The Globe & Mail discusses the literary legacy of Jack Kerouac.
From the article...
Nearly 45 years after his death, Jack Kerouac has become a part of that select society of North American authors whose work it is not necessary to have read in order to talk about, and who need only be identified by their last name. Like Hemingway, Plath and Poe, Kerouac is a literary rock star.
It is almost always non-literary factors that generate literary fame (posthumous and otherwise), an appropriately debauched life and an equally scandalous death the standard formula for creating and maintaining artistic celebrity.
On both counts, Kerouac more than qualifies, being the handsome figurehead of the media-manufactured Beat Generation, as well as riotously drinking himself into an early grave. Tragedy compels and tragedy sells, which is why we see not only countless biographies and memoirs about Kerouac, but why there are T-shirts and coffee mugs and posters with his picture on them, why his image is selling khakis for the Gap, and why a movie version of On the Road starring Sam Riley, Garrett Hedlund and Kristen Stewart is about to open.
Yet there’s something else – something gratifyingly non-salacious – as well.
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