This is the fascinating, compelling, and tragic story of an American legend, recorded through the conversations of his friends, lovers and rivals. Authors Barry Gifford and Lawrence Lee retraced Jack Kerouac's life on the road, talking with the prophets, musicians, poets, and socialites who knew him. William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Gore Vidal, Gary Snyder, Gregory Corso, Herbert Huncke, Carolyn Cassady, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti and many others talk, argue and reminisce of their times with him. Also here are those who knew Kerouac at rest - the lesser-known, the working-men, the childhood friends, the bar companions, the lovers. It makes for a technicolour portrait of the 'King of the Beats'. We see Jack at Columbia University and in Greenwich Village, speeding across the States with Neal Cassady, at home with his possessive mother, in California drinking wine and promoting Buddhism, and finally dying in Florida at the age of 47, angry and spent. This edition also includes eight pages of photographs, many of which are previously unpublished.
