Legacy Matters

Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac lived and wrote before my time, still when I finally read Dharma Bums.   I was as entranced with the sweetness of the man as I was with his zest for life and search for truth, not to mention his sheer good looks.

Dharma Bums is an autobiographical novel, set in California, following the publication and amazing success of On the Road of which he said, "I wrote the book because we're all going to die."

Here's a video of Jack  reading from On the Road.

But the best place to see that sweetness is in Steve Allen's interview of Jack on YouTube

via Boing Boing

Some of my favorite Kerouac quotes.

“All of life is a foreign country.”

“I hope it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others but give them life, and not only life, but that great consciousness of life.”

Dean took out other pictures. I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered, estabilished-within-the-photo lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it, the senseless nightmare road.

“Write in recollection and amazement for yourself”

His estate on his death in 1969 was worth $91.  By 2004, it was worth an estimated $20 million.

Jack Boulware writes about the unbelievable complexities of his literary estate  in The Kerouac Obssession

The legal situation surrounding the Kerouac estate is so mysterious and confusing as to be almost impenetrable. These, however, are the basic facts: When Jack Kerouac died, he left everything to his mother, Gabrielle. When she died, her will left her entire estate, including Jack Kerouac’s literary materials, to Stella Sampas, Jack’s third wife. In 1994, Kerouac’s only daughter, Jan, contended this will was a forgery, and filed an action in Florida, the state in which Gabrielle died, contesting the probate of her grandmother’s will. This is the action that Nicosia has championed, as an heir and literary representative of Jan Kerouac, even after her death. 
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Jan met her father for the first time in 1962, when her mother’s efforts to gain child support finally forced Kerouac to take a paternity blood test. (The result was positive.) As a 9-year-old, she nervously accompanied him to the liquor store for a bottle of Harveys Bristol Cream sherry, and saved the cork as a reminder that she did indeed have a father.
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Johnny Depp's purchase invoice of Kerouac memorabilia

The Kerouac raincoat, $15,000; suitcase, $10,000; travel bag, $5,000; sweat shirt, $2,000; rain hat, $3,000; tweed coat, $10,000; a letter to fellow road-tripper Neal Cassady, $5,000; and a canceled check to a liquor store, $350.

The total is $50,640, including tax.