Jack Kerouac Biography:
Jack Kerouac was born on March 12, 1922 in Lowell, MA to French-Canadian immigrants. Kerouac attended Catholic parochial schools until Junior High. In High School, he played football and won a football scholarship to Columbia. Unfortunately, a leg injury nullified the scholarship, and Kerouac left New York to begin the itinerant life for which he is known.
During his time in NY, Kerouac met many of the people who would greatly influence the direction his life would take: Lucien Carr, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and Neal Cassady. Along with Kerouac, this group of writers and friends became the core of the Beat Generation.
Jack Kerouac's first novel, The Town and the City, was published in 1950. He wrote constantly but didn't publish again until 1957, when Viking Press published On the Road, Kerouac's defining novel about his cross-country adventures with Neal Cassady. On the Road was unusual in that it was written in "spontaneous prose," a sort of uniquely Kerouacian stream of conciousness style.
Other novels followed: The Dharma Bums, The Subterraneans, Dr. Sax. But Kerouac had begun an alcoholic decline that was only accelerated by the fame he had achieved with On the Road. He died in 1969 at the age of 47, from internal bleeding caused by cirrhosis of the liver.
Dates:
(March 12, 1922 - October 21, 1969)
Nationality:
American
Genre(s):
Novels; Poetry
Notable Work:
On the Road, 1957
