Jack Kerouac Born on March 12, 1922 to French-Canadian parents, Jack Kerouac's given name was Jean Louis Kirouac. He grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts, surrounded by his two great loves, football and the written word. He spoke a French dialect in which some of his later works were written, finally learning English at school, at the age of six. His athletic abilities later earned him a scholarship to Columbia University. He wrote many pieces for the school newspaper while a broken tibia forced him to leave the team. He later dropped out of Columbia after much discussion with his coach. He remained in New York where he met many people whose names are still synonymous with his "beat generation" today. These people provided him with experience and influenced his writing along with jazz, travel and spirituality. Jack Kerouac is famous for many of his pieces including On the Road and Big Sur. He wrote in "Spontaneous Prose". The story is mostly biographical, with Kerouac portrayed as Sal Paradise while his friend, Neal Cassady, was rewritten as Dean Moriarty. It is split into 5 parts and is set against the backdrop of many different road trips. The evolution of the two characters and their changing friendship is crucial to the plot. It refers to the time when young people in those days without careers or goals knew only one way to go: the street. He was also referring to the beat generation. Excerpt-'For months in Paterson I had pored over maps of the United States, even reading books about the pioneers and savoring names like Platte and Cimarron and so on, and on the road map There was a long red line called Route 6 leading from the tip from Cape Cod to Ely, Nevada, and from there down to Los Angeles. I'll just stick with it all... middle of the paper... beautifully executed, the clearest and most important statement ever made by the generation that Kerouac himself called "beat" years ago, and of which he is the primary avatar. "Review-'On the Road', reviewed by David Dempsey (1957)" Jack Kerouac has written an extremely readable and entertaining book, but one reads it in the same frame of mind as one might visit a sideshow - the monsters are fascinating even if they are hardly part of our lives." Terms such as 'well executed' 'the clearest' 'readable' and 'entertaining' have been used to describe this novel. This means that it has managed to do what most authors never managed to do in that period, and he did it well, and the way in which it was written, while telling the story in a direct way, was clear and readable. Both underline the fact that he is a'. icon of the "beat" generation and that his writing was fun.