Speaker 1: All right, how about we take a wild road trip
Speaker 1: with a true original an episode suggested by a listener
Speaker 1: who goes by nine one one Grail. This is about
Speaker 1: on the road author Jack Kerouac, the guy who practically
Speaker 1: invented the beat generation. His life was messy, passionate, and heartbreaking,
Speaker 1: filled with stories that changed American literature forever. But who
Speaker 1: knew that he was involved in a front page murder story.
Speaker 1: I'm Patty Steele. Jack Kerouac, restless, reckless and brilliant, but
Speaker 1: unable to save himself. That's next on the backstory. The
Speaker 1: backstory is back. We know him as the brilliant author
Speaker 1: Jack Kerouac, But he was born Jean Louis le Brie
Speaker 1: de Kiroac Love that on March twelfth, nineteen twenty two,
Speaker 1: in Lowell, Massachusetts. His parents were French Canadian immigrants. This
Speaker 1: great American author actually grew up speaking French, learning English
Speaker 1: when he started school. Believe it or not, this creative
Speaker 1: offbeat guy wasn't some odd dreamy kid. By high school,
Speaker 1: Jack was a football star, snagging a scholarship to Columbia
Speaker 1: University in New York City. Picture it a really handsome,
Speaker 1: ambitious teenage football player pounding the pavement of Upper Manhattan
Speaker 1: in the nineteen forties. Problem is, ambition isn't always coupled
Speaker 1: with dedication. That's where the offbeat Kerouac shows up. He
Speaker 1: just couldn't stick with it. He broke his leg in
Speaker 1: his freshman year, Okay, not his fault, but the next
Speaker 1: year he constantly clashed with his football coach. He was
Speaker 1: benched most of that season. So Jack decided, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: drop out of Columbia. Sure, So next he floated through
Speaker 1: odd jobs all over Manhattan. He wrote constantly, and he
Speaker 1: fell in with kind of a wild crew. They would
Speaker 1: later be called the core of the Beach Generation. His
Speaker 1: pals and included Alan Ginsburg, william S Burrows, and Lucian Carr,
Speaker 1: all defining the counterculture. They partied, philosophized, got arrested, slept around,
Speaker 1: and wrote poetry until dawn. But then one event changed everything.
Speaker 1: Jack Kerouac was arrested as an accessory to a murder
Speaker 1: committed by Lucian Carr. It was nineteen forty four, and
Speaker 1: Carr claimed a guy named David Kamerer had been stalking
Speaker 1: him for years. Finally they were walking in Manhattan's Riverside Park.
Speaker 1: Late one night, Carr said Camerer made another aggressive sexual
Speaker 1: come on to him. He said Camerer began to overpower him,
Speaker 1: so he pulled out his boy scout knife and stabbed him. Well,
Speaker 1: it killed him, He panics, what do I do? He
Speaker 1: ties Camera's hands and feet together, and then, after weighing
Speaker 1: the body down with Rocks, dumps him in the nearby
Speaker 1: Hudson River. Probably not a great choice, now what Carr
Speaker 1: goes to the apartment of his pal Burrows and asked
Speaker 1: for help, but Burrows tells him to get a lawyer
Speaker 1: and turn himself in. Next, he goes to Kerouac, who
Speaker 1: helps him dispose of the knife in some of his clothing.
Speaker 1: Then the pair goes to a movie. Sure. Finally, Carr
Speaker 1: goes to his mother. She tells him go to the
Speaker 1: DA immediately and turn yourself in, which he does. What's next, Well,
Speaker 1: Burrows Andac are both hauled in by the cops as well.
Speaker 1: They spend a few days in jail, arrested as material witnesses.
Speaker 1: Burrow's dad posts his bail, but Jack's shocked father refuses
Speaker 1: to help. Now it gets dicier since Jack doesn't have
Speaker 1: the hundred bucks to get himself out of jail. He
Speaker 1: needs a plan. He turns to the parents of his girlfriend,
Speaker 1: Edie Parker. Edie has a trust fund, and Jack asks
Speaker 1: the family if she can access a little bit of
Speaker 1: bail money for him. Oddly, the parents say sure, as
Speaker 1: long as you marry her first. Wow. Great parents with
Speaker 1: detectives sirrving his witnesses, the pair gets married at the
Speaker 1: municipal building and then Edie springs him from jail. They
Speaker 1: wind up moving to Edie's hometown, Gross Pointe, Michigan, although
Speaker 1: four years later the marriage is annulled. As for Lucian
Speaker 1: car coming from money, having a top notch lawyer who
Speaker 1: claims that Camerer was obsessed and pressuring young Lucian, who
Speaker 1: was straight, for gay sex, the court system goes easy
Speaker 1: on him, as did the press. The New York Daily
Speaker 1: News referred to it as an honored killing. A later
Speaker 1: account of the trial in Carr's obituary many years later
Speaker 1: gives a similar view, saying central to Carr's defense was
Speaker 1: that he was not gay and that Camerer, an older,
Speaker 1: obsessive stalker, threatened sexual violence. Once the story of a
Speaker 1: predatory homosexual was presented in court, Carr became a victim
Speaker 1: and the murder was framed as an honored killing. There
Speaker 1: was no one in court to question the story or
Speaker 1: offer a different version of the relationship. Carr gets to
Speaker 1: plead guilty to first to go manslaughter. He gets one
Speaker 1: to twenty years, but he's released after just two years.
Speaker 1: He goes on to a long successful career in journalism,
Speaker 1: and in fact, his son, calib Car was the noted
Speaker 1: author of the best seller The Alienist. For his part,
Speaker 1: Karroac struggled, but he wrote constantly on everything from napkins
Speaker 1: and coffee shops to stolen typewriters. Despite his alcohol and
Speaker 1: drug addiction, he eventually found his voice. It was nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty one and fueled by Benzadorian and endless coffee, Jack
Speaker 1: sat down at a typewriter, probably a stolen With over
Speaker 1: three frenzied weeks, he pounded out his classic On the Road.
Speaker 1: He typed the whole thing on a single massive scroll
Speaker 1: of tape together paper, no form, just pure stream of consciousness,
Speaker 1: like no paragraphs. Nothing on the Road was based on
Speaker 1: real road trips Kaak took with a pal. He kept
Speaker 1: no notes, just stored all the experiences in his brilliant head.
Speaker 1: The book captured the hunger of postwar kids looking for freedom, experience,
Speaker 1: and something authentic. Interesting. Sidebar, Even though his most famous
Speaker 1: book is all about a road trip, Jack Kerouac never
Speaker 1: learned to drive in his life anyway. He submitted the book,
Speaker 1: but publishers just didn't get it. They rejected On the
Speaker 1: Road over and over and over. It remained unpublished for
Speaker 1: six long years, during which Jack spiraled further into poverty
Speaker 1: and depression, as well as addiction. When On the Road
Speaker 1: finally hit shelves in nineteen fifty seven, it exploded. Critics
Speaker 1: said it was the most beautifully executed, the clearest, and
Speaker 1: most important utterance of its generation. Jack became an overnight legend.
Speaker 1: Just one problem. Fame crushed him. He hated being labeled
Speaker 1: King of the Beats. He hated the early hippies who
Speaker 1: followed him around like he was some kind of prophet.
Speaker 1: He hated interviews where people wanted him to be this wild,
Speaker 1: drunken poet, even though by then that's pretty much exactly
Speaker 1: what he was. Jack drank even more heavily, wildly. He'd
Speaker 1: wander into bars, recite poems to total strangers, pick fights,
Speaker 1: drink himself into a stupor, and friends like Alan Ginsburg
Speaker 1: tried to help him, but he was a runaway train. However,
Speaker 1: he kept writing. Books poured out of him, The Dharma
Speaker 1: Bums about his experience with Buddhism, Desolation Angels about his
Speaker 1: job as a fire lookout on a remote mountaintop, and
Speaker 1: Big sur which was basically a devastating account of his
Speaker 1: mental and physical collapse. He also wrote for magazines and
Speaker 1: for all kinds of published journals. His writing became more raw, sadder,
Speaker 1: and more fragmented. He was chronicling his own breakdown as
Speaker 1: it happened. For a time, he seriously considered becoming a
Speaker 1: Buddhist monk. He lived with his mom well into adulthood,
Speaker 1: obsessively protective of her. He married three times, once for money,
Speaker 1: once impulsively, and once out of loneliness. Jack Kerouac died
Speaker 1: on October twenty first, nineteen sixty nine. He was just
Speaker 1: forty seven years old. Cause of death internal bleeding from
Speaker 1: a lifetime of alcohol abuse. He died broke, living in
Speaker 1: Saint Petersburg, Florida, with his mom and his third wife.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing, Jack Kerouac's legacy isn't his sad ending.
Speaker 1: It's the energy he captured, the yearning, the music of movement.
Speaker 1: When you read On the Road or the Dharma Bombs,
Speaker 1: you can feel that urgent heartbeat, that refusal to settle
Speaker 1: for a normal life when there's a whole, vast world
Speaker 1: out there. As he wrote on the Road, the only
Speaker 1: people for me are the mad ones, the ones who
Speaker 1: are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved,
Speaker 1: desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who
Speaker 1: never yawn or say a commonplace thing. Jack Kerouac taught
Speaker 1: us that the search matters even when the road ends badly. Again,
Speaker 1: I want to thank backstory listener nine one one Grail
Speaker 1: for suggesting this amazing dive into Jack Kirouac. Really interesting.
Speaker 1: I hope you're enjoying the backstory with Patty Steele. Please
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Speaker 1: DM me if you too have a story you'd like
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Speaker 1: It's Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm
Speaker 1: Patty Steele. The Backstory is a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks,
Speaker 1: the Elvis Durand Group, and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer
Speaker 1: is Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new
Speaker 1: episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Feel free to reach out
Speaker 1: to me with comments and even story suggestions on Instagram
Speaker 1: at Real Patty Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele. The
Speaker 1: pieces of history you didn't know you needed to know.