The second in a two-volume life-in-letters offers an illuminating portrait of the latter years in the life of the acclaimed author, from his rise to fame with the publication of On the Road in 1957, through a period of growing alcoholism and disillusionment, to his death in 1969 at age forty-seven.
Jack Kerouac(1922-1969), the central figure of the Beat Generation, was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1922 and died in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1969. Among his many novels are On the Road, The Dharma Bums, Big Sur, and Visions of Cody.
Ann Charters is the editor of The Portable Sixties Reader, The Portable Jack Kerouac, two volumes of Jack Kerouac's Selected Letters, and Beat Down to Your Soul. She teaches at the University of Connecticut.