The Haunted Life: and Other Writings - Softcover

Kerouac, Jack; Tietchen, Todd

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0306823659 ISBN 13: 9780306823657

Publisher: Da Capo Press Inc, 2015

Synopsis

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 springstill reeling with grief over SebastianKerouac 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 yearunder circumstances that remain rather mysteriousthe 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 daythe 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 charact

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Review:

Praise for The Haunted Life

12 Spring Books Not To Miss, Library Journal

"Provides an exciting look into Kerouac's formative years"--Los Angeles Review of Books

"A very satisfying introduction to Kerouac's attempts at finding his voice and vision as a writer"--Providence Sunday Journal

Book Description:

A Jack Kerouac novella long believed lost, published in full for the first time, with period sketches, notes, reflections, and correspondence

About this edition

• Publisher: Da Capo Press Inc
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0306823659
• ISBN 13: 9780306823657
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208
• Editor: Kerouac Jack, Tietchen Todd