Kerouac makes academe!

The Chronicle of Higher Education is the weekly news source for university faculty and administrators, and this week it features an article about Jack Kerouac by John Tytell of Queens College. If you're a subscriber, click here to read the article, titled "Kerouac's Music."

Here's an excerpt to prod you into reading the entire article (if you can access it):

I suspect that Americans respond to On the Road and to Kerouac because of an irrepressible freshness that has everything to do with language and relatively little to do with his tales of sex, drugs, and jazz. When Kerouac used exclamations like "Wow" or "Whooee," many of his critics cringed and proclaimed that barbarians were storming the gates. But like his predecessors Whitman and Twain, Kerouac could hear natural speech.

Happy reading  . . . .