The Long Slow Death of Jack Kerouac

Susan McKnight is an administrator with the Ontario government.

Jim Christy first read Jack Kerouac 35 years ago. Since then, he has
developed a unique understanding of the man and his work. In this
biography, he portrays the American writer as a deeply religious and
compassionate man on a private pilgrimage. He draws parallels between
the lives of Kerouac and St. Augustine and points out the Catholic and
Buddhist foundations of Kerouac’s works.

Christy takes issue with Kerouac’s biographers (with the exception of
Gerard Nicosia) for dismissing the last decade of the writer’s life as
nothing more than a drunken decline. During this period, Kerouac found
himself out of step with the times: he listened to jazz rather than rock
and roll; he drank rather than doing LSD; he revered the Pope rather
than Che. Christy’s powerful account of this often misunderstood man
shows him to have been far more than simply a chronicler of road
adventures.