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Okay, Effortless English members, welcome to the vocabulary lesson for Jack Kerouac, king of the Beats. Let’s get started.

Starting at the top. We have the word Beats, king of the Beats. The Beats were a group of writers. It was a writing movement, a writing style that was popular in the late 1950s and 1960s. Jack Kerouac was the most famous Beat writer.

Okay, you see the word novelist. A novelist is a person who writes novels and a novel is a long book, usually a story.

All right, we see the word critical success. It says Jack Kerouac now enjoys critical success, but not during his lifetime. Critical success means success with reviewers, with kind of professionals, people who write a review about a story and they say this is a good book or this is not. Those are critics, book critics. We also have movie critics.

So critical success means that those people like your book or your movie. So some movies are very popular. A lot of people go to see them and they love them. But the critics, the professional writers, movie writers, don’t like it. So it’s possible to have popular success, but not critical success.

We see the word spontaneous. It’s a common English word. Spontaneous means without planning. You don’t think about doing something before you do it. You just do it.

So if you’re hungry, you just grab something to eat very quickly. You don’t think about what you want to eat. If you’re angry, you just start yelling. You don’t think about what you’re going to do. You don’t stop yourself from yelling. You do exactly what you feel right now, at this moment.

We also see the word confessional in that same sentence. That Kerouac had a confessional style. Confessional means very open and honest about your life. So confessional means you’re telling your secrets. You’re telling secrets about your life. So his style… he wrote about his own life and all the secret about how he felt and what he did. That’s a confessional style.

Okay, we see the verb to roam. Kerouac roamed around America. He roamed America for a long time. To roam is to travel. It has the idea of not having a plan. If you roam, you go from one place to another to another, but you have no real plan you just wander around you just travel around without planning. That’s roam or roaming.

Okay, you see the word catalyst, catalyst for. Kerouac’s writing was a catalyst for the 1960s counterculture. Catalyst means something that starts a reaction or something that begins an action or something that encourages an action.

So Kerouac’s writing influenced many people. It encouraged people to change their way of life. Kerouac’s writing challenged the normal American lifestyle. So he helped to start the 1960s counterculture.

Counterculture means… counter means against. So counterculture is a new culture that is going against the old culture.

All right, you see the word prowess in here. Talks about that… Kerouac had athletic prowess. Athletic means related to sports, about sports. He was a good athlete. He could play sports.

And prowess means skill or ability. So he had athletic prowess. He had athletic skill. He had sports skill.

All right, we see the word scholarship. A lot of you know the word scholarship. Scholarship is free money to go to school. Usually the government gives you money to go to university or college. That money, we call it scholarship. Sometimes a company will give us a scholarship.

All right, in the end of first page, you will see the phrasal verb, the two-word verb pan out, to pan out. It says not pan out. His scholarship did not pan out.

We usually use pan out in a negative sentence. I don’t know why, but we usually say not pan out. And to not pan out means it doesn’t work. It doesn’t happen. It’s not successful.

So you try something, but then you fail. In this case, he tried playing football in university, but he failed. He dropped out. He quit the team. So it did not pan out. His football career did not pan out. It was not successful. It didn’t happen.

All right, in the next page, the second page, we see the word seminal. It says his seminal work was “On the Road”. Seminal means very original, it’s an adjective. Very original, very creative, very new. Sometimes even has a feeling of being the best at something, something very new and creative and great.

So “On the Road” was his seminal book. It was his first really different book. It was his first really popular and original and creative book. “On the Road”. It’s great book. Try reading it. It’s a very interesting book.

All right, you see the verb established in the next paragraph. That his first book, “The Town and the City”, was before he established his style. So to establish something is to create it or to prove it or to make it permanent.

So in the beginning, he didn’t have unique style, a special style. His first book was kind of normal. But then after that, he established, he created a Beat style.

And Beat is the name for this kind of writing. Beat means very free, very open, very honest kind of writing. A very spontaneous kind of writing, not planned.

All right, and Kerouac was influenced by a man named Thomas Wolfe. A writer named Thomas Wolfe, another American writer. So Thomas Wolfe affected Kerouac.

All right, in the next paragraph, we see the words drafts and tentatively. It says building on, adding to, his previous drafts, tentatively titled “The Beat Generation” and “Gone on the Road”.

A draft is a book, something you write, a book, a record, a paper. But it’s not finished yet. So maybe you write it the first time, but it has many mistakes. That’s called a draft. Maybe you have one or two or three drafts. You write it again and again and again until it’s perfect, until it’s ready. That’s a draft.

Tentatively means not sure or temporary or, you know, possibly. So tentatively titled, tentatively named, it means this famous book “On the Road” in the beginning, he didn’t know what the name would be.

So he had just a temporary title. The first temporary title was called “The Beat Generation”. The second temporary title was called “Gone On the Road”, but the final title, the permanent title is “On the Road”.

All right, very nice. Next you see the word marginalized social groups in the next paragraph. That his book “On the Road” was rejected. Most companies did not want to publish his book, because it was sympathetic, it was kind, it was nice, it was positive about marginalized social groups in the United states.

Marginalized means a group that has no power. So for example, in the 1950s black people in America had no power. They were treated very badly. They were a marginalized group. It means the rest of society makes them weak.

So Kerouac was sympathetic. He was kind towards black people, towards people who are poor, people who are homeless, all these people. He was very kind. He wrote very kind thing about them. And that’s not good in the 1950s in America, because America was conservative then. So these are marginalized groups. Weak groups in society.

All right, and then so Viking Press, the company that did publish the book, they demanded, they requested, they said, you must make major revisions. A revision is a change. And it’s usually a change to a movie or a change to a book. We call that a revision.

All right, next you see the word explicit in the next paragraph. That the book was deemed, was thought to be, was considered too explicit for 1957 readers.

Explicit means very direct and powerful and sometimes obscene, in another words kind of rude or talking about for example **sex **or using drugs or very poor people and doing it very directly. We call that explicit. It’s an adjective. So his book “On the Road” was quite explicit for 1957 especially.

All right, in the next paragraph you see the word autobiographical. Autobiographical is an adjective. The noun is autobiography. But autobiographical means about your own life. So his book “On the Road” was autobiographical. It was about his life.

Okay and then he said he made a road trip. A road trip, that’s kind of an American slang. Road trip is a trip of course. It means traveling. But it means traveling by car, especially by car. It has the idea you jump in your car and you go. You go somewhere and you just travel around. You roam around.

All right, you see the word, the phrase defining work. “On the Road” is described as the defining work of post world war II. Defining work or a defining book or a defining piece of art. A defining something means very important or the most important.

It means it describes this time period. It’s the defining work of post world war II, after world war II. It means it’s the most important book written after that time period.

Okay, we see the phrase immersion into. Kerouac’s immersion into Buddhism. It means he started to study Buddhism a lot, very powerfully, very intensely. Immersion means to go under, so in this case, it means to go deeply into Buddhism.

All right, finally on the next page, the last page, we see the word hemorrhage. A hemorrhage, internal hemorrhage, those two words go together.

Internal means inside. Hemorrhage means bleeding. Means your blood is coming out your body. But not coming out on your skin not only outside of your body. A hemorrhage is inside your body. It means your bleeding inside your body. That’s how he died. He started bleeding inside his body.

And this bleeding it was caused by cirrhosis of the liver. Cirrhosis of the liver means dying of the liver, or the death of the liver, or a disease of the liver. Cirrhosis means your liver is sick. Your liver is weak. Your liver is bad.

And cirrhosis is usually caused by drinking alcohol, a lot of drinking. Or sometimes it’s caused by other diseases. But drinking is a common cause of cirrhosis. So he died from cirrhosis of the liver.

Okay, as always please repeat this vocabulary lesson a few times. I go very quickly in this vocabulary discussion, so probably you need to repeat this discussion several times so that you really remember the new vocabulary.

And then of course listen to the mini-story lesson. That will help you practice some of the… more key words and really learn how to use them.

Okay, bye-bye.