Big American writer : the bilingual Jack Kerouac / Jean-Christophe Cloutier.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cloutier, Jean-Christophe, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Kerouac, Jack, 1922-1969.

Kerouac, Jack.

Kerouac, Jack, 1922-1969--Criticism and interpretation.

Bilingual authors--United States.

Bilingual authors.

Franco-Americans.

Bilingualism--United States.

Bilingualism.

Self-translation--United States.

Self-translation.

American literature--20th century--History and criticism.

American literature.

United States.

Genre:

Biographies

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Biographies.

Physical Description:

320 pages : maps ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Columbia University Press, [2026]

Summary:

Big American Writer recasts Jack Kerouac as an ethnic, bilingual author, demonstrating that his French Canadian upbringing and background were formative to his breakthrough literary achievements.

"In many ways, Jack Kerouac the mythic "King of the Beats" forever hitchhiking on the road, has become synonymous with a romanticized view of the postwar, capital "A" American writer. In fact, Kerouac was born Jean-Louis Kérouac to immigrant parents from Québec, who were part of an unprecedented exodus that brought close to a million French Canadians south into the United States. Throughout his career, Kerouac not only secretly composed French manuscripts but also served as a self-translator for the majority of his writing career. As he describes in his bilingual journals, Kerouac endured the wound of assimilation and the source of his lifelong melancholy: the impossibility of living in French in the United States. In "Big American Writer": Jack Kerouac, Bilingualism, and the Archive, Jean-Christophe Cloutier repositions Kerouac in his actual geopolitical and cultural-linguistic reality as a minoritarian, bilingual, and bi-cultural author. Cloutier maintains that Kerouac's French-Canadian upbringing and bilingualism are formative to his breakthrough achievements as a new kind of North American writer. In viewing Kerouac's career in this way, Cloutier not only reconsiders Kerouac's legacy but calls for hemispheric American literary studies to encompass the North. Kerouac's writing provides a model for a continental approach and a new kind of literary landscape that transcends the boundaries of nations and embraces the polyphonic. Cloutier underscores how Kerouac's manuscripts open the possibility of new multilingual and ethnic kinship across the Americas as it presents a new way to understand this canonical but occasionally misunderstood writer"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction : "The Canuck in America" : Jack Kerouac and the making of a "big American writer"

"I never had a language of my own" : French Canadianness, ethnicity, and bilingualism, 1950-1951

"Shall I just write my units every day and file them in proper place?" : The essentials of archival prose, 1951-1952

"As soon as I finish translating and typing" : On the path to Sur le chemin, 1952-1953

"Meanings that can never be recorded in the English language" : Maggie Cassidy, Old Angel Midnight, and creolization, 1953-1964

Coda : "It's a whole dream that'll end / before we finish it" : Kerouac, 100 Years on the Go!, 1965-present day.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Athenaeum copy: Scott fund bookplate.

Other Format:

Online version Cloutier, Jean-Christophe Big American writer

ebook version :

ISBN:

9780231222440

0231222440

9780231222457

0231222459

OCLC:

1587345368

Publisher Number:

CIPO000424558