wrote, “I’ll simply blow [improvise like a jazz musician] on the vision of the Shadow in my 13th and 14th years on Sarah Ave. Lowell, culminated by the myth itself as I dreamt it in Fall 1948 . . . angles of my hoop-rolling boyhood as seen from the shroud.” In a letter to Ginsberg dated November 8 of the same year, Kerouac admits “Doctor Sax was written high on tea [marijuana] without pausing to think, sometimes Bill [Burroughs] would come in the room and so the chapter ended there, . . .” (ibid, p. 185).
1959

Among WRITERS

Among writers, Jack Kerouac ranks 454 out of 7,302. Before him are Karl Barth, Gabriela Mistral, Susan Sontag, Salvatore Quasimodo, Boris Vian, and Wolfram von Eschenbach. After him are Jacques Hébert, Héloïse, Graham Greene, Vasily Grossman, Lesya Ukrainka, and Yevgeny Zamyatin.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1922, Jack Kerouac ranks 22. Before him are Erving Goffman, Liliane Bettencourt, Emil Zátopek, Hiroo Onoda, Aage Bohr, and Kurt Vonnegut. After him are Imre Lakatos, Philip Larkin, Vittorio Gassman, Alain Resnais, Christiaan Barnard, and Miguel Muñoz. Among people deceased in 1969, Jack Kerouac ranks 21. Before him are Saud of Saudi Arabia, Liu Shaoqi, Levi Eshkol, Morihei Ueshiba, Brian Jones, and Otto Dix. After him are Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg, Princess Alice of Battenberg, Dominique Pire, Witold Gombrowicz, Arthur Friedenreich, and Joseph P. Kennedy Sr..

Others Born in 1922

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Others Deceased in 1969

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In United States

Among people born in United States, Jack Kerouac ranks 442 out of 20,380. Before him are J. Paul Getty (1892), Richard Widmark (1914), Jim Mattis (1950), Albert Fish (1870), Michael Porter (1947), and Wilt Chamberlain (1936). After him are Dennis Hopper (1936), Yehudi Menuhin (1916), Herbert A. Simon (1916), Edward Hopper (1882), Leslie Groves (1896), and Lauren Bacall (1924).

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Among WRITERS In United States

Among writers born in United States, Jack Kerouac ranks 43. Before him are Dan Brown (1964), Sylvia Plath (1932), Philip Roth (1933), Frank Herbert (1920), Kurt Vonnegut (1922), and Susan Sontag (1933). After him are Eugene O'Neill (1888), Patricia Highsmith (1921), George R. R. Martin (1948), Robert A. Heinlein (1907), Tom Clancy (1947), and Alvin Toffler (1928).

American born Writers

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