When authors refer to other great works, people, and events, it’s usually not accidental. Put on your super-sleuth hat and figure out why.
Kerouac's Other Works
- The Subterraneans (author's note)
- The Dharma Bums (author's note, 11.8)
- Doctor Sax (author's note)
- Maggie Cassidy (author's note)
- Tristessa (author's note)
- Desolation Angels (author's note)
- Visions of Cody (author's note)
- "Mexico City Blues" (23.3)
Literature, Philosophy, Other Thinkers
- Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past (author's note, 6.1)
- William Seward Burroughs II (2.1)
- William Blake (4.2, 21.15)
- Arthur Rimbaud (5.1, 23.2)
- Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (5.1, 5.3)
- Emily Dickinson (5.4)
- Orson Welles (5.5)
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance" (7.1)
- Walt Whitman (7.1)
- Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf (7.1)
- Friedrich Nietzsche (7.1, 30.2)
- Fyodor Dostoevsky (7.1)
- James Joyce (7.2, 34.3)
- Gertrude Stein (11.7)
- Ezra Pound (11.7)
- Wallace Stevens (11.7)
- Jane Austen (11.11)
- The Book of Songs, the earliest existing collection of Chinese poems (12.3)
- William Faulkner (12.3)
- César Birotteau (12.3)
- William Shakespeare (12.3)
- William Shakespeare, King Lear (24.1)
- William Shakespeare, Hamlet (mention of Ophelia and quote "Get thee to a nunnery") (34.4, 34.11)
- The Satirycon (12.3)
- Dante Alighieri (12.3)
- Sir Philip Sidney (12.3)
- Lope de Vega (12.3)
- Miguel de Cervantes (12.3, 23.4)
- Catullus (12.3)
- Jean Genet (18.2)
- Denton Welch (19.2)
- Truman Capote (19.2)
- F. Scott Fitzgerald (20.14)
- Robert Burns, "To A Mouse" (21.11)
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (21.15)
- Theo Marzials (22.5)
- Henry Harland (22.5)
- François Villon (23.3)
- Erskine Caldwell (25.1)
- Richard Wagner, Tristan und Isolde (26.6)
- Henry Miller
- Ernest Hemingway (38.1)
- Sigmund Freud (38.4)
Music, TV, Sports, Pop Culture
- "I'll Take You Home Again Kathleen," an Irish Ballad (1.1)
- Steve Allen Show (6.1)
- Ripley's Believe It or Not! (6.4)
- Babe Ruth (10.4)
- Igor Stravinsky (11.11, 25.1)
- Frank Sinatra (12.3, 31.5)
- Beethoven (15.1), " Solemn Mass " (14.1)
- Mae West (14.7)
- Stan Getz (16.1)
- Chet Baker (19.1, 22.2)
- Dame May Whitty (22.6)
- Jean Harlow (23.2)
- Humphrey Bogart (36.8)
Art
- Paul Gaugin (6.3)
- André Eglevsky, a famous ballet dancer (8.1)
- Anthony van Dyck (27.4)
Religion
- St. Christopher (2.1)
- Lankavatara Scripture (5.4, 11.7)
- Babylon (6.4)
- Dajian Huineng (10.1)
- Thomas à Kempis (10.1)
- Bodhidharma (11.11)
- Buddha (12.3, 14.9, 31.7)
- Laurence Sterne (12.3)
- Ibn El Arabi (12.3)
- Jesus Christ (14.3)
- The Kama Sutra (14.9)
- Aleister Crowley (19.2)
- Jetsun Milarepa (22.8, 31.1)
- St. Michael (23.4)
Politics, History, Biography
- Raúl Castro
- James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson (17.1)
- Chiang Kai Shek (20.1)
- President Kennedy (21.8)
- William Bonney, a.k.a. "Billy the Kid" (23.2)