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In 1960, Jack Kerouac began a correspondence with New York artist Jacques Beckwith. Their shared vision: to build cabins in the woods, retreats from a world of war, dishonesty, and literary pressure. Kerouac wrote, "I want to live in the woods where I don't even have to think about this evil world of wars and dishonesties."
But while Beckwith realized his dream, Kerouac was thwarted by alcoholism, lawsuits, constant travel, marital strife, and the burden of caring for his mother. These letters reveal the deeply human side of the Beat legend—his frustrations, distractions, and restless longing for peace.
But while Beckwith realized his dream, Kerouac was thwarted by alcoholism, lawsuits, constant travel, marital strife, and the burden of caring for his mother. These letters reveal the deeply human side of the Beat legend—his frustrations, distractions, and restless longing for peace.
Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1922, the youngest of three children in a Franco-American family. He attended local Catholic and public schools and won a scholarship to Columbia University in New York City, where he first met Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs. His first novel, The Town and the City, appeared in 1950, but it was On the Road, published in 1957 and memorializing his adventures with Neal Cassady, that epitomized to the world what became known as the “Beat generation” and made Kerouac one of the most best-known writers of his time. Publication of many other books followed, among them The Dharma Bums, The Subterraneans, and Big Sur. Kerouac considered all of his autobiographical fiction to be part of “one vast book,” The Duluoz Legend. He died in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1969, at the age of forty-seven.
Jacques Beckwith (1920–2000) was an artist and carpenter living and working during the 1950s and '60s. He was a founding member of the Hansa Gallery, one of the legendary downtown New York galleries clustered around E. 10th Street during that period.
Lois Sorrells Beckwith (b. 1935) is a poet and artist still living near the cabin that Jacques built in Cornwall, CT. She dated both Jack Kerouac and Lucien Carr and later married Jacques Beckwith.
Bill Morgan (b. 1949) is the author and editor of more than forty books which deal primarily with the Beat Generation. Among them are Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Live of Allen Ginsberg and The Typewriter Is Holy: The Complete, Uncensored History of the Beat Generation. He is currently editing the complete journals of Arthur Miller.
![The Buddhist Years by Jack Kerouac [e-book]](https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-mgusnzjr16/images/stencil/500x659/products/807/1750/9781644284612_FC__25291.1733953645.1280.1280__90958.1764029392.jpg?c=1 "The Buddhist Years by Jack Kerouac [e-book]")
