Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac, raised in Lowell, Massachusetts, in a French-Canadian household, wrote novels and poetry and was a pioneer of the Beat Generation alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. He is best known for On the Road, written in his spontaneous prose style, which made him a Beat icon. His other books include The Town and the City, The Dharma Bums, and Big Sur, a novel about a man wrestling with fame and drink on the California coast. Kerouac died in 1969, and his literary reputation has grown since.