Description
Book SynopsisThis is the authoritative biography of writer, poet, and beat generation icon Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), whose novel On the Road catapulted him to the forefront of the literary world and influenced budding writers for generations to come. A legendary figure in the landscape of American literature, Kerouac lived a turbulent life, one more intimately connected to his literary output than perhaps any other writer. Restless traveler, alcoholic, dissolute but devoted Catholic, and genius, Kerouac lived hard with his compatriots of the beat movement—William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, and Neal Cassady. With them, he created a new type of American literature as well as an enduring literary mythology. Kerouac: The Definitive Biography recounts in gripping detail the story of this exceptional life and the key relationships that affected Kerouac's development as an artist, including those with his three wives, numerous girlfriends, and beloved mother. Most important, Kerouac is the first biography based wholly on the vast array of primary source materials contemporary to the events described—letters, postcards, diaries, journals, notebooks, newspaper and magazine articles, legal documents, and television and audio transcripts—sources that provide an unparalleled view of the intimate thoughts and everyday world of Kerouac.
Trade ReviewTune in, all you desolation angels and dharma bums, and turn on to Paul Maher's jazzy bio of Kerouac. * Vanity Fair *
With enormous sensitivity and thoughtfulness, Paul Maher Jr. captures the essence of Jack Kerouac's peripatetic life on the margins of American society. Maher brings together those curious personalities and bizarre places that made Kerouac an intensely complex man, perceptive writer, and, ultimately, cultural icon of the 'beat' generation. This riveting biography is meticulously researched, vividly written and a substantial contribution to American cultural history. -- Lester P. Lee Jr., Northeastern University
Paul Maher has unearthed a plethora of fascinating new information. He is, without question, one of the new leaders in interpreting the life of this literary legend whose reputation grows daily. -- Douglas Brinkley, Historian and editor of
Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac
What makes Paul Maher's story of Jack Kerouac ... stand out from other Kerouac biographies is his factual tone and his reliance on formal evidence in recounting Kerouac's life and making a case for his place in American letters. * Smoky Mountain News *
Maher succeeds on many levels and nails the advertised "definitive biography." * Charleston Post and Courier *
The virtues of Kerouac are its concise prose style, inclusion of unpublished work by Kerouac, and refutation of anecdotal material uncritically accepted and printed as fact by previous biographers. * Burlington Free Press *
Maher takes a riveting look at the forces that shaped Kerouac's development into the original hipster artist. * Smoke *
Sheds new light on a writer of considerable interest. * Library Journal *
Kerouac is an engaging mix of anecdote and archive. Tales of ecstacy and despair, of drugs and drunkenness and poetry, are counterbalanced by Maher's perceptive commentary and criticism. * Times Literary Supplement *
Unique among Kerouac biographers for his prodigious archival research, Paul Maher tells a magnificant American story of a small-town boy who loved books, created himself as a writer, and destroyed himself. You can spot-check a month or year in this rigorously chronological documentation, or, better, seat yourself for the whole inspiring, infuriating, appalling story. Taking his hint from Kerouac's famous scroll, the ruthlessly non-judgmental Maher unrolls a panorama where squalid settings are thronged by a gaudy, self-indulgent, yet profoundly creative literary generation held at bay by baffled editors, publishers, and critics. -- Hershel Parker, author of Herman Melville: A Biography
