UNIVERSE — ONE SONG

Kerouac Kept a Young Woman from Taking Her Own Life

“I felt his pain deeply, and his beauty, and his knowledge.”

BY MARIA POPOVA

In the late 1950s, a young woman named Lois Sorrells Beckwith did what many passionate book-lovers find themselves doing — she fell in love with an author through his work; not with the writing alone, but with the man. That man was Jack Kerouac and the book that tipped Lois over the edge of infatuation was his newly published novella The Subterraneans (public library), a semi-fictional account of a fervid romance.

But then Lois did something few ardent readers would dare to do./.../