Six facts you might not know about Jack Kerouac:
1. Kerouac believed that his older brother, Gerard, who died of rheumatic fever at age 10, was an actual saint, and in later life he often felt that Gerard was speaking directly to him from heaven.
2. Kerouac had the highest IQ in the history of Newport Naval Base at the time he was stationed there (1942), and because of it he was suspected of being a German spy. He was later discharged from the Navy for "angel tendencies," an early term for schizophrenia.
3. While docked in Greenland in the Merchant Marine, Kerouac traded his Horace Mann football sweater to an Eskimo for the Eskimo's handmade harpoon, which he saved all his life.
4. Later during World War II, Kerouac served on the S.S. Dorchester, on the voyage before it was sunk by German torpedoes with the loss of about 800 lives, including the famed Four Chaplains who gave their life jackets to others, as well as Kerouac's close friend, an African-American cook called Old Glory. Kerouac received a telegram from Coach Lou Little calling him back to Columbia University to play football just before the Dorchester sailed again.
5. Kerouac loved to listen to, and would often scat-sing along with, Gregorian chants, which he called a "jazz Mass."
6. Contrary to the belief of '60s radicals like Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, who thought him a hopeless redneck, Kerouac actually opposed the Vietnam War. But his reason for opposing it was unique -- he claimed it was "a conspiracy between the North and South Vietnamese to get American jeeps."
Source: "Memory Babe: A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac," by Gerald Nicosia (www.geraldnicosia.com)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Must credit the San Francisco Chronicle
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