Today marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Jack Kerouac and to celebrate we are releasing Beatdom #22, a Kerouac-themed special edition of the journal, in which we explore numerous aspects of his life and work.

Jack Kerouac was, of course, a complex individual and he remains divisive even a century on from his birth. As such, we have not attempted to paint any coherent picture of the author but rather to embrace his duality. Kerouac was a Buddhist and a Catholic, somehow both liberal and conservative. He was a white male yet also a minority, an athlete and poet. He loved women yet failed to see them as equal to men. He was both racist and avowedly anti-racist.

Hopefully, with a wide array of voices, styles, and approaches to dissecting Kerouac, his work, and his legacy, we have come close to doing justice to this incredible yet misunderstood writer.

Here’s what you can read in Beatdom #22.

  • “The Mad Ones: How Kerouac Introduced his Generation” by David S. Wills
  • “Memory Babe: The French Connection” by Gerald Nicosia
  • “Remembering Uncle Jack: Neal and Carolyn Cassady’s children look back over a lifetime at their memories of The Great Rememberer” by Ryan Mathews
  • “Kerouac, Germany, and the Beat Generation” by Peter Oehler
  • “I Think of Jack Kerouac, I Even Think of Jack Kerouac’s Spontaneous Bop Prosody: The New Vision and Visions of Cody” by Sasha Tamar Strelitz
  • “Women on the Margins in the Kerouac Legend” by Hank Kalet
  • “Jack Kerouac,” by Karlostheunhappy
  • “To the Things We Can’t Remember, To the Things We Can’t Forget” by Westley Heine
  • “On the Road with Brian Hassett” by David S. Wills
  • “A Beat in Blackface: Jack Kerouac and the Issue of Race” by Ryan Mathews
  • “Jack in Ghost-Town” by Gerald Nicosia
  • “Off the Bus or On it,” by David Monteleone
  • “Queering Kerouac for the Stage” by Alyssa Cokinis
  • “The Many Names of Jack Kerouac” by David S. Wills
  • “Kerouac and Myth” by Benjamin Olsen
  • “Where Marble Stood and Fell: Gregory Corso in Greece” by Leon Horton

As always, our cover was produced by the incredible Waylon Bacon.

jack kerouac at 100

You can find Beatdom #22 on Amazon as both a printed and digital journal.