On the July 4th weekend of 1948, John Clellon Holmes (1926-1988) met Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) in New York City for the first time, and the two became lifelong friends. As a young, ambitious novelist, Holmes knew Kerouac as a mentor and comrade in a literary movement eventually known as the Beat Generation. They shared New England roots and shared the same birthday (March 12; Kerouac born in 1922, Holmes in 1926). They were characters in each other's novels, and they fed each other encouragement over the years through letters and get-togethers at Holmes's home in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, until Kerouac's untimely death at age 47, on October 21,1969.