Kerouac, Jack (Jean Louis) (1922-1969)

After a year at Columbia University, New York, the US poet and writer Jack Kerouac dropped out and travelled around the USA, often working as a labourer while gaining material for his novels. In the late 1950s he was recognized as the voice of the rebellious young and it was he who named them the Beat Generation.

US novelist. He named and epitomized the Beat Generation of the 1950s. The first of his autobiographical, myth-making books, The Town and the City (1950), was followed by the rhapsodic On the Road (1957). Other works written with similar free-wheeling energy and inspired by his interests in jazz and Buddhism include The Dharma Bums (1958), Doctor Sax (1959), and Desolation Angels (1965). His major contribution to poetry was Mexico City Blues (1959).

Kerouac became a legendary symbol of youthful rebellion from the late 1950s, but before his early death from alcoholism, he had become a semi-recluse, unable to cope with his fame.