Jack kerouac biography amazon

From relative obscurity, even at the time of his death in 1969, Jack Kerouac has risen to icon status with invigorated interest at all levels of scholarship and readership.

This biography serves an important purpose in cutting through both the hagiography and the critical backlash that still surrounds the figure most closely identified with the Beat movement. Using the same structure―the events of his life― that Kerouac himself utilized in writing his roman a clef novels such as On the Road, this biography provides an accessible alternative to current studies that will help readers, particularly students understand the creative legacy left by Kerouac.

To this generation Jack Kerouac became a romantic hero, an archetypal rebel, the symbol of their own vanities, the symbol of their own romantic legend.

Kerouac achieves what Jack Kerouac himself always had dreamed of: written from the inside with disarming candor, enormous compassion, and meticulous detail.

All the components of the Jack Kerouac legend are here: the excesses of alcohol and drugs; the soul searching; the characters.

Jack Kerouac (), the central figure of the Beat Generation, was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in and died in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Writers Barry Gifford and Lawrence Lee recount Jack Kerouac's story, from his childhood in Lowell, Massachusetts, to his tragic end in Florida at the age of.

Readers will be able to draw their own insights and conclusions from this well drawn account that traces the historical and personal events that moved his career along uncharted paths. Sixteen chapters piece together his troubled ties with family, friends, lovers, and the literary establishment.

This study carefully examines the philos