The Unknown Kerouac: Rare, Unpublished & Newly Translated Writings: 4 (Library of America Jack Kerouac Edition) - Hardcover

Jack Kerouac; Todd Tietchen; Jean-Christophe Cloutier

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 159853498X ISBN 13: 9781598534986

Publisher: Library of America, 2016

Synopsis

A STUNNING COLLECTION OF LONG-LOST WRITINGS FROM THE LEGENDARY, ICONIC KING OF THE BEATS

The 13 never-before-published pieces in THE UNKNOWN KEROUAC mark a major literary event.

The Library of America continues its acclaimed Kerouac editions with this remarkable gathering of previously unpublished writings, including two novellas originally written in the French-Canadian dialect joual. This unprecedented collection offers intimate glimpses of the growth of Kerouac's mind and art, revealing him, for the first time, to have been essentially an immigrant writer, one whose extraordinary style emerged as a fusion of his native and adopted languages.

It opens with a series of early essays on Frank Sinatra and bebop that reveal Kerouac to be an acute observer of the post-war cultural scene. The newly translated novellas 'The Night Is My Woman' (La Nuit est ma femme), from 1957 (the last work he wrote before composing the On the Road scroll) and 'Old Bull in the Bowery' (Sur le Chemin an alternate version of On the Road written in five days in Mexico) provide missing links in Kerouac's path to a wholly new style of storytelling.

Also included is the pivotal 1951 journal in which Kerouac experiences the breakthrough that leads him to write On the Road (Viking, 1957), the late reflective works 'Memory Babe' and 'Beat Spotlight,' which offer detailed portraits of his youth and his struggle with fame; and a penetrating interview with his friend and fellow Beat, John Clellon Holmes.

About this title

About the Author

Jack Kerouac is one of the most iconic and legendary writers of the 20th century. Often named 'King of the Beats', he is the author of On the Road (Viking, 1957). Todd Tietchen, editor, is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and the author of The Cubalogues: Beat Writers in Revolutionary Havana (Uni. Press of Florida, 2010). Jean-Christophe Cloutier, translator, is assistant professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. He has edited a comprehensive collection of Kerouac's French-language writings entitled La vie est d'hommage.

Edition details

• Publisher: Library of America
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 159853498X
• ISBN 13: 9781598534986
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 500