Selected Letters: 1940-1956: Volume 1: 1940-1956 - Softcover

Kerouac, Jack

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140234446 ISBN 13: 9780140234442

Publisher: Penguin, 1996

Synopsis

In his prolific correspondence Jack Kerouac set down the raw material of the life that he would later transmute into his multi-volume "Legend of Duluoz". He also refined the seemingly freewheeling and spontaneous prose style that became his trademark. This volume contains many letters written between 1940, when Kerouac was a college freshman and 1956, immediately before his leap to celebrity status. They offer invaluable insights into Kerouac's family life, friendships, travels, love affairs and literary apprenticeship, and provide accounts of the events that inspired "On the Road", "Visions of Cody" and "The Dharma Burns".

About this title

Review:

"The most exhilirating book of the year."
--Chicago Tribune

"As we just now begin to map full the fallout of [the Beat Generation's] creative explosion, these letters offer an invaluable blueprint to the intricate, high-yield ballistics that went into creating it."
--San Francisco Examiner

"The greatest addition to the Kerouac canon in recent years"
--Steven Moore, Review of contemporary Fiction

"To have [his letters] gathered in one place . . . is to be overwhelmed by his passion for the printed word, by his hunger for experience and by his ability to describe both in language that sings. . . . The most exhilirating book of the year."
--Thomas McGonigle, Chicago Tribune

About the Author:

Jack Kerouac(1922-1969), the central figure of the Beat Generation, was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1922 and died in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1969. Among his many novels are On the Road, The Dharma Bums, Big Sur, and Visions of Cody. Ann Charters is the editor of The Portable Sixties Reader, The Portable Jack Kerouac, two volumes of Jack Kerouac's Selected Letters, and Beat Down to Your Soul. She teaches at the University of Connecticut.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0140234446
• ISBN 13: 9780140234442
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 656