JACK KEROUAC. Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) was a highly influential American writer widely acknowledged as the most dynamic and brilliant figure of the “Beat” movement. His classic autobiographical novel On the Road (1957) takes a place among the high points of twentieth-century American literature.
POSTCARD OF MADONNA IN THE ROSE GARDEN DEPICTING MARY WITH THE BABY JESUS PERSONALLY OWNED BY JACK KEROUAC, THE FAMOUS BEAT AUTHOR BEST-KNOWN FOR HIS NOVEL ON THE ROAD
Postcard after Sister Maria Innocentia Hummel of Madonna in the Rose Garden depicting Mary with the baby Jesus, measuring 5 by 3.5 inches and in fine condition with minor soiling and indentations, personally owned by Jack Kerouac. Kerouac used this postcard to decorate his last home at 5169 10th Avenue North, St. Petersburg, Florida where numerous other religious objects scattered around the rooms. Accompanied with a copy of a manila envelope stamped with the Jack Kerouac Estate stamp and inscribed with, “Lawrenson + Mass Card,” and a certificate of authenticity from University Archives, the world’s leading historical documents and relics company, acknowledging the prayer card came from Kerouac’s estate. Personal items belonging to Kerouac are virtually nonexistent and we were unable to locate any available for sale before 2020.
ACCOMPANIED WITH A COPY OF AN ENVELOPE STAMPED WITH THE JACK KEROUAC ESTATE STAMP AND A CERTIFICATE OF AUTHENTICITY FROM UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES
Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, the son of immigrants from Quebec on his mother’s side. This piece may have been passed down in his family, as we believe it to have come from Saint Joseph’s Oratory of Mount Royal, a Roman Catholic minor basilica and national shrine on Mount Royal’s Westmount Summit in Montreal, Quebec. It is a National Historic Site of Canada and is Canada’s largest church with one of the largest domes in the world. St. Joseph’s Oratory is a pilgrimage site for Catholics with some dropping to their knees to climb 99 of St. Joseph’s Oratory’s 283 stairs in prayer.
Jack Kerouac was raised as a Catholic by devout parents who had come to New England from French-Canada, the pre-Vatican II Catholicism that saturated Lowells tight-knit French Canadian community. Gabrielle matched Leos’, Kerouac’s mother and father, civic pride with a fervent religious faith. According to Kerouac, “On the Road was really a story about two Catholic buddies roaming the country in search of God. And we found him. I found him in the sky, in Market Street San Francisco (those 2 visions), and Dean (Neal) had God sweating out of his forehead all the way.” At the core of On the Road, and at the heart of all his work, is the Catholic and Beat insistence upon an underlying spirituality that inhabits all creation.
It is impossible to overstate the influence of Catholicism on all of Kerouac’s work, save perhaps those books written during his Buddhist period in the mid to late 1950s. The influence is so obvious and so pervasive, in fact, that Kerouac became justifiably incensed when Ted Berrigan of the Paris Review asked during a 1968 interview: “How come you never write about Jesus?” Kerouac replied: ”I’ve never written about Jesus? You’re an insane phony. All I write about is Jesus.”