Contrary to the view of my good friend Ben Levine, as a New England Franco-American (FA) I find that FCFA's have a lively interest in Kerouac. And he was no Beauceron. I believe his family was from Kamouraska, one of the venerable old counties on the South Bank of the St. Lawrence, and he was a second-generation Franco-American on his father's side. I find it hard to understand Kerouac as anything but a FA. I sometimes get into arguments about his literary legacy b/c people do not understand that he resembles Quebec novelists like Marie-Claire Blais — not so much "beatnik" as Magical Realist. His prose isn't so much drug-addled bohemianism as the surrealism of a man who experiences his world out of phase — out of time, out of place, and out of the cultural context where his way of communicating and use of language made sense. For example his famous prose tone poem about "what the water said" resembles the technique of the comic songs of Old Quebec. I think his best work is his most Franco-cultural novels "Visions of Gerard" and "Vanity of Duluoz"...but who reads those?
According to Hervé Quéméner and Patricia Dagier, authors of “Jack Kerouac, Breton d'Amérique ” recently published in France, Jean-Louis was also - and first of all - a Breton.
His father repeatedly told him : ” Ti Jean, n’oublie jamais que tu es Breton”... Never forget that you are Breton...
In 1965, he travelled to Brittany searching his family’s roots. Unfortunately, he followed a wrong track. He never went any further until his death, in 1969.
...and not all Franco-Americans live in New England! In my Upstate NY home village on the NY-VT-Canadian borders they made up half the Catholics in town, the other half being Irish and Polish. Each had their own church and vernacular masses %-{)>
Jack hardly hid his Franco-American heritage in his writings! They are peppered with the Quebecois language.
www.thebeathandbook.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kt_lI7w3t-Y&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r2aOSoRsoE&feature=related
Kerouac’s given name wasn’t Jack it was Jean-Louis which I think is much more suiting...
I wonder why it wasnt used?
