Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Books n the 50th Anniversary of Jack Kerouac's "On The Road"

"On The Road" was a fictionalized account of Kerouac's travels across the country in the late 1940s. He originally wrote the book over a three week stretch in the early 1950s. Kerouac typed it on a scroll singlespaced with no margins or paragraph breaks.

• Jack Kerouac, reading "On The Road"

As the literary world marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of "On The Road" we spend the hour today with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, a leading literary figure of the Beat Generation. He is part poet, book seller, book publisher and activist.

In 1953, with Peter Martin, he founded City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, the first all-paperbound bookshop in the country. Two years later he launched the City Lights publishing house. Both institutions are still running half of a century later.

City Lights might be best known as the publisher of Allen Ginsberg's landmark poem Howl. It revolutionized American poetry and American consciousness. But it also led to Ferlinghetti and his publishing partner being arrested and put on trial for obscenity.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti is a poet himself. His 1958 collection "A Coney Island of the Mind" has sold over a million copies and he is a former poet laureate of San Francisco.

At the age of 88, Lawrence Ferlinghetti is still going strong. He continues to write poetry and run City Lights. I met up with him recently in San Francisco. He gave me a brief tour of the City Lights bookstore.

• Lawrence Ferlinghetti

• Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet and co-founder of the San Francisco bookstore and publishing house City Lights Books. In 1956 City Lights published Allen Ginsberg's Howl. Ferlinghetti's own poetry collection "A Coney Island of the Mind" continues to be the most popular poetry book in the U.S. It has been translated into nine languages, and there are nearly 1,000,000 copies in print. He is also the author of plays, fiction, art criticism, and essays.