Jack Kerouac

Before Jack Kerouac expressed the spirit of a generation in his 1957 classic, On the Road, he spent years figuring out how he wanted to live and, above all, learning how to write. Atop an Underwood brings together more than sixty previously unpublished works that Kerouac wrote before he was twenty-two, ranging from stories and poems to plays and parts of novels, including an excerpt from his 1943 merchant marine novel, The Sea Is My Brother. These writings reveal what Kerouac was thinking, doing, and dreaming during his formative years, and reflect his primary literary influences. Readers will also find in these works the source of Kerouac's spontaneous prose style. Uncovering a fascinating missing link in Kerouac's development as a writer, Atop an Underwood is essential reading for Kerouac fans, scholars, and critics.

Best known for his "Legend of Duluoz" novels, including **On the Road** and **The Dharma Bums** , Jack Kerouac is also an important poet. In these eight extended poems, Kerouac writes from the heart of experience in the music of language, employing the same instrumental blues form that he used to fullest effect in **Mexico City Blues** , his largely unheralded classic of postmodern literature. Edited by Kerouac himself, **Book of Blues** is an exuberant foray into language and consciousness, rich with imagery, propelled by rythm, and based in a reverent attentiveness to the moment. "In my system, the form of blues choruses is limited by the small page of the breastpocket notebook in which they are written, like the form of a set number of bars in a jazz blues chorus, and so sometimes the word-meaning can carry from one chorus into another, or not, just like the phrase-meaning can carry harmonically from one chorus to the other, or not, in jazz, so that, in these blues as in jazz, the form is determined by time, and by the musicians spontaneous phrasing & harmonizing with the beat of time as it waves & waves on by in measured choruses." —Jack Kerouac ### From Publishers Weekly The form of these eight long, previously unpublished poems written between 1954 and 1961, is, Kerouac writes, "limited by the small page of the breastpocket notebook in which they were written." Each poem is actually a series of "blues choruses," and they leap with drunkenly self-centered themes and wordplay, laced with some vivid, subjective observations of street scenes, as in Canto Uno of "MacDougal Street Blues": "I mean sincerely/ naive sailors buying prints/ Women with red banjos/ On their handbags... They don't even listen to me when/ I try to tell them they will die." Girls, nonsense and the craft of writing are topics that figure prominently. Like all of Kerouac's work, these choruses live or die with the poet's enthusiasm, sometimes sunk in navel-gazing, sometimes stunning in their inspired leaps between images or thoughts. They beg to be read aloud and, like the jazz they are meant to reflect, some sections really swing while others are just keeping time. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. ### From Library Journal Kerouac's poetry is oddly appealing, even when it isn't very good, which is often in this collection of "blues"?sequences of song-poems rooted in urban locales that range from San Francisco to Mexico City. The given limitation of each short poem is the size of a page in the poet's tiny notebook; in each sequence, a thread is carried over from one poem to the next, like song verses or diary entries interrupted by drink or sleep. Best known, of course, for his 1957 novel, On the Road, Kerouac always seems to be on the move. From the Bowery to Mexico City, he sketches what he sees: his vision is permeated with booze, suffering, and an admirable drive to get it all down on paper. His faith in the redemptive act of writing is particularly refreshing at this time of conservative backlash against the arts. These previously unpublished poems annoy and amuse and occasionally relax into beauty: "And raindrops/that don't know/You've been deceived/Slide on iron/Raggedly gloomy." For subject collections.?Ellen Kaufman, Dewey Ballantine Law Lib., New York Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. ### From Booklist Gaps in Kerouac's complex and sonorous canon are being filled in slowly but surely. Last winter brought his *Selected Letters* and *The Portable Jack Kerouac* , and now we have this set of eight previously unpublished "blues" poems written between 1954 and 1961. These long poems, series of "choruses" or sketches, resemble, in form and avidity, Kerouac's amazing verse creation *Mexico City Blues* (1959). They are strongly tied to place and are, as the allusion to music implies, boldly improvisational. Kerouac finds and breaks connections between images and observations as he channels the energy of San Francisco, New York, Washington, and various Mexican towns and cities into great rushes of language. As he riffs and indulges in easy wordplay, Kerouac can be either astute or sloppy, visionary or banal, but, as Robert Creeley writes in his fine introduction, his poems "provide an intensely vivid witness of both writer and time." Whatever their failings, these scintillating poems will strike a chord with fans of performance poetry or even rap, as well as with Kerouac enthusiasts. *Donna Seaman* ### About the Author **Jack Kerouac** was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1922, the youngest of three children in a Franco-American family. He attended local Catholic and public schools and won a scholarship to Columbia University in New York City, where he first met Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs. His first novel, *The Town and the City* , appeared in 1950, but it was *On the Road* , published in 1957 and memorializing his adventures with Neal Cassady, that epitomized to the world what became known as the “Beat generation” and made Kerouac one of the most best-known writers of his time. Publication of many other books followed, among them *The Dharma Bums* , *The Subterraneans* , and *Big Sur*. Kerouac considered all of his autobiographical fiction to be part of “one vast book,” *The Duluoz Legend*. He died in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1969, at the age of forty-seven.

<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p><em>Starred Review.</em> Somewhere between diary, verbal sketchbook and play-by-play account of whatever passed before his eyes, this collection of poems transcribed from notebooks Kerouac kept in his pocket between 1952 and 1954 turns out to rank with his most interesting work. From clipped descriptions of America's underbelly ("a pile of junk, —&amp; the/ girders of the viaduct have / great black bolt heads/ like knobs of a / sweating steel black/ city") to vague hipster prophesying ("The next great con-/ flict will be between/ Hip &amp; Christ"), Whitmanesque embraces of his fellow man ("...I have cared/ for ye dutchmen"), love notes to famous beatnik friends ("O Allen Sad Allen Ah / Mystery") and sad, self-deprecating prayers ("Drink is good for/ love — good for/ music — let it/ be good for writing"), Kerouac hits all the notes for which he and his fellow beats are known. While not everything here is golden, the immediacy and unpretentiousness of this off-the-cuff writing makes it an intimate glimpse into the consciousness of a man who simply couldn't stop observing. A short, aggrandizing introduction by painter George Condo sets the tone. <em>(Apr.)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>Kerouac admirers know of the legendary writer's habit of carrying a small notebook in his shirt pocket to jot down his impressions. But it is not common knowledge that this peripatetic observer typed up the contents of the journals he filled from mid-1952 through 1954 to create a manuscript he titled <em>Book of Sketches.</em> This collection of in-the-moment jottings, the literary equivalent of rapidly executed drawings, is now published for the first time. Whitmanesque in his embrace of life, painterly in his details, and enthralled by the texture of language, Kerouac describes the "longroar of sea," hitchhiking in North Carolina, and finding himself naked among trees in Mexico, suffering "the terrible benzedrine / depression after big / night of drinking." He remembers "childhood dreams," wishes for a woman, marvels over the unexpected beauty of a Denver barbershop, and frets over "TV stupidities" and "Americans / who only think in / terms of paranoia &amp; oil." Restless, receptive, and hungry for divinity, Kerouac continues to feed our collective imagination in yet another treasure from his precious archives. <em>Donna Seaman</em><br /><em>Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved</em></p> <p>In 1952 and 1953 as he wandered around America, Jack Kerouac jotted down spontaneous prose poems, or "sketches" as he called them, on small notebooks that he kept in his shirt pockets. The poems recount his travels—New York, North Carolina, Lowell (Massachusetts, Kerouac’s birthplace), San Francisco, Denver, Kansas, Mexico—observations, and meditations on art and life. The poems are often strung together so that over the course of several of them, a little story—or travelogue—appears, complete in itself. Published for the first time, <strong>Book of Sketches</strong> offers a luminous, intimate, and transcendental glimpse of one of the most original voices of the twentieth century at a key time in his literary and spiritual development.</p> <p>**</p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3> <p><em>Starred Review.</em> Somewhere between diary, verbal sketchbook and play-by-play account of whatever passed before his eyes, this collection of poems transcribed from notebooks Kerouac kept in his pocket between 1952 and 1954 turns out to rank with his most interesting work. From clipped descriptions of America's underbelly ("a pile of junk, —&amp; the/ girders of the viaduct have / great black bolt heads/ like knobs of a / sweating steel black/ city") to vague hipster prophesying ("The next great con-/ flict will be between/ Hip &amp; Christ"), Whitmanesque embraces of his fellow man ("...I have cared/ for ye dutchmen"), love notes to famous beatnik friends ("O Allen Sad Allen Ah / Mystery") and sad, self-deprecating prayers ("Drink is good for/ love — good for/ music — let it/ be good for writing"), Kerouac hits all the notes for which he and his fellow beats are known. While not everything here is golden, the immediacy and unpretentiousness of this off-the-cuff writing makes it an intimate glimpse into the consciousness of a man who simply couldn't stop observing. A short, aggrandizing introduction by painter George Condo sets the tone. <em>(Apr.)</em> <br /> Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p> <h3>From Booklist</h3> <p>Kerouac admirers know of the legendary writer's habit of carrying a small notebook in his shirt pocket to jot down his impressions. But it is not common knowledge that this peripatetic observer typed up the contents of the journals he filled from mid-1952 through 1954 to create a manuscript he titled <em>Book of Sketches.</em> This collection of in-the-moment jottings, the literary equivalent of rapidly executed drawings, is now published for the first time. Whitmanesque in his embrace of life, painterly in his details, and enthralled by the texture of language, Kerouac describes the "longroar of sea," hitchhiking in North Carolina, and finding himself naked among trees in Mexico, suffering "the terrible benzedrine / depression after big / night of drinking." He remembers "childhood dreams," wishes for a woman, marvels over the unexpected beauty of a Denver barbershop, and frets over "TV stupidities" and "Americans / who only think in / terms of paranoia &amp; oil." Restless, receptive, and hungry for divinity, Kerouac continues to feed our collective imagination in yet another treasure from his precious archives. <em>Donna Seaman</em><br /> <em>Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved</em></p>

**A young man searches for meaning, creates art, and grapples with fame as he traverses the stomping grounds of the Beat Generation --from Mexico City to Manhattan--in Jack Kerouac's semi-autobiographical novel** This urgently paced yet deeply introspective novel closely tracks *On the Road* author Jack Kerouac's own life. Jack Duluoz journeys from the Cascade Mountains to San Francisco, Mexico City, New York, and Tangier. While working as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak in the Cascades, Duluoz contemplates his inner void and the distressing isolation brought on by his youthful sense of adventure. In Tangier he suffers a similar feeling of desperation during an opium overdose, and in Mexico City he meets up with a morphine-addicted philosopher and seeks an antidote to his solitude in a whorehouse. As in Kerouac's other novels, *Desolation Angel* s features a lively cast of pseudonymous versions of his fellow Beat poets, including William S.... 'One of the most true, comic and grizzly journeys in American literature' Time Desolation Angels is the wild and soulful story of the legendary road trip that Jack Kerouac took before the publication of On the Road, told through the persona of Jack Duluoz and accompanied by his thinly-disguised Beat cohorts Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and William Burroughs. As they hitch, hop freight trains, walk and talk their way across the world, from California to Mexico, London to Paris and on to opium-ridden Tangiers, Kerouac chronicles their poetry, partying, mountain vigils and spiritual contemplation with unsurpassable energy and humanity. 'Nerve-jangling, sentimental, sincere and funny' Sunday Times

“Kerouac’s best book.”—TIMEDr. Sax is a haunting novel of deeply felt adolescence, Jack Kerouac tells the story of Jack Duluoz, a French-Canadian boy growing up in Kerouac’s own birthplace, the dingy factory town of Lowell, Massachusetts. There, Dr. Sax, with his flowing cape, slouched hat, and insinuating leer, is chief among the many ghosts and demons that populate Jack’s fantasy world. Deftly mingling memory and dream, Kerouac captures the accents and textures of his boyhood in Lowell in this novel of a cryptic, apocalyptic hipster phantom that he once described as “the greatest book I ever wrote, or that I will write.”

**A sensory narrative poem capturing the rhythms of the universe and secrets of the subconscious with stunning linguistic dexterity from the author of *On the Road*** A spontaneous writing project in the form of an extended prose poem, this sonorous and spiritually playful book is one of Jack Kerouac's most boldly experimental works. Collected from five notebooks dating from 1956 to 1959--a time in which Kerouac was immersed in Buddhist theory-- *Old Angel Midnight* is comprised of sixty-seven short sections unified by an unwavering dedication to sounds, the subconscious, and verbal ingenuity. *Friday Afternoon in the Universe, in all directions in & out you got your men women dogs children horses pones tics perts parts pans pools palls pails parturiences and petty Thieveries that turn into heavenly Buddha.* Thus begins Kerouac's Joycean language dance. From birdsong to dharmic verse, street jargon to French slang, the resonances of the... A sensory narrative poem capturing the rhythms of the universe and secrets of the subconscious with stunning linguistic dexterity from the author of On the Road A spontaneous writing project in the form of an extended prose poem, this sonorous and spiritually playful book is one of Jack Kerouac’s most boldly experimental works. Collected from five notebooks dating from 1956 to 1959—a time in which Kerouac was immersed in Buddhist theory—Old Angel Midnight is comprised of sixty-seven short sections unified by an unwavering dedication to sounds, the subconscious, and verbal ingenuity. Friday Afternoon in the Universe, in all directions in & out you got your men women dogs children horses pones tics perts parts pans pools palls pails parturiences and petty Thieveries that turn into heavenly Buddha. Thus begins Kerouac’s Joycean language dance. From birdsong to dharmic verse, street jargon to French slang, the resonances of the universe come blaring in though the windows, unfurling their meaning as the mind lets go and listens.

From the renowned Beat writer, Kerouac’s colorful and meandering search for his family history, now reissued following his centenary celebrationSatori in Paris is the semi-autobiographical tale of Jack Kerouac’s trip to France in search of his heritage. Beginning in Paris and moving west to Brittany, Kerouac traces the paths of his ancestors and explores his own understanding of the Buddhism that came to define his beliefs. From his familiar milieu of strangers and all-night conversations in seedy bars, to a pivotal cab ride in which he experiences Buddhism’s satori—a feeling of sudden understanding—Kerouac’s affecting and revolutionary writing transports the reader. Published at the height of his fame and showcasing his mature talent, Satori in Paris is a lyrical, rollicking tale of philosophy, identity, and the power and strangeness of travel.

**Just as he upended the conventions of the novel with *On the Road* , Jack Kerouac revolutionized American poetry in this ingenious collection** Bringing together selections from literary journals and his private notebooks, Jack Kerouac's *Scattered Poems* exemplifies the Beat Generation icon's innovative approach to language. Kerouac's poems, populated by hitchhikers, Chinese grocers, Buddhist saints, and cultural figures from Rimbaud to Harpo Marx, evoke the primal and the sublime, the everyday and the metaphysical. *Scattered Poems* , which includes the playfully instructive "How to Meditate," the sensory "San Francisco Blues," and an ode to Kerouac's fellow Beat Allen Ginsberg, is rich in striking images and strident urgency. Kerouac's widespread influences feel new and fresh in these poems, which echo the rhythm of improvisational jazz music, and the centuries-old structure of Japanese haiku. In rebelling against the dry rules and literary... Just as he upended the conventions of the novel with On the Road, Jack Kerouac revolutionized American poetry in this ingenious collection Bringing together selections from literary journals and his private notebooks, Jack Kerouac’s Scattered Poems exemplifies the Beat Generation icon’s innovative approach to language. Kerouac’s poems, populated by hitchhikers, Chinese grocers, Buddhist saints, and cultural figures from Rimbaud to Harpo Marx, evoke the primal and the sublime, the everyday and the metaphysical. Scattered Poems, which includes the playfully instructive “How to Meditate,” the sensory “San Francisco Blues,” and an ode to Kerouac’s fellow Beat Allen Ginsberg, is rich in striking images and strident urgency. Kerouac’s widespread influences feel new and fresh in these poems, which echo the rhythm of improvisational jazz music, and the centuries-old structure of Japanese haiku. In rebelling against the dry rules and literary pretentiousness he perceived in early twentieth-century poetry, Kerouac pioneered a poetic style informed by oral tradition, driven by concrete language with neither embellishment nor abstraction, and expressed through spontaneous, uncensored writing.

In 1954, Jack Kerouac announced that he was writing the world’s first Beat Science Fiction novel; what resulted the following year was actually a short story of around 10,000 words entitled cityCityCITY, a futurist dystopian tale of a mega-city plated in superconducting steel, whose inhabitants are housed in “Zone Blocks” which double, when necessary, as electrified mass-execution chambers. Kerouac apparently sent this blueprint to William S. Burroughs with a request to collaborate on a full-length version, but Burroughs declined. Thus the story languished in limbo, until a new version of it, entitled “The Electrocution Of Block 38383939383”, was published in 1959 (in Nugget magazine). This special ebook edition of “The Electrocution Of Block 38383939383” as it was originally published, restores to prominence one of the most intriguing literary experiments of Kerouac’s oeuvre, and of the Beat Generation as a whole.

1944 was a troubled and momentous year for Jack Kerouac. In March, his close friend and literary confidant, Sebastian Sampas, lost his life on the Anzio beachhead while serving as a US Army medic. That spring -- still reeling with grief over Sebastian -- Kerouac solidified his friendships with Lucien Carr, William Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg, offsetting the loss of Sampas by immersing himself in New York's blossoming mid-century bohemia. That August, however, Carr stabbed his longtime acquaintance and mentor David Kammerer to death in Riverside Park, claiming afterwards that he had been defending his manhood against Kammerer's persistent and unwanted advances. Kerouac was originally charged in Kammerer'a killing as an accessory after the fact as a result of his aiding Carr in disposing of the murder weapon and Kammerer's eyeglasses. Consequently, Kerouac was jailed in August 1944 and married his first wife, Edie Parker, on the twenty-second of that month in order to secure the money he needed for his bail bond. Eventually the authorities accepted Carr's account of the killing, trying him instead for manslaughter and thus nullifying the charges against Kerouac. At some point later in the year -- under circumstances that remain rather mysterious -- the aspiring writer lost a novella-length manuscript titled The Haunted Life, a coming of age story set in Kerouac's hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts. Kerouac set his fictional treatment of Peter Martin against the backdrop of the everyday: the comings and goings of the shopping district, the banter and braggadocio that occurs within the smoky atmospherics of the corner bar, the drowsy sound of a baseball game over the radio. Peter is heading into his sophomore year at Boston College, and while home for the summer in Galloway he struggles with the pressing issues of his day -- the economic crisis of the previous decade and what appears to be the impending entrance of the United States into the Second World War. The other principal characters, Garabed Tourian and Dick Sheffield, are based respectively on Sebastian Sampas and fellow Lowellian Billy Chandler, both of whom had already died in combat by the time of Kerouac's drafting of The Haunted Life (providing some of the impetus for its title). Garabed is a leftist idealist and poet, with a pronounced tinge of the Byronic. Dick is a romantic adventurer whose wanderlust has him poised to leave Galloway for the wider world -- with or without Peter. The Haunted Life also contains a compelling and controversial portrayal of Jack's father, Leo Kerouac, recast as Joe Martin. Opposite of Garabed's progressive, New Deal persepctive, Joe is a right-wing and bigoted populist, and an ardent admirer of radio personality Father Charles Coughlin. The conflicts of the novella are primarily intellectual, then, as Peter finds himself suspended between the differing views of history, politics, and the world embodied by the other three characters, and struggles to define what he believes to be intellectually true and worthy of his life and talents. The Haunted Life, skillfully edited by University of Massachusetts at Lowell Assistant Professor of English Todd F. Tietchen, is rounded out by sketches, notes, and reflections Kerouac kept during the novella's composition, as well as a revealing selection of correspondence with his father, Leo Kerouac.

<p>From the iconic New York Times–bestselling author of On the Road: Three revolutionary collections of poetry in one volume. Rebelling against the dry rules and literary pretentiousness he perceived in early twentieth-century poetry, Jack Kerouac pioneered a poetic style informed by oral tradition and driven by concrete language with neither embellishment nor abstraction. In these three groundbreaking collections, the legendary Beat writer offers a spontaneous, uncensored perspective on everything from religion to the structure of language itself.  Scattered Poems: Bringing together selections from literary journals and his private notebooks, Scattered Poems exemplifies Kerouac’s innovative approach to language. Populated by hitchhikers, Chinese grocers, Buddhist saints, and cultural figures from Rimbaud to Harpo Marx, the poems evoke the primal and the sublime, the everyday and the metaphysical.  The Scripture of the Golden Eternity: During an unexplained fainting spell, Kerouac experienced a flash of enlightenment. A student of Buddhist philosophy, he recognized the experience as “satori,” a moment of life-changing epiphany. The knowledge he gained in that instant is expressed in this volume of sixty-six prose poems with language that is both precise and cryptic, mystical and plain. His vision proclaims, “There are not two of us here, reader and writer, but one golden eternity.”  Old Angel Midnight: A spontaneous writing project in the form of an extended prose poem, this sonorous and spiritually playful book is one of Kerouac’s most boldly experimental works. Collected from five notebooks dating from 1956 to 1959—a time in which Kerouac was immersed in Buddhist theory—Old Angel Midnight captures the rhythms of the universe and secrets of the subconscious with stunning linguistic dexterity.</p> <p><B>From the iconic <I>New York Times</I>&#8211;bestselling author of <I>On the Road</I>: Three revolutionary collections of poetry in one volume.</B><BR /> Rebelling against the dry rules and literary pretentiousness he perceived in early twentieth-century poetry, Jack Kerouac pioneered a poetic style informed by oral tradition and driven by concrete language with neither embellishment nor abstraction. In these three groundbreaking collections, the legendary Beat writer offers a spontaneous, uncensored perspective on everything from religion to the structure of language itself.<BR /> <BR /><I>Scattered Poems</I>: Bringing together selections from literary journals and his private notebooks, <I>Scattered Poems </I>exemplifies Kerouac's innovative approach to language. Populated by hitchhikers, Chinese grocers, Buddhist saints, and cultural figures from Rimbaud to Harpo Marx, the poems evoke the primal and the sublime, the everyday and the metaphysical.<BR /> <BR /><I>The...

Poetic meditations on joy, consciousness, and becoming one with the infinite universe from the author of On the Road During an unexplained fainting spell, Beat Generation writer Jack Kerouac experienced a flash of enlightenment. A student of Buddhist philosophy, Kerouac recognized the experience as “satori,” a moment of life-changing epiphany. The knowledge he gained in that instant is expressed in this volume of sixty-six prose poems with language that is both precise and cryptic, mystical and plain. His vision proclaims, “There are not two of us here, reader and writer, but one golden eternity.” Within these meditations, haikus, and Zen koans is a contemplation of consciousness and impermanence. While heavily influenced by the form of Buddhist poems or sutras, Kerouac also draws inspiration from a variety of religious traditions, including Taoism, Native American spirituality, and the Catholicism of his youth. Far-reaching and inclusive, this collection reveals the breadth of Kerouac’s poetic sensibility and the curiosity, word play, and fierce desire to understand the nature of existence that make up the foundational concepts of Beat poetry and propel all of Kerouac’s writing.

From the most famous of the Beat writers and the author of On the Road and The Dharma Bums, Kerouac's intoxicating love story of two young bohemiansWritten over the course of three days and three nights, The Subterraneans was generated out of the same kind of ecstatic flash of inspiration that produced another one of Kerouac's early classics, On the Road. Centering around the tempestuous romance and breakup of Leo Percepied and Mardou Fox--two denizens of the 1950s San Francisco underground--The Subterraneans is a tale of dark alleys and smoky rooms, of artists, visionaries, and adventurers existing outside mainstream America's field of vision. Loosely based on Kerouac's own life, and peopled with analogues of real-life friends, including William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, and Neal Cassady, The Subterraneans is a vivid and breathless masterwork of Beat literature.

A quintessential American family is pulled apart by war and the rapidly changing tides of society in Jack Kerouac’s captivating first novel Published seven years before his iconic On the Road, Jack Kerouac’s debut novel follows the experiences of one family as they navigate the seismic cultural shifts following World War II. Inspired by Kerouac’s own New England youth, the eight Martin children enjoy an idyllic upbringing in a small Massachusetts mill-town. Middle son Peter, a budding intellectual and promising athlete, most strongly feels the lure of the future. When war breaks out, the siblings’ lives are interrupted by military service; their parents must sell their house after the family business goes bankrupt; and Peter, eager to see the world, voyages overseas as a Merchant Marine. After returning home, Peter is drawn to the kinetic energy of New York City and the progressive, bohemian ideas springing from its denizen young poets, writers, and artists. His new friends are fictionalized versions of Kerouac’s contemporaries: Allen Ginsberg (as Leon Levinsky), Lucien Carr (as Kenneth Wood), and William Burroughs (as Will Dennison), and other members of the Beat Generation. Seen by Peter’s parents as hoodlums and junkies, the Beats challenge conventional American ideas of everything from authority and religion to marriage and domestic life.

The tale of Kerouac's alter-ego, Vanity of Duluoz presents Jack Duluoz's high school experiences as a sporting jock in Massachusetts and his time at Columbia University on a football scholarship. Just as Jack's glamorous new adult life begins, so does World War II, and he joins the US Navy to travel the world. As Jack experiences more, he realizes the limits of his former plans and returns to New York at the start of the Beat movement, to a riot of drugs, sex and writing. Vanity of Duluoz was Kerouac's final work published before his death in 1969.

"What I'm beginning to discover now is something beyond the novel and beyond the arbitrary confines of the story. . . . I'm making myself seek to find the wild form, that can grow with my wild heart . . . because now I know MY HEART DOES GROW." Jack Kerouac, in a letter to John Clellon Holmes Written in 1951-52, **Visions of Cody** was an underground legend by the time it was finally published in 1972. Writing in a radical, experimental form ("the New Journalism fifteen years early," as Dennis McNally noted in **Desolate Angel** ), Kerouac created the ultimate account of his voyages with Neal Cassady during the late forties, which he captured in different form in **On the Road**. Here are the members of the Beat Generatoin as they were in the years before any label had been affixed to them. Here is the postwar America that Kerouac knew so well and celebrated so magnificently. His ecstatic sense of superabundant reality is informed by the knowledge of mortality: "I'm writing this book because we're all going to die. . . . My heart broke in the general despair and opened up inward to the Lord, I made a supplication in this dream." "The most sincere and holy writing I know of our age." Allen Ginsberg Read More

'The piteousness of his little soft shroud of hair falling down his brow and swept aside by the hand over blue serious eyes'Described by Kerouac as 'my most serious sad and true book', Visions of Gerard forms the first volume of his memoir cycle the 'Duluoz Legend'. Based on Jack Kerouac's memories of the beloved older brother who died when he was a boy, it is unique among his novels for its dreamlike evocation of the sensations of childhood - its wisdom, anguish, intensity, innocence, joy and pain. It is a haunting exploration of the precariousness of existence.'Called a "pain-tale" by Kerouac, it's the story of an almost divine, Buddha-like child wracked with sickness and suffering' Guardian