Kerouac and Friends

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Author :
Publisher : Da Capo Press
ISBN 13 : 9781560254805
Total Pages : 400 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (548 download)

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Book Synopsis Kerouac and Friends by :

Download or read book Kerouac and Friends written by and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2003-01-06 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Renowned photographer Fred McDarrah captures the Beats in the midst of their rise to acclaim. His 100 shots of Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, and others partying in cheap downtown Manhattan apartments, socializing at Grove Press book parties, and hunching over their typewriters are joined by writings from a diverse and illuminating raft of sources. Jack Kerouac contributes a list of activities necessary for writing success ("1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy"), Diana Trilling shares her thoughts on her fears of and for husband's former student, Allen Ginsberg, and Mad magazine sends up the young men and women who took up the beat lifestyle Kerouac and friends made famous. Kerouac and Friends is a fresh and surprising look at the young men and women who would come to define the last major epoch in American literature. "A lot of great stuff here about those Abominable Snowmen of modern poetry, the Beats."—Lawrence Ferlinghetti "Not merely a marvelous nostalgia trip. It also illuminates an important period in American culture. First rate!"—Michael Harrington

Kerouac and Friends

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Author :
Publisher : William Morrow
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 344 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Kerouac and Friends by : Fred W. McDarrah

Download or read book Kerouac and Friends written by Fred W. McDarrah and published by William Morrow. This book was released on 1985 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this fresh and surprising book, the Beats are revealed in a collection of 100 candid photos, unexpected essays, and pop culture depictions.

Vanity of Duluoz

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Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101548436
Total Pages : 270 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (15 download)

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Book Synopsis Vanity of Duluoz by : Jack Kerouac

Download or read book Vanity of Duluoz written by Jack Kerouac and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1994-06-01 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written in 1967 from the vantage point of the psychedelic sixties, Vanity of Duluoz is a fascinating portrait of the artist as a young man Originally subtitled "An Adventurous Education, 1935-1946," Vanity of Duluoz presents the formative years in the life of Jack Duluoz—Kerouac's alter ego—beginning with his high school experiences as a sporting jock in small-town New England 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. The more he experiences, the more he realizes the limits of his former plans, and decides to and return to New York, where he collides with the start of the Beat movement, and a riot of drugs, sex and writing. Vanity of Duluoz was Kerouac's final work published before his death in 1969.

Jack's Book

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Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101580461
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (15 download)

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Book Synopsis Jack's Book by : Barry Gifford

Download or read book Jack's Book written by Barry Gifford and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-04-24 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A fascinating literary and historical document, the most insightful look at the Beat Generation." —Dan Wakefield, author of New York in the Fifties and Going All the Way First published in 1978, Jack's Book gives us an intimate look into the life and times of the "King of the Beats." Through the words of the close friends, lovers, artists, and drinking buddies who survived him, writers Barry Gifford and Lawrence Lee recount Jack Kerouac's story, from his childhood in Lowell, Massachusetts, to his tragic end in Florida at the age of forty-seven. Including anecdotes from an eclectic list of well-known figures such as Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Gore Vidal, as well as Kerouac's ordinary acquaintances, this groundbreaking oral biography—the first of its kind—presents us with a remarkably insightful portrait of an American legend and the spirit of a generation.

Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg

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Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101437138
Total Pages : 612 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (14 download)

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Book Synopsis Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg by : Jack Kerouac

Download or read book Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg written by Jack Kerouac and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2010-07-08 with total page 612 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first collection of letters between the two leading figures of the Beat movement Writers and cultural icons Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg are the most celebrated names of the Beat Generation, linked together not only by their shared artistic sensibility but also by a deep and abiding friend­ship, one that colored their lives and greatly influenced their writing. Editors Bill Morgan and David Stanford shed new light on this intimate and influential friendship in this fascinating exchange of letters between Kerouac and Ginsberg, two thirds of which have never been published before. Commencing in 1944 while Ginsberg was a student at Columbia University and continuing until shortly before Kerouac's death in 1969, the two hundred letters included in this book provide astonishing insight into their lives and their writing. While not always in agreement, Ginsberg and Kerouac inspired each other spiritually and creatively, and their letters became a vital workshop for their art. Vivid, engaging, and enthralling, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters provides an unparalleled portrait of the two men who led the cultural and artistic movement that defined their generation.

Subterranean Kerouac

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Author :
Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 9780312206772
Total Pages : 468 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (67 download)

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Book Synopsis Subterranean Kerouac by : Ellis Amburn

Download or read book Subterranean Kerouac written by Ellis Amburn and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1999-11-29 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this first biography of Jack Kerouac to fully portray the intense inner life that inspired his work, Kerouac's last editor addresses the writer's homosexual relationships with men, and sheds a new light on their profound impact upon his life. of photos.

The Awakener

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Publisher : City Lights Publishers
ISBN 13 : 0872866440
Total Pages : 204 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (728 download)

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Book Synopsis The Awakener by : Helen Weaver

Download or read book The Awakener written by Helen Weaver and published by City Lights Publishers. This book was released on 2014-01-05 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Awakener is Helen Weaver's long awaited memoir of her adventures with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Lenny Bruce, and other wild characters from the New York City of the fifties and sixties. The sheltered but rebellious daughter of bookish Midwestern parents, Weaver survived a repressive upbringing in the wealthy suburbs of Scarsdale and an early divorce to land in Greenwich Village just in time for the birth of rock 'n' roll—and the counterculture movement known as the Beat Generation. Shortly after her arrival Kerouac, Ginsberg, and company—old friends of her roommate—arrive on their doorstep after a non-stop drive from Mexico. Weaver and Kerouac fall in love on sight, and Kerouac moves in. " … Weaver] paints a romantic picture of Greenwich Village in the 1950s and '60s, when she worked in publishing and hung out with Allen Ginsberg and the poet Richard Howard and was wild and loose, getting high and falling into bed almost immediately with her crushes, including Lenny Bruce … Her descriptions of the Village are evocative, recalling a time when she wore 'long skirts, Capezio ballet shoes and black stockings,' and used to 'sit in the Bagatelle and have sweet vermouth on the rocks with a twist of lemon.' Early on, she quotes Pasternak: 'You in others: this is your soul.' Kerouac's soul lives on through many people—Joyce Johnson, for one—but few have been as adept as Weaver at capturing both him and the New York bohemia of the time. He was lucky to have met her."—Tara McKelvey, The New York Times Book Review “There is a tendency for memoirs written by women about The Great Man to be self-abnegating exercises in a kind of inverted narcissism—the author seeking to prove her worth as muse, as consort, as chosen one. Not so with Helen Weaver’s beautiful, plainspoken elegy for her time spent with Jack Kerouac, who suddenly appeared at her door in the West Village one white, frosty morning with Allen Ginsberg, who knew Weaver’s roommate, in tow."—New York Post "Helen Weaver’s book was a revelation to me! … This is the most graphic, honest, shameless, and moving documentary of what the newly liberated women in cities got up to—how they lived, loved, and created. Who knew? It is time they did! And here’s how."—Carolyn Cassady "Weaver recreates the excitement of a time when things were radically changing and shows us what it was like living with an eccentric genius at the turning point of his life. Eventually she asks Jack to leave but they remain friends, and over the years her respect for his writing grows even as Kerouac's reputation undergoes a gradual transition from enfant terrible to American icon. She comes to realize that by writing On the Road he woke America up—along with her—from the long dream of the fifties. And the Buddhist philosophy that once struck her as Jack's excuse for doing whatever he liked because 'nothing is real, it's all a dream' eventually becomes her own." "Helen Weaver's memoir is a riveting account of her love affair and friendship with Jack Kerouac. She is both clear-eyed and passionate about him, and writes with truly amazing grace."—Ann Charters Helen Weaver has translated over fifty books from the French of which one, Antonin Artaud: Selected Writings (Farrar, Straus and Giroux ) was a Finalist for the National Book Award in translation in 1976. She is co-author and general editor of the Larousse Enyclopedia of Astrology and author of The Daisy Sutra, a book on animal communication. She lives in Kingston, New York.

The Haunted Life

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Author :
Publisher : Da Capo Press
ISBN 13 : 0306823055
Total Pages : 204 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (68 download)

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Book Synopsis The Haunted Life by : Jack Kerouac

Download or read book The Haunted Life written by Jack Kerouac and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2014-03-11 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Off the Road

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Author :
Publisher : Abrams
ISBN 13 : 1468305719
Total Pages : 470 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (683 download)

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Book Synopsis Off the Road by : Carolyn Cassady

Download or read book Off the Road written by Carolyn Cassady and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2008-10-15 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This memoir by the woman at the center of the Beat movement is “a great book as well as a wonderful autobiography” (The Washington Post Book World). Written by the woman who loved them all—as wife of Cassady, lover of Kerouac, and friend of Ginsberg—this riveting and intimate memoir spans one of the most vital eras in twentieth-century literature and culture, including the explosive successes of Kerouac’s On the Road and Ginsberg’s Howl, the flowering of the Beat movement, and the social revolution of the 1960s. Artist, writer, and designer Carolyn Cassady reveals a side of Neal Cassady rarely seen—that of husband and father, a man who craved respectability, yet could not resist the thrills of a wilder, and ultimately more destructive, lifestyle. “To the familiar history of the Beat generation, Carolyn Cassady adds a proprietary chapter marked with newness, self-exposure, love and poignancy.” —Publishers Weekly “Rich with gossip, historically significant photographs, intimate memories, [and] unpublished letters.” —The New York Times “A poignant recollection—truthful, coarse, and inviting—teeming with the spirit of the men who inspired and symbolized the dreams of a generation.” —San Francisco Chronicle

Kerouac: Selected Letters

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Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0140234446
Total Pages : 657 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (42 download)

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Book Synopsis Kerouac: Selected Letters by : Jack Kerouac

Download or read book Kerouac: Selected Letters written by Jack Kerouac and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1996-03-01 with total page 657 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It was in his letters that Jack Kerouac set down the raw material that he transmuted into his novels, exploring and refining the spontaneous prose style that became his trademark. The letters in this volume, written between 1940, when Kerouac was a freshman at college, and 1956, immediately before his breathless leap into celebrity with the publication of On the Road, offer invaluable insights into Kerouac's family life, his friendships with Neal and Carolyn Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, and William S. Burroughs, his travels, love affairs, and literary apprenticeship. At once fascinating reading and a major addition to Kerouac scholarship, here is a rare portrait of the writer as a young adventurer of immense talent, energy, and ambition in the midst of writing and living an American legend.

Book of Sketches

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Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 9780142002155
Total Pages : 436 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (21 download)

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Book Synopsis Book of Sketches by : Jack Kerouac

Download or read book Book of Sketches written by Jack Kerouac and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-04-04 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A luminous, intimate, and transcendental glimpse into the mind of Jack Kerouac, one of the most original voices of the twentieth century “Sketching . . . Everything activates in front of you in myriad profusion, you just have to purify your mind and let it pour the words and write with 100% personal honesty.” In 1951, it was suggested to Jack Kerouac by his friend Ed White that he “sketch in the streets like a painter but with words.” In August of the following year, Kerouac began writing down prose poem “sketches” in small notebooks that he kept in the breast pockets of his shirts. For two years he recorded travels, observations, and meditations on art and life as he moved across America and down to Mexico and back. The poems are often strung together so that over the course of several of them, a little story—or travelogue—appears, complete in itself. In 1957, Kerouac sat down with the fifteen handwritten sketch notebooks he had accumulated and typed them into a manuscript called Book of Sketches. Published for the first time, this work offers a detailed portrait of Kerouac at a key period of his literary career.

Sometimes a Great Notion

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Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 9780143039860
Total Pages : 740 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (398 download)

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Book Synopsis Sometimes a Great Notion by : Ken Kesey

Download or read book Sometimes a Great Notion written by Ken Kesey and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-08-29 with total page 740 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The magnificent second novel from the legendary author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Following the astonishing success of his first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey wrote what Charles Bowden calls "one of the few essential books written by an American in the last half century." This wild-spirited tale tells of a bitter strike that rages through a small lumber town along the Oregon coast. Bucking that strike out of sheer cussedness are the Stampers. Out of the Stamper family's rivalries and betrayals Ken Kesey has crafted a novel with the mythic impact of Greek tragedy. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

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Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101209046
Total Pages : 335 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (12 download)

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Book Synopsis One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by : Ken Kesey

Download or read book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest written by Ken Kesey and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2007-11-27 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An international bestseller and the basis for the hugely successful film, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is one of the defining works of the 1960s. In this classic novel, Ken Kesey’s hero is Randle Patrick McMurphy, a boisterous, brawling, fun-loving rebel who swaggers into the world of a mental hospital and takes over. A lusty, life-affirming fighter, McMurphy rallies the other patients around him by challenging the dictatorship of Nurse Ratched. He promotes gambling in the ward, smuggles in wine and women, and openly defies the rules at every turn. But this defiance, which starts as a sport, soon develops into a grim struggle, an all-out war between two relentless opponents: Nurse Ratched, backed by the full power of authority, and McMurphy, who has only his own indomitable will. What happens when Nurse Ratched uses her ultimate weapon against McMurphy provides the story’s shocking climax. “BRILLIANT!”—Time “A SMASHING ACHIEVEMENT...A TRULY ORIGINAL NOVEL!”—Mark Schorer “Mr. Kesey has created a world that is convincing, alive and glowing within its own boundaries...His is a large, robust talent, and he has written a large, robust book.”—Saturday Review

Visions of Cody

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Author :
Publisher : Penguin UK
ISBN 13 : 0141972009
Total Pages : 529 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (419 download)

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Book Synopsis Visions of Cody by : Jack Kerouac

Download or read book Visions of Cody written by Jack Kerouac and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2012-03-01 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An experimental novel which remained unpublished for years, Visions of Cody is Kerouac's fascinating examination of his own New York life, in a collection of colourful stream-of-consciousness essays. Transcribing taped conversations between members of their group as they took drugs and drank, this book reveals an intimate portrait of people caught up in destructive relationships with substances, and one another. Always fixated by Neal Cassady - the Cody of the title, renamed for the book along with Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs - Kerouac also explores the feelings he had for a man who would inspire much of his work.

And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks

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Author :
Publisher : Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
ISBN 13 : 0802198899
Total Pages : 228 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (21 download)

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Book Synopsis And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks by : William S. Burroughs

Download or read book And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks written by William S. Burroughs and published by Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. This book was released on 2009-11-10 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the summer of 1944, a shocking murder rocked the fledgling Beats. William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, both still unknown, we inspired by the crime to collaborate on a novel, a hard-boiled tale of bohemian New York during World War II, full of drugs and art, obsession and brutality, with scenes and characters drawn from their own lives. Finally published after more than sixty years, this is a captivating read, and incomparable literary artifact, and a window into the lives and art of two of the twentieth century’s most influential writers.

Paradise Road

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Author :
Publisher : Wiley
ISBN 13 : 9780470237694
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (376 download)

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Book Synopsis Paradise Road by : Jay Atkinson

Download or read book Paradise Road written by Jay Atkinson and published by Wiley. This book was released on 2010-03-29 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Noted writer Jay Atkinson recreates Jack Kerouac's legendary On the Road journeys in contemporary North America Jack Kerouac's iconic 1950s novel On the Road is a Beat Generation classic, chronicling the adventures and misadventures of Kerouac's travels crisscrossing North America with Neal Cassady, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and other colorful companions. Now gifted writer Jay Atkinson hits the road to retrace Kerouac's legendary journey today. The author's experiences offer fascinating insights on American culture and society then and now and illuminate his own quest for self-understanding and discovery. Contrasts the life and landscape of Kerouac's 1940s and 1950s America with the realities today Filled with unexpected adventures and strangers encountered on Atkinson's trips to New York, New Orleans, Chicago, Denver, Mexico City, and the California coast Reveals Atkinson's engaging reflections on the search for personal identity and self Other titles by Jay Atkinson: Ice Time (a Publishers Weekly Notable Book of the Year) and Legends of Winter Hill (a Boston Globe bestseller) as well as the novels City in Amber and Caveman Politics Absorbing and beautifully written, Paradise Road is essential reading for Kerouac fans as well as lovers of engaging travel memoirs and anyone interested in American life and culture.

Big Sur

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Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101548819
Total Pages : 214 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (15 download)

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Book Synopsis Big Sur by : Jack Kerouac

Download or read book Big Sur written by Jack Kerouac and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-04-26 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A poignant masterpiece of wrenching personal expression from the acclaimed author of On the Road “In many ways, particularly in the lyrical immediacy that is his distinctive glory, this is Kerouac’s best book . . . certainly he has never displayed more ‘gentle sweetness.’”—San Francisco Chronicle Jack Kerouac’s alter ego Jack Duluoz, overwhelmed by success and excess, gravitates back and forth between wild binges in San Francisco and an isolated cabin on the California coast where he attempts to renew his spirit and clear his head of madness and alcohol. Only nature seems to restore him to a sense of balance. In the words of Allen Ginsberg, Big Sur “reveals consciousness in all its syntactic elaboration, detailing the luminous emptiness of his own paranoiac confusion.”