Paul Maher Jr.

READER'S COMMENTS

"Just finished reading Kerouac: The Definitve Biography that I thoroughly enjoyed. Indeed, it does clear up the distorted accounts of a life "particularly susceptible to agendas and animosity." Your reliance on primary source materials is what I tried to do in my humble little work Gerard: The Influence of Jack Kerouac's Brother on His Life and Writing . . ." --- Donald Motier (author's note: I highly recommend tracking down this little piece of important research of Motier's, it is from this that I found out that my grandfather was a classmate of Gerard's at Ste. Louis de France in Lowell, Massachusetts)

"I haven't thought about Kerouac ina long time, but reading your biography has brought back his enormous importance to our literary history in the last half of the 20th century. These days, I think we tend to view the beats as rather quaint precursors to the tumultuous upheavals of the 60s, those themselves better shoved onto a backshelf as an embarrassment in many of the exceses of that decade and those to follow. But Kerouac is seminal and I hope that his On the Road continues to be read n schools at al levels to capture a mindset of the 50s." --- author and poet Laurel Speer

"This is to offer my somewhat belated congratulations on an outstanding Kerouac biography! You've accomplished a truly great piece of work." ---- Kerouac scholar, Stephen D. Edington (auhor of Kerouac's Nashua Conection)