Kerouac, Jack
Kerouac, Jack( 1922–69),Massachusetts-born writer who attended Columbia University (1940–42) and roamed about and took odd jobs before he became associated with the Beat movement. His fiction, very loose in style and structure, includes The Town and the City (1950), tracing the Martin family from 1910 in Lowell, Mass., through the war years and the dispersal of the eight children; On the Road (1957), a quasi-autobiographical tale of Beat people ranging around America seeking experience and fulfillment; The Dharma Bums (1958), a similar novel but with more emphasis on the discovery of truth or “dharma” through Zen Buddhism; The Subterraneans (1958), about a love affair between a Beat writer and a black girl; Doctor Sax (1959), an early novel fictively re-creating the author's youth; Maggie Cassidy (1959), about the adolescent Jack Duluoz searching for love and identity; Tristessa (1960),...
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