Jack Kerouac

Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac grew up speaking French in Lowell, Massachusetts, learning English at six and carrying the accent into his late teens. He served as a merchant mariner during World War II and finished a first novel that wouldn't see print for over four decades. The Town and the City appeared in 1950 to little notice, but On the Road in 1957 made him a Beat icon overnight - spontaneous prose, stream of consciousness, the open highway as spiritual condition. He published 12 more novels and multiple poetry volumes, writing about Buddhism, mysticism, New York and the Bay Area in the '40s and '50s, childhood, religion, life itself. The hippies adopted him; he wanted nothing to do with them, stayed clear of politics, became an underground celebrity by accident. He died in 1969 at 47, but the books kept coming - unseen manuscripts, growing prestige, a influence that touched Dylan, the Beatles, Garcia, the Doors, and everyone who ever thought the road might be the point.