Kerouac

ATLANTA (CNN) -- For biographers and students of Jack Kerouac, the challenge to understand the Beat Generation writer as a human being seems nearly impossible. The real Kerouac, the one that perhaps only he knew, has long since drowned in a wave of mythic road stories, contradictions and alcohol.

One popular vision of Kerouac is that of a macho, carousing adventurer, a wind-blown spirit who defined an era by taking it "on the road."

And then there is the image of the older, bitter Kerouac, a man ravaged by a troubled conscience who engaged in a mad descent into the bottle, and never came up for air.

"Most Americans look to him as a macho role model, mistaking him for the character he created in 'On the Road' -- the motorcycle hero, cowboy hero, your thug, your gang member," says Ellis Amburn, Kerouac's former editor and the author of a new biography on him. "The popular notion of Kerouac was this tough, macho man who had a woman at every pit stop. The other dimension of him was the dark side of Kerouac present in his work."

The other Jack

In "Subterranean Kerouac," Amburn brings light to Kerouac's dark -- or subterranean -- side. In a revealing and original look at the man who helped guide in the free-thinking 1960s, Amburn claims Kerouac was shackled by his own conservative upbringing, torn between his homophobia and his homoerotic fantasies.

The biography is sure to add to the controversy already surrounding the Kerouac name. Kerouac's $10 million estate has been the subject of an intense legal battle. Other biographies have touched upon rumors of Kerouac's homosexuality. But Amburn not only brings Kerouac out of the closet, he uses that knowledge as a touchstone for his research and analyzation of Kerouac.

"I think he hated his homoerotic nature," says Amburn. "He drank to anesthesize the pain of basically an unlived life. Nature abhors a vaccum and if we don't admit the truth about ourselves it destroys us."

The idea that Kerouac chose alcohol over accepting his homoerotic self is not mudslinging, Amburn says. It's simply the truth.

"To me, everything that is human is holy," Amburn says. "So I don't think anything in the book is despicable or wrong."

From schoolboy to icon

The book is receiving strong reviews. The Library Journal swooned that the book belongs "in all literature collections." Vanity Fair called it "delectably gossipy."

It's filled with stories about Kerouac, as told to Amburn by friends of the writer, covering Kerouac's upbringing in Massachusetts, his high school days as a football star (something Amburn believes played an important role in the development of Kerouac as a writer), his controversial collegiate days at Columbia, and of course his discovery of an almost bacchanalian lifestyle as he became the voice of a generation of nonconformist believers.

Amburn's research also uncovers the countless affairs Kerouac had -- with both men and women -- including a night in Mexico with his mentor, William Burroughs.

And then there were the years that followed Kerouac's highest success, and his refusal to publicly accept his true sexuality.

Amburn

'A pathetic monster'

Amburn says he saw the decline of the man firsthand. He met Kerouac in 1964, editing "Desolation Angels" and "Vanity of Duluoz" while watching him increasingly turn to alcohol.

"He turned into a pathetic monster," recalls Amburn. "He used to scare me. It's as if it's Jekyll and Hyde, and suddenly he's talking jibberish and repeating himself and you can't get him off the phone. It's something no one can endure."

Kerouac died in 1969 from complications associated with his heavy drinking.

A new generation

It wasn't for two more decades that Amburn says he got the idea for the book, when he realized that Kerouac's writing was becoming wildly popular with the 20-something set. By some estimates, sales of Kerouac's "On the Road" -- which was recently featured on two lists as one of the top books of the 20th century -- has quadrupled since 1991.

"Generation X people would somehow track me down and want to know about him," Amburn says. "I remember he had told me it would take 25 years for his work to be totally appreciated, and I found myself telling these stories to these young people and some would say, 'Why don't you put all of it in a book?'"

Now younger generations have something new to mull over, and perhaps the clearest picture of the 20th century icon to date.

More than knowing the Kerouac he knew, Amburn says he wants readers to walk away from the book with one thing: "A sense of how important it is to be yourself and accept yourself the way you are and live your life as fully and truthfully as possible and not try to pretend you're something you're not, which will kill you."

Related stories:

• Kerouac's home to be a refuge for writers - July 13, 1998
• Poet Allen Ginsberg dead at 70 - April 5, 1997
• Modern Library's Top 100 list - July 20, 1998
• Radcliffe Publishing Course's Top 100 list - July 22, 1998

Related sites:
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• The Beat Generation Catalog
• Dharma Beat -- A Jack Kerouac Newszine

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