A Vast Glowing Empty Page: The Life and Writings of Jack Kerouac

A Vast Glowing Empty Page: The Life and Writings of Jack Kerouac takes the reader from Kerouac's early years in Lowell, Massachusetts through his last years in St. Petersburg, Florida. Read of the hapless young man searching for his voice as a writer as he struggles through the pitfalls of school, family conflicts, poverty, World War II, fame and the growing social unrest of the 1960s. Using archival material such as journals, notebooks, diaries and letters as well as Kerouac's published and unpublished books, this extensive biographical portrait brings into focus the internal and external forces that created Jack Kerouac's poetry and prose."Maher is a leader in the vanguard of contemporary writing on Jack Kerouac." - Beat Scene"Tune in, all you desolation angels and dharma bums, and turn on to Paul Maher's jazzy bio of Kerouac." -Vanity Fair"Maher has unearthed a plethora of fascinating new information. He is, without question, one of the new leaders in interpreting the life of this literary legend whose reputation grows daily." -Douglas Brinkley, editor of WINDBLOWN WORLD: The Journals of Jack Kerouac" A] thoroughly researched and worthy biography. . . . Kerouac is an engaging mix of anecdote and archive. Tales of ecstasy and despair, of drugs and drunkenness and poetry, are counterbalanced by Maher's perceptive commentary and criticism. Kerouac himself comes over as a confused romantic perpetually in danger of self-destruction, a man driven by the twin demons of wanderlust." -Times Literary Supplement"Kerouac research was for decades limited because his personal journals were unavailable to scholars. That has all changed now that the New York Public Library holds the Kerouac archive, which forms the basis of Maher's work. . . . A useful piece in a difficult puzzle that] sheds new light on a writer of considerable interest." -Library Journal"Unique among Kerouac biographers for his prodigious archival research, Paul Maher Jr. tells a magnificent American story of a small-town boy who read books, created himself as a writer, and destroyed himself. Spot-check Maher for his rigorously chronological documentation, or, better, seat yourself for the whole inspiring, infuriating, appalling story which the ruthlessly non-judgmental Maher unscrolls (taking his hint from Kerouac's famous roll of paper)-a long panorama of squalid literary settings thickly peopled by a gaudy, self-indulgent, yet profoundly literary generation and by a bewildered set of powerful editors, reviewers, and publishers." -Hershel Parker, Pulitzer Prize Finalist and author of HERMAN MELVILLE: A Biography