Jean-Louis Lebris de (Jack) Kerouac (1922-1969), American writer, experimented with spontaneous autobiographical fiction chronicling his travels into the American West. He is known as the father of the Beat Generation.

Rambling. Wandering. Overflowing. Like his fiction, Jack Kerouac covered a great deal of territory in a short period of time. Known as the father of the Beat Generation, Kerouac's freewheeling life on the road and his chronicles of that life paved the way for the youth counter-culture of the 1960s.

Born March 12, 1922, in Lowell, Massachusetts, Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac was the son of a French-Canadian printer. Kerouac, who wanted to be a writer from his earliest childhood, did not speak a word of English until he was five years old. He had an older brother, Gerard, who died at age nine, and an older sister Caroline. At age 11 Kerouac began writing adolescent novels and fictionalized newspaper accounts of...