Rethinking Kerouac

Erik Mortenson is a Faculty Member in English at Lake Michigan College in Benton Harbor, Michigan. Mortenson has published numerous journal articles and book chapters, as well as several books, including Capturing the Beat Moment: Cultural Politics and the Poetics of Presence (2011), which won a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title award; Ambiguous Borderlands: Shadow Imagery in Cold War American Culture (2016); and Translating the Counterculture: The Reception of the Beats in Turkey (2018). He has also published The Beats and the Academy: A Renegotiation (2023), co-edited with Tony Trigilio, along with the memoir Kick Out the Bottom (2023), co-written with Christopher Kramer. Mortenson is also a translator whose work has appeared in journals such as Asymptote, Talisman, and Two Lines. Tomasz Sawczuk is Assistant Professor at University of Bialystok, Poland. In 2022 he was a Visiting Research Scholar at Fordham University, USA. Among his publications on Beat writers, film and popular culture are On the Road to Lost Fathers: Jack Kerouac in a Lacanian Perspective (2019) and a chapter contribution to The Routledge Handbook of International Beat Literature (2018). He also co-edited Visuality and Vision in American Literature (2014).

Moving beyond hagiographic portraits of the reluctant 'King of the Beats,' this fresh volume of essays grounds Kerouac in the shifting political and cultural background of mid-20th century America. The essays grapple with the writer’s inconsistencies and lay bare some of the recalcitrant myths about the writer and his work.

• List of FiguresForewordA. Robert Lee, Emeritus, Nihon University, TokyoAcknowledgmentsIntroductionErik Mortenson, Lake Michigan College, USA and Tomasz Sawczuk, University of Bialystok, PolandPart I. Rethinking the Writing1. Reading a Copy of On the RoadMatt Theado, Kobe City University of Foreign Studies, Japan2. Choruses for Kerouac Aldon Nielsen, Penn State University, USA3. Jack Kerouac’s Paintings: Color, Texture, MovementFrida Forsgren, University of Agder, Norway4. A House of Mirrors at Coney Island: Kerouac's Obscure Experiments in ScreenwritingBrett Sigurdson, Independent Scholar, USA5. Lonesome Traveler, Buddhism, and the Fictions of Kerouac’s Non-FictionSteven Belletto, Lafayette College, USA6. “Radical Vulnerability” in Kerouac’s Big Sur, Satori in Paris, and Vanity of DuluozDeborah R. Geis, DePauw University, USAPart II. Kerouac and the Social7. Anti-homosexual Paranoia, Queer Love, and Cold War Poetics in Jack Kerouac’s Visions of CodyPierre-Antoine Pellerin, University of Lyon 3 – Jean Moulin, France8. Teaching Kerouac in the Time of Trump: An Orwellian Approach to The Dharma BumsJohn Whalen-Bridge, National University of Singapore9. Recovering Jack Kerouac's Blackface Novel Pic Kurt Hemmer, Harper College, USA10. Jack Kerouac and the Language of Populism Nancy M. Grace, The College of Wooster, USA11. Kerouac’s Fellahin Poetics: Reimagining Global Culture against Nation and EmpireHassan Melehy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USAPart III. Kerouac's Influence and Legacy12. From Beat Generation to Hacker Generation: The Experimental Road Narratives On the Road and 1 the RoadPeggy Pacini, CY Paris Cergy Université / UMR 922 – Héritages, France13. Kerouac's Enduring Influence on Anglo-American Popular Music Composers and PerformersSimon Warner, University of Leeds, UK14. Jack Kerouac: American AvatarRonna C. Johnson, Tufts University, USA15. The Futures of Kerouac’s Past: Public Humanities and the Kerouac Archive at 100Michael Millner, University of Massachusetts, Lowell, USA16. Kerouac in Translation: A Conversation with Farid Ghadami, Minami Aoyama, and Maciej SwierkockiErik Mortenson, Lake Michigan College, USA and Tomasz Sawczuk, University of Bialystok, PolandAfterwordTim Hunt, Emeritus, Illinois State University, USANotes on Contributors Index