Book excerpt: One of the most widely read and influential American writers of the 20th century, Jack Kerouac is often misunderstood. This study examines the confessions of a 20th-century St. Augustine and traces the progress of a great pilgrim through the decline of modern civilization. Christy focuses on the last ten years of Kerouac's life, from the influential New York Times rave review of On the Road until his death in 1969, a period in Kerouac's life that until now has been dismissed by most biographers as nothing more than a drunken decline. Christy asserts that Kerouac was a madman and mystic whose last days were wilder and more fascinating than any of the adventures he wrote about. As Christy reveals, in the last decade of his life Jack Kerouac was racing to obtain his goal of being “safe in heaven dead.”