[nickcarraway]

I wonder if she knows he lived the remainder of his life and died a devout Catholic.

[Steve_Seattle]

"I wonder if she knows he lived the remainder of his life and died a devout Catholic."

Yes, I read Ann Charters' biography of Kerouac, and in his final years he went home to Lowell and - though still a heavy drinker - embraced his Catholic roots. I think he wrote an essay called "A Bippy in the Middle," in which he criticized the counter-culture he had unwittingly helped create. I think he said something like, "We weren't trying to change the world, we were just a bunch of guys trying to get laid."

But even in his glory days, he was a lover of America and a full tank of gas and the open road, the fifties version of unlimied possibilities, a vision which the left thoroughly rejects.