Litkicks Message Board Archive

I'm curious as to how it came to be known

that Jack Kerouac based his characters on real people. Also, I remember reading that Thomas Wolfe (not Tom Wolf) based characters in one or more of his novels on real people from his home town, and the story is that some of those people didn't like it.

Then, you see these movies that are obviously based loosely on real people but they still have that disclaimer saying "All characters are fictional...blah, blah, blah"...