I've been reading a lot of Kerouac bios recently, and just finished "On the Road" (re-reading after 40 years) and am halfway through "Dharma Bums." The difference between Kerouac and Jones (both working-class, both great) is that Kerouac took himself too seriously; and he, as a young man, hooked up with a decadent, drug-addled, literary NYC crowd that also took themselves very seriously, while living completely crummy lives but simultaneously claiming they were god-like. George and company, on the other hand, were equally great and wasted but made no such personal claims to either profundity or godliness.
Kerouac died of alcoholism at age 47 at his Mommy's house. Jones died at age 81 in a home he'd shared with his wife of 30 years, after off-and-on sobriety for 30 years.
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