Jack Kerouac

During the 1950s Jack Kerouac stood out as the central literary figure of the Beat movement. His defining book, On the Road (1957), presented an autobiographical narrative of journeys shared with the singular Dean Moriarty, the fictional counterpart of Neal Cassady. Subsequent novels extended his accounts of life on the road while also recalling his boyhood and upbringing in Lowell, MA. Although his work left a deep mark on the young people of the 1960s, Kerouac rejected the sensual excesses and drug culture of that decade’s counterculture, even as Cassady, by contrast, threw himself into the hippie scene as a member of the Merry Pranksters and a mentor to the Grateful Dead. His poetry and fiction have continued to shape new generations in the decades since his death.