More than forty years after the publication of On the Road, Jack Kerouac is more read and revered than ever, especially by a new young generation of seekers who weren't even born until after his death in 1969. Why this is so is the subject of Barry Miles's fresh and intimate exploration of the complex man and extraordinary writer who peopled his fiction with such vivid and engaging characters that the real Jack Kerouac got lost amid all the myths and misperceptions.

Drawing on his years of friendship and many conversations with Ginsberg and Burroughs, Miles shows Kerouac as a man full of contradictions, surprisingly conventional in his beliefs as much as he longed to rebel, rarely at peace with himself, though profoundly drawn to the serenity he glimpsed in Zen Buddhism.

Far from being a free spirit, Kerouac was never able to break away from his domineering mother, and he spent his life confused and anguished by the fact that he was attracted sexually to men as well as to women. And yet without Kerouac, the Beats may never have gained the notoriety and influence that allowed them to so profoundly shake up American culture in the 1960s and beyond.