Jack Kerouac - Influences

Influences

Kerouac's early writing, particularly his first novel The Town and the City, was more conventional, and bore the strong influence of Thomas Wolfe. The technique Kerouac developed that later made him famous was heavily influenced by Jazz, especially Bebop, and later, Buddhism, as well as the famous "Joan Anderson letter" authored by Neal Cassady. The Diamond Sutra was the most important Buddhist text for Kerouac, and "probably one of the three or four most influential things he ever read". In 1955, he began an intensive study of this sutra, in a repeating weekly cycle, devoting one day to each of the six Pāramitās, and the seventh to the concluding passage on Samādhi. This was his sole reading on Desolation Peak, and he hoped by this means to condition his mind to emptiness, and possibly to have a vision.

However, often overlooked but perhaps his greatest literary influence may be that of James Joyce whose work he alludes to, by far, more than any other author. Kerouac had the highest esteem for Joyce, emulated and expanded on his techniques. Regarding On the Road, he wrote in a letter to Ginsberg, "I can tell you now as I look back on the flood of language. It is like Ulysses and should be treated with the same gravity." Indeed, Old Angel Midnight has been called "the closest thing to Finnegans Wake in American literature."

In his book Light My Fire: My Life with The Doors, Ray Manzarek (keyboard player of The Doors) wrote "I suppose if Jack Kerouac had never written On the Road, The Doors would never have existed."

In 1974 the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics was opened in his honor by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman at Naropa University, a private Buddhist university in Boulder, Colorado. The school offers a BA in Writing and Literature, MFAs in Writing & Poetics and Creative Writing, and a summer writing program.

From 1978 to 1992, Joy Walsh published 28 issues of a magazine devoted to Kerouac, Moody Street Irregulars.

Kerouac's French Canadian origins inspired a 1987 National Film Board of Canada docudrama Jack Kerouac's Road - A Franco-American Odyssey, directed by Acadian filmmaker Herménégilde Chiasson.

In 1997, the house on Clouser Avenue where The Dharma Bums was written was purchased by a newly formed non-profit group, The Jack Kerouac Writers in Residence Project of Orlando, Inc. This group provides opportunities for aspiring writers to live in the same house in which Kerouac was inspired, with room and board covered for three months.

In 2007, Kerouac was awarded a posthumous honorary degree from the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

In 2009, the movie One Fast Move or I'm Gone - Kerouac's Big Sur was released. It chronicles the time in Kerouac's life that led to his novel Big Sur, with actors, writers, artists, and close friends giving their insight into the book. The movie also describes the people and places on which Kerouac based his characters and settings, including the cabin in Bixby Canyon. An album released to accompany the movie, "One Fast Move or I'm Gone", features Benjamin Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie) and Jay Farrar (Son Volt) performing songs based on Kerouac's Big Sur.

In 2010, during the first weekend of October, the 25th anniversary of the literary festival "Lowell Celebrates Kerouac" was held in Kerouac's birthplace of Lowell, Massachusetts. It featured walking tours, literary seminars, and musical performances focused on Kerouac's work and that of the Beat Generation.

Independent filmmaker Michael Polish is directing Big Sur, based on the novel, with Jean-Marc Barr cast as Kerouac. Filming was done in and around Big Sur. The film is set for release in 2012.

A feature film version of Kerouac's seminal novel On the Road is slated for international release in 2012, and is directed by Walter Salles, while being produced by Francis Ford Coppola.

In 2012, What Happened to Kerouac?, a re-mastered DVD of the acclaimed 1986 documentary, is being rereleased with a feature-length disc of new material from the original interviews. Those extras, called The Beat Goes On, include rare and unseen footage of Abbie Hoffman, Timothy Leary, Paul Krassner, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Gary Snyder, Steve Allen, Ann Charters, Michael McClure, Robert Creeley, Herbert Huncke, Carolyn Cassady, Paul Gleason, John Clellon Holmes, Edie Kerouac Parker, Jan Kerouac, William F. Buckley, Jr., and Father Spike Morissette.