Jack Kerouac-"King of the Beats," unwitting catalyst for the'60s counterculture, ground-breaking author-was a complex and compelling man: a star athlete with a literary bent a spontaneous writer vilified by the New Critics but adored by a large, youthful readership a devout Catholic but aspiring Buddhist a lover of freedom plagued by crippling alcoholism. Desolate Angel follows Kerouac from his childhood in the mill town of Lowell, Massachusetts, to his early years at Columbia where he met Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Neal Cassady, beginning a four-way friendship that became a lifelong obsession. Kerouac's frenetic cross-country journeys, experiments with drugs and sexuality, travels to Mexico and Tangier, and years of failure, frustration, and depression are recounted with detail and sensitivity. Desolate Angel is a harrowing, compassionate portrait of a man and artist set against an extraordinary social backdrop.

About the Author
Dennis McNally holds a doctoral degree in history from the University of Massachusetts and his written about Kerouac and the Beats for many scholarly journals. He is perhaps best known as the longtime publicist for the Grateful Dead and the author of the inside history of the band, A Long, Strange Trip. He lives in San Francisco.


Book Information
ISBN 9780306812224
Author Dennis McNally
Format Paperback
Page Count 416
Imprint Da Capo Press Inc
Publisher Hachette Books
Weight(grams) 570g
Dimensions(mm) 226mm * 154mm * 24mm