“But Kerouac was also tortured, death obsessed, an alcoholic who withdrew, during his last decade, into a bitter, self-contained universe….”
If you want to understand that, study the period CLOSE to understand what happened to Kerouac. Skip the art pictures and TV shows. Anybody who tries to understand him, or Burroughs or Ginsberg, without knowing what those times were like, will fail.
The 50s were a steaming pile. The rancid, bored, desperate 50s “smelled terrible: boozy, tinged with sweat and urine.” Why the fuck you think they wrote what they did? Bukowski wasn’t inventing, he was *describing*.