21st Century: Query 144 (Jack Kerouac)
“If moderation is a fault, then indifference is a crime.” ~ Jack Kerouac was an American writer and poet and author of the iconic novel On The Road . He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg , a pioneer of the Beat Generation . Kerouac is recognized for his method of spontaneous prose. Thematically, his work covers topics such as Catholic spirituality, jazz, promiscuity, Buddhism , drugs, poverty, and travel. He became an underground celebrity and, with other beats , a progenitor of the hippie movement , although he remained antagonistic toward some of its politically radical elements. How might this statement be true or false? How might this statement be true and false? How did “indifference” contribute to the myriad massacres of the 20th Century: The Holocaust , Rwanda , Bosnia , Cambodia , etc.? Is “moderation” a fault? Why or why not? How might “moderation” be both a fault and a strength?