Jan Kerouac; Writer, Child of Chronicler of Beat Generation

Jan Kerouac, novelist and only child of 1950s Beat Generation chronicler Jack Kerouac who met him only twice but fantasized about their becoming “drinking buddies,” has died. She was 44.

Kerouac, who had fought in recent years to reclaim her father’s archives, died Wednesday in Albuquerque of kidney failure. She had been on dialysis for the last five years.

Her father died in 1969, and she had hoped to place his papers in a museum or library and preserve them as a record of the alienated postwar generation he set wandering in search of itself.

Two years ago, she sued relatives of her father’s last wife, Stella Sampas, who had inherited the archives, including notebooks, Teletype rolls and parchment scrolls on which Kerouac based 19 books, including “On the Road” and “The Dharma Bums.”

Jan Kerouac contended that the will of her grandmother Gabrielle Kerouac, which left the papers to Sampas, was forged.

She first met her father, who had abandoned her pregnant mother, when she was 9. Her parents were to have a blood test to prove he was indeed the father and should pay her mother support. He was and he did.

The child adored him, but she saw him only one more time--six years later when, as she described it, he sat watching “The Beverly Hillbillies” and upending a fifth of whiskey.

She wrote about the encounters in her first book, “Baby Driver: A Story About Myself,” published in 1981.

Jan Kerouac also wrote “Trainsong” in 1988 about her travels, and had been working on a book, “Parrot Fever,” about the 1991 death of her mother.

A vagabond like her father, she freely discussed her experiences with heroin and LSD, turning tricks for gas money and roaming through Central America and the United States.

Far from successful despite her writing talent, the twice-divorced Jan Kerouac worked as a maid, dishwasher, cook, waitress, janitor, masseuse, potato picker, cannery worker and cartographer’s assistant.

“I’m just a bum in disguise,” she told The Times in 1981 when she visited Los Angeles to publish her first book.