Lonesome Traveler (Penguin Modern Classics) - Softcover

Kerouac, Jack

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141184906 ISBN 13: 9780141184906

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2000

Synopsis

A timeless travelogue from the leading light of the Beat Generation, Jack Kerouac's Lonesome Traveller is a jubilant celebration of human discovery, published in Penguin Modern Classics.

As he roams the US, Mexico, Morocco, Paris and London, Kerouac records, in prose of pure poetry, life on the road. Standing on the engine of a train as it rushes past fields of prickly cactus; witnessing his first bullfight in Mexico while high on opium; catching up with the beat nightlife in New York; burying himself in the snow-capped mountains of north-west America; meditating on a sunlit roof in Tangiers; or falling in love with Montmartre and the huge white basilica of Sacré-Coeur - Kerouac reveals both the endless diversity of human life and his own high-spirited philosophy of self-fulfilment.

'Piquant writing, the best part of its flavour being ... the hunt for the big experience, a touch of Hemingway and Whitman'
Guardian

'Full of startling and beautiful things ... one sees, hears and feels'
Sunday Times

About this title

From the Back Cover:

In this restless, exciting book, Jack Kerouac covers the Los Angeles waterfront, Mexico, New York, Paris and London. He reveals a way of life – the life of the road – and presents his unique philosophy of self-fulfilment. A key Kerouac work, 'Lonesome Traveler' is one of the books that made him the prophet and chronicler of an entire generation.

"Railroad work, sea-work, mysticism, mountain work, solipsism, self-indulgence, bullfights, drugs, churches, streets of cities, a mishmash of life as lived by an independent educated penniless rake going anywhere: 'Lonesome Traveler's' scope and purpose is simply poetry, or natural description."
JACK KEROUAC

"Kerouac's strange mixture of wit, high spirits, incoherence, nobility and odd-ball individualism produces some piquant writing, the best part of its flavour being that peculiarly American strain, the craving for greatness, the hunt for the big experience, a touch of Hemingway and Whitman."
GUARDIAN

"Kerouac has the essentially American gift of describing the physical world so intensely, so poetically, that one sees, hears and feels. 'Lonesome Traveler' is full of startling and beautiful things."
SUNDAY TIMES

"We can be grateful for this reminder of the sense of loss itself, this search for innocence, this prose of observed detail, of high childish delight, of peace and joy and the hymns to the flux and flow and endless diversity of human life"
TLS

About the Author:

Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts. His most famous novels are On the Road, The Subterraneans and The Dharma Bums. His first more orthodox published novel was The Town and the City. Jack Kerouac, who described himself as a 'strange solitary crazy Catholic mystic,' was working on his longest novel, a surrealistic study of the last ten years of his life when he died in 1969, aged forty-seven. Other works by Jack Kerouac include Big Sur, Desolation Angels, Lonesome Traveler, Visions of Gerard, Tristessa, and a book of poetry called Mexico City Blues. On the Road: The Original Scroll, the full uncensored transcription of the original manuscript of On the Road, is published by Penguin Modern Classics.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0141184906
• ISBN 13: 9780141184906
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160