Best Selling Books by Jack Kerouac

It was in his letters that Jack Kerouac set down the raw material that he transmuted into his novels, exploring and refining the spontaneous prose style that became his trademark. The letters in this volume, written between 1940, when Kerouac was a freshman at college, and 1956, immediately before his breathless leap into celebrity with the publication of On the Road, offer invaluable insights into Kerouac''s family life, his friendships with Neal and Carolyn Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, and William S. Burroughs, his travels, love affairs, and literary apprenticeship. At once fascinating reading and a major addition to Kerouac scholarship, here is a rare portrait of the writer as a young adventurer of immense talent, energy, and ambition in the midst of writing and living an American legend.

Jack Kerouac’s classic American novel of freedom and the search for originality that defined a generation “An authentic work of art.”—The New York Times Inspired by Jack Kerouac’s adventures with Neal Cassady, On the Road tells the story of two friends whose cross-country road trips are a quest for meaning and true experience. Written with a mixture of sad-eyed naïveté and wild abandon and imbued with Kerouac’s love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz, On the Road is the quintessential American vision of freedom and hope—a book that changed American literature and changed anyone who has ever picked it up.

The legendary 1951 scroll draft of On the Road, published word for word as Kerouac originally composed it Though Jack Kerouac began thinking about the novel that was to become On the Road as early as 1947, it was not until three weeks in April 1951, in an apartment on West Twentieth Street in Manhattan, that he wrote the first full draft that was satisfactory to him. Typed out as one long, single-spaced paragraph on eight long sheets of tracing paper that he later taped together to form a 120 foot scroll, this document is among the most significant, celebrated, and provocative artifacts in contemporary American literary history. It represents the first full expression of Kerouac’s revolutionary aesthetic, the identifiable point at which his thematic vision and narrative voice came together in a sustained burst of creative energy. It was also part of a wider vital experimentation in the American literary, musical, and visual arts in the post-World War II period. It was not until more than six years later, and several new drafts, that Viking published, in 1957, the novel known to us today. On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of On the Road, Viking will publish the 1951 scroll in a standard book format. The differences between the two versions are principally ones of significant detail and altered emphasis. The scroll is slightly longer and has a heightened linguistic virtuosity and a more sexually frenetic tone. It also uses the real names of Kerouac’s friends instead of the fictional names he later invented for them. The transcription of the scroll was done by Howard Cunnell who, along with Joshua Kupetz, George Mouratidis, and Penny Vlagopoulos, provides a critical introduction that explains the fascinating compositional and publication history of On the Road and anchors the text in its historical, political, and social context.

Collects 200 letters exchanged by the celebrated Beat movement writers to offer insight into their abiding friendship and artistic views, in a volume that spans the period from Ginsberg''s Columbia education until shortly before Kerouac''s death.

Presents selections from Jack Kerouac''s novels, poetry, letters, and essays.

A luminous, intimate, and transcendental glimpse into the mind of Jack Kerouac, one of the most original voices of the twentieth century “Sketching . . . Everything activates in front of you in myriad profusion, you just have to purify your mind and let it pour the words and write with 100% personal honesty.” In 1951, it was suggested to Jack Kerouac by his friend Ed White that he “sketch in the streets like a painter but with words.” In August of the following year, Kerouac began writing down prose poem “sketches” in small notebooks that he kept in the breast pockets of his shirts. For two years he recorded travels, observations, and meditations on art and life as he moved across America and down to Mexico and back. The poems are often strung together so that over the course of several of them, a little story—or travelogue—appears, complete in itself. In 1957, Kerouac sat down with the fifteen handwritten sketch notebooks he had accumulated and typed them into a manuscript called Book of Sketches. Published for the first time, this work offers a detailed portrait of Kerouac at a key period of his literary career.

In "Windblown World," distinguished Americanist Brinkley has gathered a selection of journal entries from the most pivotal period of Kerouac''s life, 1947-1954--a self-portrait of the artist as a young man.

Kerouac''s ultimate account of his voyages with Neal Cassady.

Book of Dreams is Jack Kerouac''s record of his dream life, a parallel autobiography of the soul, the sleeper''s On the Road: "I got my weary bones out of bed & through eyes swollen with sleep swiftly scribbled in pencil in my little dream notebook till I had exhausted every rememberable item ... " Awake of asleep, Jack''s mind spun the web of relationships that were the substance of almost everything he wrote: "In the book of dreams I just continue the same story but in the dreams I had of the real-life characters I always write about."

Jack Kerouac’s classic novel about friendship, the search for meaning, and the allure of nature “In [On the Road] Kerouac’s heroes were sensation seekers; now they are seekers after truth . . . the novel often attains a beautiful dignity.”—Chicago Tribune First published in 1958, a year after On the Road put the Beat Generation on the map, The Dharma Bums stands as one of Jack Kerouac’s most powerful and influential novels. The story focuses on two ebullient young Americans—mountaineer, poet, and Zen Buddhist Japhy Ryder, and Ray Smith, a zestful, innocent writer—whose quest for Truth leads them on a heroic odyssey, from marathon parties and poetry jam sessions in San Francisco’s Bohemia to solitude and mountain climbing in the High Sierras.

A collection of Icelandic epic tales translated into English.

Based on Jack Kerouac''s own real-life love affair in Mexico City, this is the story of a man''s ill-fated relationship with a woman he portrays with tenderness and dignity, even as her life spirals out of control "Each book by Jack Kerouac is unique, a telepathic diamond. With prose set in the middle of his mind, he reveals consciousness itself in all its syntatic elaboration, detailing the luminous emptiness of his own paranoiac confusion. Such rich natural writing is nonpareil in later half XX century, a synthesis of Proust, Céline, Thomas Wolfe, Hemingway, Genet, Thelonius Monk, Basho, Charlie Parker, and Kerouac''s own athletic sacred insight. "This entire short novel Tristessa''s a narrative meditation studying a hen, a rooster, a dove, a cat, a chihuaha dog, family meat, and a ravishing, ravished junky lady, first in their crowded bedroom, then out to drunken streets, taco stands, & pads at dawn in Mexico City slums." —Allen Ginsberg

"And The Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks is an engaging, fast-paced read that shows the two authors'' developing styles. It is also an incomparable artifact, a legendary novel from the dawn of the Beat movement by two hugely influential writers."--BOOK JACKET.

The life of an American original in his own words, offering unparalleled insights into the mind and life of a giant of the American literary landscape.

Jack Kerouac''s groundbreaking novel—soon to be a major motion picture with a star-studded cast This Deluxe edition includes clips and stills from the movie, maps, notes on the original screenplay, and exclusive interviews with director Walter Salles and castmembers Kristen Stewart, Viggo Mortensen, and Kirsten Dunst. 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.

This rich, unique, complex work of experimental nonfiction is a major addition to the Kerouac canon. "Some of the Dharma" started out as notes of Kerouac''s serious Buddhist study. A precisely composed collage, it contains poems, haiku, prayers, journal entries, meditations, fragments of letters, ideas about writing, overheard conversations, blues, sketches, and more. It sheds an immense amount of light upon Kerouac''s entire literary career.

Jack Kerouac, who died in 1969 at the age of forty-seven, is renowned as the father of the "beat generation." His eighteen internationally acclaimed books -- including "On the Road, Doctor Sax, The Subterraneans," and "Lonesome Traveler" -- were important signpost in a new American literature. Here, in "Mexico City Blues," his only collection of poetry, his voice is as distinctive as in his prose; it roams widely across continents and cultures in a restless search for meaning and expression, giving the verse the unique qualities found in America''s most distinctive contribution to music.

Written over the course of three days and three nights, The Subterraneans was generated out of the same ecstatic flash of inspiration that produced another one of Kerouac''s early classic, On The Road. Centering on the tempestous breakup of Leo Percepied and Mardou Fox--two denizens of the 1950s San Francsico underground--The Subterraneans is a tale of dark alleys and dark rooms, of artists, of visionaries,

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.