Jack Kerouac, ‘Beat Generation’ author and poet

“I was standing on the hot road underneath an arc-lamp with the summer moths smashing into it when I heard the sound of footsteps from the darkness beyond, and lo, a tall old man with flowing white hair came clomping by with a pack on his back, and when he saw me as he passed, he said, ‘Go moan for man,’ and clomped on back to his dark. Did this mean that I should at last go on my pilgrimage on foot on the dark roads around America?” (From “On the Road,” 1957)

March 12, 1922-Oct. 21, 1969