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Kerouac: Selected Letters

Volume 2: 1957-1969

By Jack Kerouac (Author)

Paperback published by Penguin Books (Penguin Books)

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Kerouac: Selected Letters

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About This Book
The first volume of Jack Kerouac's selected letters, published in 1995, was hailed as an important and revealing addition to Kerouac scholarship. This second and final volume, comprising letters written between 1957, the year On the Road was published, and the day before his death in 1969 at age forty-seven, tells Kerouac's life story through his candid correspondence with friends, confidants, and editors—among them Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Philip Whalen, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Joyce Johnson, and Malcolm Cowley. Documenting his continuing development as a writer and his travels, love affairs, and complicated family life, the letters also reveal Kerouac's amazing courage in the force of criticism and his never-ending quest to be the best writer possible.

Jack Kerouac Selected Letters 1957-1969 offers unparalleled insight into the life and mind of this giant of the American landscape.

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The first volume of Jack Kerouac's selected letters, published in 1995, was hailed as an important and revealing addition to Kerouac scholarship. This second and final volume, comprising letters written between 1957, the year On the Road was published, and the day before his death in 1969 at age forty-seven, tells Kerouac's life story through his candid correspondence with friends, confidants, and editors—among them Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Philip Whalen, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Joyce Johnson, and Malcolm Cowley. Documenting his continuing development as a writer and his travels, love affairs, and complicated family life, the letters also reveal Kerouac's amazing courage in the force of criticism and his never-ending quest to be the best writer possible.

Jack Kerouac Selected Letters 1957-1969 offers unparalleled insight into the life and mind of this giant of the American landscape.

Product Details
Paperback (656 pages)
Published: November 1, 2000
Publisher: Penguin Books
Imprint: Penguin Books
ISBN: 9780140296150
Other books byJack Kerouac
(56)
  • Jack Kerouac: Collected Poems: Library of America Series Jacket

    Jack Kerouac: Collected Poems: Library of America Series Jacket
    Poetry was at the center of Jack Kerouac’s sense of mission as a writer. This landmark edition brings together for the first time all Kerouac’s major poetic works—Mexico City Blues, The Scripture of the Golden Eternity, Book of Blues, Pomes All Sizes, Old Angel Midnight, Book of Haikus—along with a rich assortment of his uncollected poems, six published here for the first time. He wrote poetry in every period of his life, in forms as diverse as the classical Japanese haiku, the Buddhist sutra, the spontaneous prose poetry of Old Angel Midnight, and the poetic “blues” he developed in Mexico City Blues and other serial works, seeing himself as “a jazz poet blowing a long blues in an afternoon jam session on Sunday.” Many poets found Kerouac a liberating influence on their work: Robert Creeley called him “a genius at the register of the speaking voice”; for Allen Ginsberg he was “a poetic influence over the entire planet”; and Bob Dylan said that Mexico City Blues was crucial to his own artistic development. Also available in specially-designed jacket (978-1-59853-194-7)
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    On the Road (Essential Edition)

    On the Road (Essential Edition)
    (Penguin Essential Edition)
    Jack Kerouac's groundbreaking novel—soon to be a major motion picture with a star-studded cast In what is sure to be one of the major cinematic events of 2012, Jack Kerouac's legendary Beat classic, On the Road, will finally hit the big screen. Directed by Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries; Paris, Je T'Aime) and with a cast of some of Hollywood's biggest stars, including Kristen Stewart (The Twilight Saga), Sam Riley, Garrett Hedlund, Kirsten Dunst, Amy Adams (Julie & Julia, The Fighter), Tom Sturridge, and Viggo Mortensen (the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Road), the film will attract new fans who will be inspired by Kerouac's revolutionary masterwork.
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    On the Road

    On the Road
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    On the Road chronicles Kerouac's years traveling the North American continent-from East Coast to West Coast to Mexico-with his friend Neal Cassady, "a sideburned hero of the snowy West." Read by Will Patton
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    The Dharma Bums

    The Dharma Bums
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    The Dharma Bums was published one year after On the Road made Jack Kerouac a celebrity and a spokesperson for the Beat Generation. Sparked by his contagious zest for life, the novel relates the adventures of an ebullient group of Beatnik seekers in a freewheeling exploration of Buddhism and the search for Truth.
    Visit Book Page

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  • October 18, 1999
    via Publishers Weekly

    The peripatetic urgency, Buddhist catchphrases and casual prose of On the Road (1957) and Dharma Bums (1958) made Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) the star of the Beat generation. Kerouac's "craft of spontaneous prose" (in Charters's words) let him use his letters as rough drafts for some of his autobiographical fiction. Devotees of those novels can troll for their favorite episodes among Kerouac's complaints, requests, loans, repayments, reports, retorts, rebukes and resolutions. "[W]hen I write a book it's just a chapter in the whole story," a 1960 missive to Neal Cassady explains, "but there wd be no literature in the world safe to say i would rather read than my own remembrance of things." Editor Charters (also Kerouac's biographer) uses her annotations and commentary to make the sometimes hasty, expressive missives cohere as an account of the novelist's life. A first volume of letters appeared in 1995; this second starts with the publication of On the Road and continues almost to the day Kerouac died. The years 1957-1960, the height of Kerouac's career, occupy more than half the volume. Later letters record his struggle to care for his ailing mother, his efforts to finish his later books and his troubles with money and health: "I drink more than ever, my hands tremble, I can't type." Frequent addressees and subjects include Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg ("I still think he's a false prophet, sheep's clothing and ravening wolf"). By turns witty, slovenly and empathetic, the letters provide a look into Kerouac's psyche and into the exhilarating, frustrating, ramshackle milieu he helped create. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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    The peripatetic urgency, Buddhist catchphrases and casual prose of On the Road (1957) and Dharma Bums (1958) made Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) the star of the Beat generation. Kerouac's "craft of spontaneous prose" (in Charters's words) let him use his letters as rough drafts for some of his autobiographical fiction. Devotees of those novels can troll for their favorite episodes among Kerouac's complaints, requests, loans, repayments, reports, retorts, rebukes and resolutions. "[W]hen I write a book it's just a chapter in the whole story," a 1960 missive to Neal Cassady explains, "but there wd be no literature in the world safe to say i would rather read than my own remembrance of things." Editor Charters (also Kerouac's biographer) uses her annotations and commentary to make the sometimes hasty, expressive missives cohere as an account of the novelist's life. A first volume of letters appeared in 1995; this second starts with the publication of On the Road and continues almost to the day Kerouac died. The years 1957-1960, the height of Kerouac's career, occupy more than half the volume. Later letters record his struggle to care for his ailing mother, his efforts to finish his later books and his troubles with money and health: "I drink more than ever, my hands tremble, I can't type." Frequent addressees and subjects include Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg ("I still think he's a false prophet, sheep's clothing and ravening wolf"). By turns witty, slovenly and empathetic, the letters provide a look into Kerouac's psyche and into the exhilarating, frustrating, ramshackle milieu he helped create. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved


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  • January 15, 1996
    via Publishers Weekly

    Commencing during his student years at Columbia and leaving off just prior to the publication of On the Road, these letters document Kerouac's apprentice years as an aspiring young writer. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

    Show less

    Commencing during his student years at Columbia and leaving off just prior to the publication of On the Road, these letters document Kerouac's apprentice years as an aspiring young writer. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved


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