Jack Kerouac The Subterraneans
Autobiographical novels, such as
On the Road
(1957) and
The Dharma Bums
(1958), of American writer Jack Kerouac, originally Jean-Louis Kerouac, embody the values of the Beat Generation.
Career of Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac began in the 1940s but did not met with commercial success until 1957, when he wrote and published On the Road. The book, an American classic, defined the Beat Generation.
As his friend and contemporary, William S. Burroughs once wrote, "Kerouac opened a million coffee bars and sold a million pairs of Levis to both sexes. Woodstock rises from his pages."
“I was going to rise, do some typing and coffee drinking in the kitchen all day since at that time work, work was my dominant thought, not love- not the pain which impels me to write this even while I don't want to, the pain which won't be eased by writing of this but heightened, but which will be redeemed, and if only it were a dignified pain and could be placed somewhere other than this black gutter of shame and loss and noisemaking folly in the night... /The Subterraneans”
Jack Kerouac The Subterraneans