FEW INDIVIDUALS have taken on the Kerouac biographical project with such seriousness and commitment, vigour and industry, as Paul Maher Jr. He has, over the last 20 years, produced a series of intensely hewn portraits of the Beat Generation legend and shows few signs of slowing down in his pursuit of the essence of the man.
Becoming Kerouac: A Writer in His Time, Maher’s latest foray into print, has very recently appeared, a story of the novelist’s life up to 1957 when his most famous fictional work On the Road came out. The new release might, the author admits, form the first part of a two-volume survey but he currently feels the final, declining 12 years of Kerouac’s life might present darker challenges which he currently feels little appetite to address head-on.
It is two decades since Maher issued Kerouac: The Definitive Biography, an edition he revisited as Kerouac: His Life and Work in 2007. In 2005, his edited collection Empty Phantoms: Interviews and Encounters with Jack Kerouac first appeared. He has also co-written a 2013 book about On the Road itself and a collaborative effort, Jack Kerouac: Self-Portrait, a gathering of unpublished writings, emerges this summer.
In this latest contribution to our widely-read series ‘Biographical Details’, Maher reveals a deep hunger for the biographical form that extends well beyond the Beat book canon. In this deep trawl regarding his approach and process, he cites a string of biographies – those focused on Faulkner and Lawrence, Melville and Van Gogh among others – that have had a powerful effect on him.
Read the rest HERE.
Paul Maher Jr. 