He was raised speaking the French-Canadian working class dialect Joual until he learned English at age five. Kerouac’s first novel is a great way to understand just how much the writer’s style evolved during his career. Buy Kerouac: A Biography Reprint by Charters, Ann (ISBN: 9780312113476) from Amazon's Book Store. at Berkeley and her Ph.D. at Columbia. Jack Kerouac: A Biography by Tom Clark was in some ways a more interesting read and it is very engaging. She first met Kerouac at a poetry reading in Berkeley in 1956, and compiled a comprehensive bibliography of his work in 1967. She first met Kerouac at a poetry reading in Berkeley in 1956, and compiled a comprehensive bibliography of his work in 1967. Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, on March 12, 1922, Jack Kerouac, baptised Jean Louis Kirouac, was the youngest of three children of French-Canadian immigrants from Quebec, Canada. Kerouac loved to read and wanted to be a writer from his earliest childhood. Like Carolyn Cassady, I couldn't put this book down. Jack Kerouac's ex-girlfriend lifts lid on beat novelist's rise and fall This article is more than 7 years old. Ann Charters received her B.A. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders. Now that Kerouac's major novel, On the Road is accepted as an American classic, academic critics are slowly beginning to catch up with his experimental literary... Free shipping over $10. Buy a cheap copy of Kerouac: A Biography book by Ann Charters. at Berkeley and her Ph.D. at Columbia. It j This was a nice short biography on Kerouac which gives you the 'highlights' of his meteoric ascent to fame and headlong plunge into oblivion. October 22, 1969 By JOSEPH LELYVELD Jack Kerouac, Novelist, Dead; Father of the Beat Generation Author of 'On the Road' was Hero to Youth--Rejected Middle-Class Values ack Kerouac, the novelist who named the Beat Generation and exuberantly celebrated its rejection of middle-class American conventions, died early yesterday of massive abdominal hemorrhaging in a St. Petersburg, Fla., hospital. Find books like Kerouac: A Biography from the world’s largest community of readers. Ann Charters received her B.A. This concise biography draws on both new and established research on Kerouac to lay out the facts and distinguish the man from the myth. Born March 12, 1922, in Lowell, Massachusetts, Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac was the son of Leo Kerouac, a printer, and Gabrielle Levesque, a factory worker.