Jack Kerouac.

In a drunken haze during World War II, Kerouac enlisted in the Army, Navy, Marines and Coast Guard all on the same day. He shipped out for Naval training at Great Lakes but soured on the idea and began giving more attention to an unfinished manuscript. His superiors sent him for psychological evaluation, leading to discharge. He later enlisted in the Merchant Marine, serving a successful hitch and qualifying for veteran’s benefits.

Kerouac came up with the title for his close friend William S. Burroughs’s book Naked Lunch, though he later claimed no memory of doing so. While visiting Burroughs in Tangier in the mid-1950s, he retyped the manuscript originally titled Naked Lust and misread it as Naked Lunch. Their friendship soured over food issues, and Burroughs broke it off in 1957. They met once more in New York in 1968 at a bar before Kerouac appeared drunk on William F. Buckley’s show Firing Line.

Kerouac’s last marriage was to Stella Sampas, sister of his friend and writing mentor Sammy Sampas who died at Anzio during World War II. She waited more than twenty years in Lowell, Massachusetts for him to return.

Kerouac’s burial site is in his hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts. It was years before his grave received a marker. His epitaph reads He honored life.

A $110,000 offer came for the screen rights to On the Road. On advice from agent Sterling Lord, Kerouac turned it down, hoping for a $150,000 deal with Paramount involving Marlon Brando as Dean Moriarity. The deal fell through and the book was never sold in his lifetime, leaving him bitter.

Kerouac’s mother Gabrielle Memère usually had no involvement in his writing, but for the novel Pic he wrote much at her bedside when she was ill. She suggested the ending where young Pic meets a priest who helps him settle down.

Kerouac never had a driver’s license and envied skilled drivers, especially Neal Cassady. He made peace with driving after a Mexican trip where he took the wheel over long stretches of desert, as described in Desolation Angels.

In 1958, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer paid Kerouac $15,000 for the rights to The Subterraneans, which he used to buy a house in Long Island, the first he ever owned.

Kerouac sporadically worked for movie studios summarizing scripts and writing synopses in the late 1940s and early 1950s. His longest stint was an initial assignment lasting six weeks in 1947.

Kerouac recorded three albums of poetry and short stories: one with Steve Allen and a small combo, one with saxophonists Al Cohn and Zoot Sims, and one unaccompanied. They became rare until reissued as a box set by Rhino Records in the early 1990s.

Kerouac never lost his sense of patriotism for America. At a late-1960s party, when a flag was draped over him, he carefully folded it and put it away.

Kerouac entered Columbia University, where he met Allen Ginsberg, on a football scholarship with the apparent promise of a job for his father in New York. He broke his leg during a practice game, the job never materialized, and he cut classes before dropping out.