I have grown out of my Beat leanings, but I still hold an affection for Kerouac - both the man and some of his writings. Alcoholic, Catholic, 'madman, bum and angel', I identify with certain aspects of his confusion ... As the Kerouac magnet on our fridge says: I have nothing to offer anyone except my own confusion.
New World Writing "Jazz of the Beat Generation" by Jean-Louis (April, 1955)
Also from the same site http://www.thebeatmuseum.org/kerouac-jacket/ I hope you enjoy the following ...
This is the very first appearance of an excerpt from On The Road called "Jazz of the Beat Generation".
Legend has it Kerouac used the pseudonym because he was being sued for child support by his ex-wife Joan Haverty (their daughter's name was Jan, born 1951) and he didn't want Joan to know he'd been paid $100 for the except.
From the book: "This selection is from a novel-in-progress, "The Beat Generation" (later published in 1957 as On The Road). Jean-Louis is the pseudonym of a young American writer of French-Canadian parentage. He is the author of one published novel."
"Dean was in a trance. The tenorman's eyes were fixed straight on him; he had found a madman who not only understood but cared and wanted to understand more and much more than there was, and they began dueling for this; everything came out of the horn, no more phrases, just cries, cries, "Baugh" and down to "Beep!" and up to "EEEEE!" and down to clinkers and over to sideways echoing horn-sounds and horselaughs, and he tries everything, up, down, sideways, upside down, dog fashion, horizontal, thirty degrees, forty degrees and finally he fell back in somebody's arms and gave up and everybody pushed around and yelled "Yes, yes, he done blowed that one!"
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