BiographyType: Novelist, poet, painter Born: March 12, 1922 Died: October 21, 1969 Jack Kerouac (born Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac) was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his method of spontaneous prose. Thematically, his work covers topics such as Catholic spirituality, jazz, promiscuity, Buddhism, drugs, poverty, and travel. He became an underground celebrity and, with other beats, a progenitor of the hippie movement, although he remained antagonistic toward some of its politically radical elements. |
One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.
Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life
the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.
I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future.
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