Literature
Jack Kerouac
Novelist, author of On the Road
Born 1922 · Died 1969
Photo: Tom Palumbo from New York, NY, USA · CC BY-SA 2.0
«One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.»
Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road, the novel that defined the Beat Generation and sent a generation of readers hitchhiking across America. He met Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs around Columbia, and those friendships produced a whole literary movement.
Key achievements
- Wrote On the Road, a landmark of American literature
- Defined the spontaneous prose style of the Beat writers
Universities
New York, Manhattan
Arrived in 1940 on a football scholarship, broke his leg in his first season, and left without a degree.
Facts
- He typed On the Road on a single 120-foot roll of paper so that changing sheets would not interrupt him.
- He spoke French at home in Massachusetts and did not learn English properly until he was about six.
- The manuscript roll was later bought at auction for 2.4 million dollars and has toured as a museum exhibit.
Photographs
Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences; the author and licence are shown on each image.