Books: The Ganser Syndrome

ON THE ROAD (310 pp.) — Jack Kerouac—Viking ($3.95).

Last summer a U.S. writer named Jack Kerouac went to Paris, was unable to find a room or anyone to talk to. and went home after a week. "Paris." he says, "rejected me." Now he spends a lot of time in his mother's house in Orlando, Fla., painting (on cheap paper, with a mixture of house paint and glue) and writing (sometimes in much the same style). Having learned that the Left Bank ''lost generation" era is no more, he writes about the "beat generation"—and "beat,"...