WHEN: Friday. Journalist and filmmaker Gabriel Anctil will lecture on "Kerouac, Quebec, and the French Language," at 4 p.m., Pleasants Family Assembly Room, Wilson Library.
At 8 p.m., filmmaker Curt Worden will introduce a screening of his film "One Fast Move or I'm Gone: Kerouac's Big Sur" at 8 p.m. in Howell Hall, room 104.
A one-day exhibit of some published works by Kerouac, from the Wilson Library's Beat Literature collection, also will be on view at Wilson.
ADMISSION: All events are free and open to the public
By Cliff Bellamy
cbellamy@heraldsun.com; 419-6744
Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) is best known as the author of "On the Road," "The Dharma Bums" and other novels that chronicled the lives of the postwar poets and writers known as the Beat Generation. Less known to many readers is Kerouac's connection and devotion to his French-Canadian ancestry.
Kerouac's native language is French, and his birth name was Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac. His novels make frequent reference to his French-Canadian ancestry, and his memoir "Satori in Paris" is about his attempts to do genealogical research in France's national library and to find fellow descendants in France. A series of events at UNC Friday will explore Kerouac's French-Canadian connection and its influence on his writing.
The celebration also includes a one-day exhibit of some of Kerouac's books from the Wilson Library's Beat Literature Collection, and a screening of director Curt Worden's documentary "One Fast Move or I'm Gone: Kerouac's Big Sur." Worden will introduce the film.
The principal organizer of the event is Hassan Melehy, an associate professor of French at UNC. Melehy is working on a new scholarly book about Kerouac that he said will "reinterpret Kerouac quite a bit." Kerouac's family left Quebec in the late 19th century and eventually settled in Lowell, Mass., where Kerouac was born.
The French-speaking people of Quebec faced economic persecution, and many made their way to New England. At one time, Melehy said, of Lowell's 100,000 or so population, about a third were French-speaking.
His family's migration from Quebec is reflected in Kerouac's fascination with the road, and with travel, Melehy said. That exile experience also may be seen in Kerouac's identification in his novels with African-Americans, Mexicans and other minorities. Melehy's research is attempting to show how Kerouac "was very well aware of the multicultural makeup of America" and by extension how the Beats were exploring the idea of transculturalism some 30 or 40 years before literary critics.
Kerouac's French connection will be further explored in a lecture by Gabriel Anctil, a Montreal journalist and filmmaker. Anctil published a series of articles for Montreal's Le Devoir newspaper that focused on Kerouac's Quebec roots. Those articles also revealed the existence of two unpublished Kerouac novels written in French. His lecture will discuss the migration of French Canadians from Quebec to New England, and how Kerouac's relationship to that history can help readers better understand the author.
With this event, Melehy said he wants to expose the public to "the Jack Kerouac who understood how festively muliticultural North America was."
UNC has presented other Beat Generation-related events in recent years. In 2008, Wilson Library presented "The Beats and Beyond," an exhibit of items from the Beat Literature Collection, an event that included readings and panel discussions. In 2005, the original scroll on which Kerouac wrote the first draft of "On the Road" was exhibited in Wilson Library during the scroll's national tour.
