The Last Breakfast of Jack Kerouac
by Jonathan Morrill
Original - Sold
Price
$300
Dimensions
16.000 x 20.000 x 0.500 inches
This piece has been already sold. Please feel free to contact the artist directly regarding this or other pieces.
Click here to contact the artist.
Title
The Last Breakfast of Jack Kerouac
Artist
Jonathan Morrill
Medium
Painting - Acrylic On Canvas
Description
"The Last Breakfast of Jack Kerouac"
is an acrylic painting, which depicts a possible visual scenario
of the final breakfast that Jack Kerouac enjoyed, on October 20th, 1969.
Jack Kerouac was born Jean-Louis Kérouac on March 12, 1922,
He called himself Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac.
Jack Kerouac was an American novelist and poet of French-Canadian descent.
He is considered a literary iconoclast and,
alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation.
Kerouac is recognized for his method of spontaneous prose.
Thematically, his work covers topics such as Catholic spirituality, jazz, promiscuity, Buddhism, drugs, poverty, and travel.
He became an underground celebrity and, with other beats,
a progenitor of the hippie movement, although he remained antagonistic toward
some of its politically radical elements.
In 1969, at age 47, Kerouac died from an abdominal hemorrhage
caused by a lifetime of heavy drinking.
Since his death, Kerouac's literary prestige has grown,
and several previously unseen works have been published.
All of his books are in print today, including 'The Town and the City', 'On the Road',
'Doctor Sax', 'The Dharma Bums', 'Mexico City Blues', 'The Subterraneans',
'Desolation Angels', 'Visions of Cody', 'The Sea Is My Brother', and 'Big Sur'.
"Jack Kerouac’s Final Years in St. Petersburg, Florida"
By Kytka
You may say that you can’t judge a book by its cover,
but we know for a fact that you can’t tell an author’s interior life by his home.
Jack Kerouac spent his final years in St. Petersburg, Florida,
in a simple home in a quiet neighborhood.
That’s right.
The Beat Generation high priest, free-spirited novelist and author of 'On the Road',
Jack Kerouac, spent the last six years of his life in a very ordinary suburban house,
located at 5169 10th Ave. N., St. Petersburg, Florida.
"He was more famous in France, and Europe, than here.
I think the reason he liked Florida is, he was under the radar." – Ron Tichenor
…a shot of whiskey and a wash of beer…
He was known to spend many nights dragging a cot outside
to sleep in the peaceful backyard, under the stars.
Kerouac ushered in an urgent and stream-of-consciousness style of writing
that questioned nearly every aspect of modern life while at the same time,
celebrating the seedier aspects of it.
Jack mentioned St. Petersburg frequently throughout his body of work,
and he remains a beloved icon to many people in St. Petersburg.
By some accounts, Kerouac never did take to his adopted home,
calling it in his letters “a good place to come die”,
and “the town of the newly wed and the living dead.”
All of his novels remain in print, and are a mainstay on high school,
and college reading lists.
Even today, 'On the Road' sells approximately 100,000 copies a year.
His house in St. Petersburg has sat mainly empty,
until the friends of Jack Kerouac came onboard,
and wanted to restore it to it’s original state.
Jack would often hang out at Haslam’s Book Store,
and he was known to bring stacks of his books to tables near the front door,
in order to more prominently display them.
Another favorite haunt was the Flamingo Bar where he drank his infamous
“shot and a wash”.
Jack Kerouac is one of this country’s great writers, and he was a part of Florida’s history, he left behind an amazing collection of work.
From 1964 to 1965, and then again from the fall of 1968 until October 1969,
Jack Kerouac lived in semi-obscurity with his paralyzed mother, Gabrielle,
and his third wife, Stella, in this small and quite ordinary block house.
Today the house is owned by Kerouac’s brother in law, John Sampas.
The home sits on a 9,470 square foot lot and was built in 1963.
It has three bedrooms and measures 1,750 square foot in size.
They called Jack the “King of the Beats” a title he squirmed under
because his free verse approach inspired an entire generation of beat poets.
At eleven o'clock, on the morning of October 20, 1969, in St. Petersburg, Florida,
Kerouac was sitting in his favorite chair, drinking whiskey and malt liquor,
working on a book about his father's print shop in Lowell, Massachusetts.
He suddenly felt nauseated and walked to the bathroom, where he began to vomit blood. Kerouac was taken to a nearby hospital, suffering from an abdominal hemorrhage.
He received several transfusions in an attempt to make up for the loss of blood,
and doctors subsequently attempted surgery, but a damaged liver
prevented his blood from clotting.
He died at 5:15 the following morning at St. Anthony's Hospital,
never having regained consciousness after the operation.
His cause of death was listed as an internal hemorrhage (bleeding esophageal varices) caused by cirrhosis, the result of longtime alcohol abuse.
A possible contributing factor was an untreated hernia he suffered in a bar fight
several weeks earlier.
He is buried at Edson Cemetery, Lowell, Massachusetts.
Kerouac's mother inherited most of his estate.
He was honored posthumously with a Doctor of Letters degree
from his hometown University of Massachusetts, Lowell, on June 2, 2007.
Uploaded
April 3rd, 2019
Embed
Share
Comments
There are no comments for The Last Breakfast of Jack Kerouac. Click here to post the first comment.