Kerouac is still consistently ignored in American literature anthologies and is given only passing notice in critics' discussions of postwar writers. Yet certain recent events--the reevaluation of his work by critics John Tytell and Tim Hunt, the biographies by Ann Charters and Dennis McNally, the publication of the Viking critical edition of
On the Road, as well as the continuing appearance in print of appreciative articles--give hope that a calm assessment of Kerouac's achievement is at last becoming possible. Perhaps as a result of this assessment his true position as a major figure in American literature will become clear.
Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, an old textile manufacturing town on the Merrimac River. Kerouac's parents, both devout Roman Catholics, came from rural communities in the French-speaking part of Quebec, and French was the language spoken in the Kerouac home. Kerouac did not begin to learn to speak English until he was six years old, a fact which, along with his Catholicism, has never been sufficiently stressed by commentators. Kerouac's father, Leo Kerouac, a former insurance salesman, opened a print shop in Lowell and for many years was able to support his growing family comfortably. The first of his sons, Gerard, was born in 1917; his daughter, Caroline, was born in 1919; and his second son and last child, Jean Louis Lebris (or "Jack," as he came to be called later by his English-speaking friends), was born on 12 March 1922.
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