Kerouac was born on March 22,1922, in Lowell, Massachusetts. His parents, Leo and Gabrielle, were French-Canadian immigrants. "Ti Jean" (Little Jean), as he was known as a child, lived in the shadow of his sickly, angelic brother, Gerard. Gerard was barely ten years old when he died of rheumatic fever, and his death had such a profound effect on Kerouac that he later wrote a novel about his brother entitled Visions of Gerard. Kerouac had a lively imagination as a boy. He scripted his own "movies" and acted them out in front of the family Victrola and later illustrated them in his own comic books. He created a complex baseball game with an ordinary deck of playing cards that he would play throughout his life. In the early years of his life, Kerouac was a solitary child with few friends. However, he soon grew into a handsome...