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Let's say that his parents get nostalgic for the Quebec countryside and move back there from Lowell, Masschusetts, shortly after Jean-Louis (Jack) Kerouac is born--or a few years later, perhaps after the death of his brother Gérard. Remember, Jack Kerouac grew up with French as his language for the first few years of his life:

"Kerouac did not start to learn English until the age of six, and at home he and his family spoke French.[4][5] When he was four he was profoundly affected by the death of his nine-year-old brother, Gérard, from rheumatic fever, an event later described in his novel *Visions of Gerard*. Some of Kerouac's poetry was written in French, and in letters written to friend Allen Ginsberg towards the end of his life he expressed his desire to speak his parents' native tongue again. Recently, it was discovered that Kerouac first started writing *On the Road* in French, a language in which he also wrote two unpublished novels.[6] The writings are in dialectal Quebec French, and predate the first plays of Michel Tremblay by a decade."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Kerouac

In this ATL, French is Kerouac's (or, rather, "Kérouac"'s) only language for many years. He attends the Université de Montréal instead of Columbia.

In OTL, Kerouac's French caused him some embarrassment during a 1967 interview in Montreal:

"...Kerouac himself was dressed in an open-necked shirt, with the sleeves rolled up. He was clearly ill at ease--furrowing his brow, fidgeting in his chair, as he tried to answer Seguin's questions in French. Almost immediately, the audience started laughing. Kerouac was puzzled. He asked Seguin why they were laughing.

"'They came to see an icon--you know, Jack Kerouac, *On The Road*--and then he starts to speak French,' explains Yves Frenette, a historian at the University of Ottawa. 'But it's the French of an older generation. It's not a broken French, it's not even the French of an Anglo speaking French, it's the French of someone who's a farmer, someone far from Montreal.

"Pierre Anctil, director of the Institute of Canadian Studies at the University of Ottawa, agrees. 'His parents came from a rural area of Quebec in the Gaspé,' he comments. 'They knew the Quebec of farms and quaint people and small towns and there he was in Montreal, where the entire crew spoke French. He wasn't used to that.'

"To the members of his audience, anxious to be part of a modern Quebec, hearing Kerouac's French was like an educated American audience hearing a famous author speak in the hillbilly, southern accent of a guest on The Jerry Springer Show. 'The way he was speaking, it wasn't so much the words by themselves, it was just the rhythm of the sentences, Anctil says. 'It appeared as rural and unlearned and folkloric.'

http://www.thestar.com/columnists/article/261067

In this ATL, Kérouac will learn "proper" French at the Université, yet probably never entirely lose his rustic accent. But he potentially could put his knowledge of the speech of rural folk to good use in his novels (which of course will be in French in this ATL). Quebec of the Duplessis era might seem uncongenial for a rebellious novelist, but it was during this era that "Quebec literature broke away from religion and conservative ideology..." as well as becoming more indpendent of French literature, according to
http://books.google.com/books?id=1cew7XS_3MEC&pg=PA299 Kérouac potentially could be part of that breakaway. Of course he might be fascinated by American bohemians, learn enough English to move south and mix with them, and even write a novel about his experiences with them--called *Sur la Route*...

But let's say he never gets involved with the Beats in this ATL. Of course the Beat Generation existed before *On the Road* and had already been the subject of literature, most famously John Clellon Holmes' *Go* and Allen Ginsburg's *Howl.* Still, *On the Road* enormously expanded interest in the Beats. And anyway, without early participation by Kerouac, the Beats would not even have that name--as Holmes acknowledged, he got the term "Beat Generation" (see http://faculty.mansfield.edu/julrich/holmes.htm for his famous November 16, 1952 *New York Times Magazine* article "This Is The Beat Generation") from a conversation with Kerouac.

(One other possibility: he becomes a star of *Canadian* football. In OTL, he was a promising player of American football at Lowell High School and then at Columbia--until he got injured and later did not get along with his coach, Lou Little. Maybe with a different university, a different coach, and a slightly diferent game, things go better for him as an athlete?)
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