A star all over, except his hometown
Fans adore Jack Kerouac, but Lowell ignores him
By Douglas Belkin, Globe Staff, 4/4/2004

LOWELL -- Theresa Barone had no idea what famous native son had been born in her home when she first moved in 13 years ago. She just needed a deal on a two-bedroom apartment near the Lowell print shop where she worked.

Then, a year after she and her husband, Lawrence, moved into the brown and yellow two-family house, a group of about 10 people pulled up in a van and started taking pictures while she and her husband sat on the porch.

"What are you doing?" asked her husband, a native of Lowell, his temper rising.

"We're taking pictures of Jack Kerouac's home," was the reply.

On working-class Lupine Street, where a plaque commemorates five neighborhood veterans, there is nothing to mark the apartment as the birthplace of Mill City's most famous son. But even as Kerouac's legacy remains unheralded in his hometown, his literary reputation is enjoying an international revival of unprecedented proportions.

Driven by the release of 11 formerly unpublished volumes of his writing in the past decade and fueled by a series of documentaries, biographies, and academic conferences as far away as China, Kerouac's literary estate -- valued at $1 when he died -- is now assessed at $10 million.

When Kerouac died, only his most famous work, "On the Road," was in print. Today, 32 Kerouac books are available. He is the subject of two new biographies. Later this spring, his "On the Road" journals will be published, as will the letters between him and fellow beat poet Allen Ginsberg and a book of his paintings, said John Sampas, executor of Kerouac's estate and the brother of the author's third wife.

Meanwhile, the original "On the Road" manuscript, written on a 120-foot scroll, and bought at auction for $2.43 million three years ago, is touring the country and drawing crowds in the tens of thousands. On college campuses, Kerouac -- who championed the notion of "first thought best thought" and "spontaneous prose" -- has been adopted as a modern day avatar of e-mail, said biographer Douglas Brinkley. Stirred together, Kerouac's name has become shorthand for a freedom spirit and counterculture creativity.

Even the political establishment has taken notice. Last month, Governor Mitt Romney signed a commemoration honoring Kerouac's birthday March 12, which is also Romney's birthday.

"He's the most popular writer among young people in their 20s in the country," said Brinkley, a professor at University of New Orleans, the editor of Kerouac's journals, and author of a Kerouac biography slated to be published in 2007. "He's replaced Hemingway."

But while Kerouac's star continues to rise on the literary landscape, in Lowell -- the setting for five of his novels and where thousands of devotees travel annually from around the globe to visit his graveside -- he remains a divisive figure.

Theresa Barone said she has not read any of his works. Her sister referred to him as "that drunk" when interviewed last month, and the city's historical committee has yet to place a plaque on any of the homes he lived in Lowell despite that fact that Kerouac devotees come knocking on their doors year-round.

"There is an element of shame here because he was an alcoholic," said former Lowell mayor and current city councilor Rita Mercier, who advocated for a Kerouac sign on the highway two years ago even though she is not a fan. "People are a little embarrassed by that."

Kerouac's explicit narratives don't shy away from homosexuality, drinking, and drugs.

Even as Mercier championed the sign, she acknowledged that she felt a little uneasy about it.

"Don't get me wrong. We're proud of him," she said. "It's just that he didn't behave very well all the time. . . It's actually sort of amazing, he has this wonderful following but a lot of people in the city could care less about Jack."

Born and raised in Lowell, Kerouac lived in eight homes before he graduated from Lowell High School and won a football scholarship to Columbia University in 1940. Ten years later, excerpts of Kerouac's first -- and most traditional -- novel, "The Town and the City," were published in the Lowell Sun, according to Paul Marion, the editor of "Atop An Underwood," a compilation of Kerouac's early writings.

Kerouac's star really rose several years later after the publication of "On the Road" in 1957, and he came to symbolize the antiestablishment beat movement -- a status that did not play well in working-class Lowell.

"You've got to remember," said Sampas, "this was McCarthy country."

Ever peripatetic, Kerouac continued to move around, living in Denver, New York, California, Mexico, and Florida. He returned to Lowell later in his life for about a year and half. By then, he had veered into the final stages of the alcoholism that would soon kill him. He was described by many at that stage in his life as an antisocial, broken-down drunk. It is that image of Kerouac that has stuck in Lowell's craw, Marion said.

While the house where Bette Davis was born is marked, all nine homes where Kerouac lived, including his birthplace, remain anonymous.

"If you want to know where Kerouac's house is, you already know where Kerouac's house is," said Hilary Holladay, English professor at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.

"It's probably something that should be done; we just haven't had anybody bring it to our attention," said Steve Stowell, the administrator of Lowell's Historic Board.

Kerouac's fans are passionately devoted. Last week his simple, granite gravestone was surrounded by beer cans, wine bottles, pens, candles, roaches of marijuana, Jack Daniels bottle caps, cigarette packs, and scraps of paper scrawled with poems. One, titled "Kerouac at Dawn," captured the psychedelic flavor of his fans' devotion: "Ambling down city streets where once you breathed, my love, 500 miles from home, sick in a strange bed. Whose visions are the real ones?"

In his home 5 miles from the cemetery, stored among the dozens of file cabinets and boxes of Kerouac's writings, Sampas keeps a collection of mementos he has picked up over the years from the grave site -- from sculptures and typewriters, to books and love letters. One legendary visit, Sampas said, included a serenade by a young Bob Dylan.

It wasn't always like this. For the first 10 years after his death there was almost nothing. Scorned by the literary establishment, the so-called King of the Beats had fallen out of popular favor. Then slowly, Kerouac enthusiasts began to find one another and plant their flag. The first organized Kerouac event was held in 1979. Kerouac Park was created in 1988 and a biannual Kerouac Festival was launched in 1995 at UMass-Lowell.

In 2001, his estate began to sponsor a Jack Kerouac Writer in residence. Last summer a Kerouac Road Race was launched and the Lowell Spinners, a minor league team and Red Sox affiliate, gave away Kerouac bobblehead dolls. (The remaining dolls are now fetching $35 at UMass-Lowell, said Holladay.

Kerouac's mainstream image as the Elvis Presley of the underground picked up momentum in the mid '90s after actor Johnny Depp bought Kerouac's raincoat for $15,000 and the Gap launched its "Jack Kerouac wore Khakis" marketing campaign. As Kerouac's archives have been slowly filtered into the public after decades in a Lowell bank vault, his star quality has continued to rise.

Perhaps the ultimate coronation of his legacy would be a Hollywood production of "On the Road." Francis Ford Coppola bought the rights to the book in 1982 for $90,000, Sampas said, but the project has continually stalled.

In Lowell, a center of Kerouac tourism is a magnificent monument of polished slabs of granite with Kerouac's words etched in them.

Standing in front of one of the slabs last week, Jeremiah Wiggins, an actor in town from New York with the Merrimack Repertory Theatre, aimed his digital camera at Kerouac's name. A longtime beat admirer, Wiggins, 31, grew up near San Francisco Bay, with beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti as a family friend.

"It seems like the city still doesn't quite know what to do with him," Wiggins said of Lowell and Kerouac. "I think as more time passes there will be some clarity about it, but it's not quite there yet."

© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.

Jack's last years in Lowell were spent in bars-
locals say he would do obnoxious things like go up to a
woman and ask 'how's your c---?' ,which would get him tossed.

Alas,people still remember THAT Jack,the alcoholic,rather than the
dedicated writer/free spirit he was.

I find it shocking that Lowell would shun a man that abandoned his children, was an accessory to murder, circle jerked with Burroughs and Ginsberg and blessed us with the monotonous Big Sur just prior to pickling his liver while living with his mom at 47

The man was flawed,no question...
let's look at some folks who have all sorts of things named after them

John F.Kennedy-
serial philanderer,suspect in actress' death,attempted assasssin of Castro

George Washington-
slave owner

Martin Luther King,Jr.-
adulterer

Does this mean we dismiss the good that they did?

Certainly not. I vote for a giant copper statue in the center of Hyannisport of JFK being fellated by some Mafia chick in go go boots.

While high on them Dilaudid shots he recieved every four hours that caused him to famously nod off during a meeting with Nikita "We will Bury You" Kruschev.

Parker,so angry this morning.
Does someone need a hug?

I just wish I could have all the time I spent reading Visions of Cody and Dr. Sax back.

I like Kerouac's stuff,but even I couldn't get through Dr.Sax.
Now I feel your pain.

Like trying to play Scrabble without any of the vowel tiles.

My friend came out from Chicago and we went to visit his grave. There certainly aren't any crowds to contend with.
Lowell has their Kerouac appreciation week every year, but that's about it. He's not the kind of fella that the host town of HBO's High On Crack Street wants to lift up onto their shoulders, ya know?

My friend came out from Chicago and we went to visit his grave.

I went once about twelve years ago. Took forever to find the grave, but it's pretty easy once you know where to look. Just look for a bunch of beer cans and cigarette butts.

I tried to find his grave a few years ago, but had flash backs of Siagon..so I aborted...

Lowell should be more concerned with the drugs in that city than enthusiasts..

J. Kerouac spawned a tremendous imagination, he was an ass, drunk, writer...but I try keep works separate from personalities...when it comes to artists, writers, musicians at least...

[quote=Izzy,Apr 6 2004, 10:24 AM] I went once about twelve years ago. Took forever to find the grave, but it's pretty easy once you know where to look. Just look for a bunch of beer cans and cigarette butts. [/QUOTE]
I tried to find his grave a few years ago, but had flash backs of Siagon..so I aborted...
[/quote]
Izzy!
What's with the racist crap,dude?
You sound like Dapper O'Neill.
Wise up!

Any rock fan MUST be able to separate the artist from the person.
Hendrix/Ray Davies/Billy Idol/Jim Morrison/Johnny Ramone/John Lennon
all did crap things (some abandoned kids,or hit women,or...)

Lowell has come a long way over the years,and is no more dangerous or drug
infested than say,JP,where someone's DAD lives!!!!

Check out the Lowell Folk Festival in July,and the Lowell Celebrates Kerouac
festivities in October.

Lowell Spinners baseball is great,as is Evos Arts....

[quote=Parker Posey,Apr 6 2004, 09:31 AM] I like Kerouac's stuff,but even I couldn't get through Dr.Sax.
Now I feel your pain. [/QUOTE]
Like trying to play Scrabble without any of the vowel tiles. [/quote]
Jack used the word SAD way too much.
The sad skies,the sad faces,the sad roads
ENOUGH WITH THE SAD ALREADY.

His best book?
His first
The Town & The City

pre-WWII Lowell/America

The Town & The City? Okay...
Anyway, I feel like this writer is all about making Lowell somehow appreciate Kerouac more, but I'm not sure it needs to, really. I went to Lowell a few years ago and went to Kerouac Park, found his grave and everything. It was great--no crowds or anything, just how you'd want it to be. I went to the historical museum downtown and the bookstore was full of most of his books. I got a map of historical sites in town and asked the guy working there why Kerouac's house wasn't marked on the map and he said they actually used to have it on there but the residents of the house complained about people bugging them at all hours of the night, understandably. Look, Kerouac lived in all kinds of places all over the world--flats in NY and SF, attics in Mexico and Tangiers--none of them are marked and he probably did much more significant work there and had a lot more interesting times there. What's the point of more "recognition?" More things like "Kerouac bobblehead dolls?" Yuk.

Let me rephrase my statement.
The Town & The City was the most enjoyable Kerouac book
that I have read so far,his best IMHO.
Critics then and now do not agree.

There are lots of areas in Lowell that you can "see" in the book
even today.
(the actual book signing took place at the then-Bon March,where the
Barnes & Noble is now,on the main drag)

Me again.The Town In The City is written in a Thomas Wolfe style,rather than the
be-boppin' hep cat style of OTR,etc.

Maggie Cassidy is his best. ..IMO

especially if you grew up in the North East...

I'm trying to start Lonesome Traveler but it's gibberish so far.

I agree...I think he wrote that over a long weekend and was drugged up more than usual...still some cool images of California and the railroad...

Whatever.

The real John Clellon Holmes would never be so void of imagination as to
post the dread cliche "whatever".

I invented the term "beat generation" and this lousy drunk gets all the credit. what else do you want me to say? I'm old with countless illegitimate children and no income and i have no job because I lurk on the Noise Board all day hoping to find someone who might have any information on cures for my various liver and pancreaotic diseases. so sue me.

The real Holmes also would never have said that, was very close to Kerouac right up till Jack's death, and is dead himself, having passed in 1987.

Telepathy,my new hero!
Actually knows something about JCH!!!
His 'Go' is considered the first Beat Generation book by SOME
(others credit Chandler Brossard's Who Walk In Darkness as the 1st)
It's a good read,I know that much,as are his other novels
'The Horn' and 'Get Home Free'.

His essays are also quite good,VERY wordy,exhausting to read,but fulfilling
if you're in the mood.

JCH did not invent,or claim to invent,the term Beat,or Beat Generation,but he did a major piece on it in the NY Times to enlighten the masses.

Am told BU has some of his letters,papers...

That some may also argue that Mr. Holmes, in fact, quasi-coined the phrase beat generation by recalling Herbert Hunke's term 'beat', and replied in an interview "I guess you might say we're a beat generation"

"Godfather of the Beats" - Kenneth Rexroth.


I know...whatever.