Jan Kerouac

thumb|Jan Kerouac in 1983 in Eugene, Oregon Janet Michelle "Jan" Kerouac (February 16, 1952 – June 5, 1996) was a novelist, poet, and the only child of Jack Kerouac. Quotes Baby Driver: A Story About Myself (1981) Was it January or February? The coconut fronds waving, shining like green hair in the sun, gave no clue. I sat in the window of our thatched house in Yelapa, not even a dot on the map below Puerto Vallarta, staring out through puffs of tiny afternoon flies. p. 21 (opening lines) Next door lived Lucy Crook, an old lady in an even older house surrounded by craggy plum trees. Plums would fall on the ground and rot there, making a wonderful smell of purple earth ferment that stained the air of our street. p. 48-49 The crisp, autumnal air had been replaced by the crystal breath of winter. Sapphire skies grazed the roofs of pink-bisque clay buildings and reflected themselves in blue-black heads of Indians. I wandered about, hugging my tan corduroy secondhand jacket tight around me in the bright cold. p. 87 After that, we had to go get blood tests, Jack and I, to determine if he was really my father. I felt like we were special somehow, as if our blood was some precious substance the laboratory needed, and we were the only two people in the world that had it. Then we went back to my neighborhood, bringing Jack with us. As soon as we got to the apartment, he wanted to know where the nearest liquor store was, so I took him by the hand to the one on Tenth Street, proudly walking him past kids I knew as if to say, “See—I have one too.” p. 106 After the meeting with my father, things went on as always, except that the twins and I were closer, having spent the summer together on the Cape. I did my homework every night to the radio, and hung out in the candy stores by day, and every once in a while I’d take out my one souvenir of his visit—the cork from the bottle of sherry—and stare at it, wishing it would hurry up and be Janyary. p. 108 Sometimes I did things for no reason whatsoever except that they were there to do, and it went no further. I drifted into scenes through an open door and happened to stumble through, staying until I leaked out. I had no goals, so I stabbed in the dark figuring I'd strike something solid sooner or later if I didn't die in the process. p. 118 She spoke perfect English, but with a lovely curved and full-mouthed tropical density that parted the atmosphere into octagons. p. 200 I read [On the Road] all in one night instead of ringing for a Seconal. And I was happy to know that my father’s thought patterns were so similar to mine. Also, now that I had a picture of what he’d been doing all this time, all over the country, it made more sense that he hadn’t had the time to be fatherly. p. 230 Without hesitation I jumped in between the other sweating bodies and gave the boatman my ticket. A rush of carbonated bubbles went up my back as we pushed off. I glanced toward the shore through my hair, and there was Miguel walking back out into the sun, his hands outstretched in perplexity, a cloud of black anger quivering around his body. p. 242 Gazing out over the pale rooftops I hung clothes on the line, remembering rooftops in different cities—New York with its tarry brick and pigeon coops, San Francisco’s bright windy wood structures, Santa Fe’s flat adobes from which I’d watched so many mountain sunsets, and a place in El Salvador where I had forgotten who I was. p. 244 External links Category:1952 births Category:1996 deaths Category:Novelists from the United States Category:Women authors from the United States Category:Travel writers from the United States Category:People from New York (state)