So, at the age of 17, Kerouac packed his bags and moved to New York City, where he was immediately awed by the limitless new experiences of big city life. Upon graduating from high school in 1939, Kerouac received a football scholarship to Columbia University, but first, he had to attend a year of preparatory school at the Horace Mann School for Boys in the Bronx. Kerouac, who by that time, was a star running back on the Lowell High School football team, saw football as his ticket to a college scholarship, which, in turn, might allow him to secure a good job and save his family's finances. His mother took a job at a local shoe factory to boost the family income, but, in 1936, the Merrimack River flooded its banks and destroyed Leo's print shop, sending him into a spiral of worsening alcoholism and condemning the family to poverty. With the onset of the Great Depression, the Kerouac family suffered from financial difficulties, and Kerouac's father turned to alcohol and gambling to cope. Although Kerouac dreamed of becoming a novelist and writing the 'great American novel,' it was sports, not writing, that Kerouac viewed as his ticket to a secure future. He devoured all the 10-cent fiction magazines available at the local stores, and he also excelled at football, basketball and track. Kerouac's two favorite childhood pastimes were reading and sports. The sound of the organ and singing could be heard.' Kerouac's writing is full of vivid memories of attending church as a child: 'From the open door of the church warm and golden light swarmed out on the snow. Drowning in grief, the Kerouac family embraced their Catholic faith more deeply. Kerouac endured a childhood tragedy in the summer of 1926 when his beloved older brother Gerard died of rheumatic fever at the age of nine. Kerouac later described the family's home life: 'My father comes home from his printing shop and undoes his tie and removes 1920s vest, and sits himself down at hamburger and boiled potatoes and bread and butter, and with the kiddies and the good wife.' Leo owned his own print shop, Spotlight Print, in downtown Lowell, and Gabrielle, known to her children as Memere, was a homemaker. Kerouac's parents, Leo and Gabrielle, were immigrants from Quebec, Canada Kerouac learned to speak French at home before he learned English at school. A thriving mill town in the mid-19th century, Lowell had become, by the time of Kerouac's birth, a down-and-out burg where unemployment and heavy drinking prevailed. Kerouac was born Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac on March 12, 1922, in Lowell, Massachusetts. Kerouac died on October 21, 1969, from an abdominal hemorrhage, at age 47. The book became an American classic that defined the Beat Generation. Jack Kerouac's writing career began in the 1940s but didn't meet with commercial success until 1957 when his book On the Road was published.

Jack kerouac reading on the road