Catherine's Town Catherine's Town Catherine's Town was a Seneca village, ("Queanettquaga," or "Sheoquago") named informally for a prominent Seneca woman, Catherine Montour. It was located at the south end of Seneca Lake, near present-day Watkins Glen (and the towns of Catharine, Montour, and Montour Falls, all named for Catherine Montour) in what is now Schuyler County, New York. The Seneca leader Red Jacket was said to have practiced his speeches at Shequaga Falls, located nearby in the present-day Town of Montour Falls. According to "Historical Sketch of the Chemung Valley, Etc..," he was also buried there. Catherine's Town was destroyed by the
The Town and the City of quickly written "spontaneous prose". "The Town and the City" was written before Kerouac had developed his own style, and it is heavily influenced by Thomas Wolfe (even down to the title, reminiscent of Wolfe titles such as "The Web and the Rock"). The novel is focused on two locations (as suggested by the title): one, the early Beat Generation circle of New York in the late 1940s, the other, the nearly rural small town of Galloway, Massachusetts that the main character comes from, before going off to college on a football scholarship. Galloway represents the town of Lowell, Massachusetts,