Howl, 1956; On the Road, 1957

Summer 1955, one of the Six Gallery founders, Wally Hedrick, approached Ginsberg about organizing a poetry reading at the gallery.  Ginsberg refused.  After drafting Howl, though, Ginsberg changed his mind.

The reading was October 7, 1955, and was the first public showing of the works of the beat poets, which before had only been known to a small circle of people.

For 3 weeks in 1951, Kerouac wrote on a scroll about trips and friends between 1947 and 1950, using notebooks which contained much of the text, and which had begun to be turned into a novel by 1948.  In 1950 Keroac devised the idea of Spontaneous Prose after reading a long letter from Neil Cassady and wrote the novel as if a letter to a friend, written like jazz.

In the next half decade, Kerouac spent time working various jobs, living with his mother, travelling, drinking, and writing the drafts of 10 other novels.