Authors of the Beat Generation:

Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady.

King of the Beats: Kerouac.

I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up. I had just gotten over a serious illness that I won't bother to talk about, except that it had something to do with the miserably weary split-up and my feeling that everything was dead.

Massachussets (1922) - St. Petersburg, Florida (1969)

Covered a lot of topics: jazz, Buddhism, drugs, poverty, etc.

Died at the age of 47.

About Jack Kerouac.

His most notable work was On

the road.

He died from internal bleeding

due to the abuse of alcohol.

His prestige grew after his

death.

His greatest influence may be

James Joyce.

He had French-Canadian

parents.

Dean Moriarty: Cassady.

He was simply a youth tremendously

excited with life, and though he was a

con-man, he was only conning

because he wanted so much to live

and to get involved with people who

would otherwise pay no attention to

him... Somewhere along the line I

knew there'd be girls, visions,

everything; somewhere along the line

the pearl would be handed to me. Salt Lake City, Utah (1926) -

Guanajuato, Mexico (1968)

Was one of the major figures of the

Beat Generation.

He is the model of the character Dean

Moriarty in Kerouac's On the road.

About Neal Cassady.

As a youth, he was involved in

crime.

When he was 19, he married

LuAnne Henderson.

He met Kerouac at Columbia

University.

He was arrested for offering to

share drugs in 1958.

He travelled to Mexico in 1968.

He was found almost dead

because of a coma near a

railroad track.