His friend and fellow Beat writer William Burroughs said of Kerouac that his writings and influence "opened a million coffee bars and sold a trillion Levis to both sexes...Woodstock rises from his pages." But at his death, Kerouac was largely forgotten except for his one commercial success,
On the Road. He lived out his last years writing and drinking. A barroom beating the previous spring had sent him into self-imposed seclusion in his St. Petersburg home with his wife and his mother, whom he had vowed to take care of years before. The beating also sent him into a bout of heavy drinking, mindless television viewing, and ceaseless listening to Handel's
Messiah on the record player. He was increasingly cut off from his former friends, especially the poet Allen Ginsberg who had crossed the bridge from Beat lyricist to hippie guru. Saddened by the Vietnam war, but even more by what seemed to him the unpatriotic stance of youth vis-a-vis the war, Kerouac was, in his personal life, out of synch with the times. All that remained for him at the end was the work, and that no longer came with the old fire.
This is a free page. This page contains 189 words. This
biography contains 5,772 words (approx. 19 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Jack Kerouac Access Pass.
