Midcentury author Jack Kerouac is the least dead of dead writers. When he died in 1969 at the age of 47, he left behind unpublished manuscripts and an untoward legacy as the so-called “King of the Beats.” His most famous novel On the Road, a road trip, a bromance, a linguistic tour de force, went far to change the ethos of American culture—finding new readers in each era. A triumph at the recent Tribeca Film Festival, director Ebs Burnough’s smart documentary KEROUAC’S ROAD: THE BEAT OF A NATION, locates Kerouac’s pervasive vibe and influence. As he did in a smart documentary about Truman Capote, Burnough turns his lens to the writing.
KEROUAC’S ROAD is not an indie biopic, but an illuminating study of how Kerouac’s writing changed America. Voiced by Michael Imperioli, Kerouac’s words speak to democracy and what it meant to him from a working-class French-Canadian family in Lowell, Massachusetts where his mother labored in a red brick shoe factory. His father was a printer before that industry grew from linotypes to massive corporate presses shutting out mom-and-pop businesses. Kerouac was not looking for the American Dream. He was looking for America.
Each generation appreciates this quest. Influenced by jazz, by fast-talking Neal Cassady, prototype for the book’s hero, On the Road speaks to an individual’s coming-of-age, a spiritual journey, as other Kerouac classics: The Dharma Bums, Big Sur, Mexico City Blues, and more limn that immigrant hunger to experience America’s promise.
Natalie Merchant, Joyce Johnson, Ann Charters, David Amram, all interviewed in the film wrest Kerouac from the limitations of the “beat” label. But Burnough’s vision includes the “road” of several travelers on this journey. What is its meaning today? A woman who, like Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, wants to connect with “the father we never found.” Or the interracial couple in a van, eluding the concept of staying put. That’s an alt-America.
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