Big Sur Allusions & Cultural References

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

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)

"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)

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)

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)