Synopsis

The novelist and poet Jack Kerouac died in 1969, a chronic alcoholic, at the age of 47. He was already something of a legend, not simply for his style of writing but for the style of life that he chronicled. He travelled back and forth across America and his most famous novel On the Road became the bible for what he called 'the Beat Generation'. Tonight's Arena presents Richard Lerner's celebrated cinema profile What Happened to Kerouac? with testimony from fellow Beats Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, William Burroughs, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, his first wife Edie Parker Kerouac, Carolyn Cassady, Ken Kesey, film of his alter-ego Nial Cassady, his idols Charlie Parker and Slim Gaillard and Kerouac himself reading from his works.