The Portable Jack Kerouac

Book: The Portable Jack Kerouac , by Jack Kerouac, Ann Charters, ISBN10: 014310506X, ISBN13: 9780143105060, Penguin Group (USA), August 2007, Paperback

Jack Kerouac (1922—1969) was born in Lowell, Massachusetts. His books include On the Road, The Dharma Bums, The Subterraneans, Big Sur, and Visions of Cody.Ann Charters worked with Jack Kerouac to compile his bibliography and after his death wrote the first Kerouac biography. She has edited two volumes of the author's letters as well as the anthologies Beat Down to Your Soul and The Portable Sixties Reader.

The definitive Kerouac collection-now in Penguin Classics

To coincide with the 50th anniversary celebration of On the Road, Penguin Classics republishes this landmark collection. The Portable Jack Kerouac made clear the ambition and accomplishment of Kerouac's "Legend of Duluoz"-the story of his life told in his many "true story" novels. Featuring selections from Kerouac's autobiographical fiction, as well as from his poetry, criticism, Buddhist writings, and letters, The Portable Jack Kerouac offers a total immersion in an American master.

Publishers Weekly

Much as Viking's Portable William Faulkner rekindled interest in Faulkner because his editor, Malcolm Cowley, had the brainstorm of pulling together a map of Faulkner's epic Yoknapatawpha County series of novels and stories in order to give the work a new coherence, so Kerouac gains new stature as a result of labors by his biographer, Charters (Kerouac: A Biography). Here she chronologically excerpts the perhaps 16 volumes of the Legend of Duluoz to create a map of Kerouac's oeuvre, which, according to the publisher, he had planned before his death. She supports it not only with fat slices of Kerouac's best writing but also with an investigation into his bop prosody that gives his jazz-riff style a new currency. In fact, this volume may deal a fist in the face of the English sentence, because Kerouac's revamping of the sentence is so song-filled and emotion-ridden that its properties could well do for American prose what Whitman did for verse: give it new life. An alcoholic jamming by candlelight with scotch and pot on the kitchen table, he mixes jazz with Rimbaud's derangement of the senses to create a vehicle for his own anguish as he recollects his life on the run. The Portable shows Kerouac at his best as a riff artist but also gathers to stronger effect than any single Kerouac novel. Includes selections from his poetry and experimental novels. (Mar.)

Cheap Books: BUY NOW [311]