Zoom Event: Amanda Fortini and Meghan Daum on Jan Kerouac’s 'Baby Driver'

Join on Wednesday, Nov. 12 for a virtual discussion of the first novel by Jan Kerouac, daughter of Jack ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

Join Amanda Fortini, author of the introduction to the NYRB Classics edition of Baby Driver, and Meghan Daum, essayist and author of The Catastrophe Hour (Notting Hill Editions 2025), for an online discussion of Jan Kerouac’s life, writing, and legacy.  RSVP Wednesday, November 12 • 5 PM ET • Zoom Baby Driver is the debut novel by Jan Kerouac, the sole daughter of Jack Kerouac, a father whom she met only twice. Born just after her parents separated, Kerouac had an itinerant childhood, flitting between reformatories and detention homes. A self-styled “gum wrapper in a whirlwind,” she was a drifter by necessity, running away from New York as a teenager, several months pregnant, and pinballing from Guadalajara to New Mexico to the Pacific Northwest, traveling alone or with lovers and friends. This autobiographical novel, first published in 1981, is a freewheeling record of those travels, a picaresque account of life on the road of a much different kind to that made famous by her father. Alternately sordid and ecstatic, the vignettes which make up Baby Driver are harrowing but never miserabilist—an astonishingly lucid description of life on the margins written without self-interest or pity. Stories of dead-end jobs (encyclopedia salesperson, go-go dancer, stable-hand, sex worker) rub up against transient friendships, scraps of half-forgotten conversation, and the smallest sensory details, from the scent of beer in a Santa Fe dive to the peeling paint on tenement walls to a freight train’s “plaintive far-spiraling whistle screaming through the night.” BUY THE BOOK   You are receiving this message because you signed up for email newsletters from NYRB. You can choose the types of mailings you wish to receive: Update preferences     New York Review Books 207 East 32nd Street, New York, NY, 10016 Unsubscribe