Download or read book Jack Kerouac King of the Beats written by Barry Miles and published by Virgin Books Limited. This book was released on 2007-02 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In conformist 1950s America, Jack Kerouac's On the Road was greeted with both delirium an dismay. For his generation - 'a generation waiting to be written' - he and the universe he created symbolism freedom. He identified the living pulse of America in jazz clubs and fast cars, and found vibrancy in hoboes hopping freight cars and travelling the highways. In his hunt for the big experience and his longing for greatness, Kerouac has inspired each successive generation. He is now an icon, an image, an attitude, forever personifying 'the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time ...' Including the sale of the Kerouac archive to the New York public library, Jack Kerouac : King of the Beats is a completely up-to-date, provocative and intimate portrait of one of the twentieth century's most influential writers, revealing a man full of contradictions, rarely at peace with himself. Barry Miles, friend and official biographer of Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, provides a meticulously researched exploration of the complex man and extraordinary writer whose creative mishmash of joyous incoherence, drug-induced ecstasy, genuine mysticism and constant craving has persuaded so many to take to the road.
Download or read book Jack s Book written by Barry Gifford and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-04-24 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A fascinating literary and historical document, the most insightful look at the Beat Generation." —Dan Wakefield, author of New York in the Fifties and Going All the Way First published in 1978, Jack's Book gives us an intimate look into the life and times of the "King of the Beats." Through the words of the close friends, lovers, artists, and drinking buddies who survived him, writers Barry Gifford and Lawrence Lee recount Jack Kerouac's story, from his childhood in Lowell, Massachusetts, to his tragic end in Florida at the age of forty-seven. Including anecdotes from an eclectic list of well-known figures such as Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Gore Vidal, as well as Kerouac's ordinary acquaintances, this groundbreaking oral biography—the first of its kind—presents us with a remarkably insightful portrait of an American legend and the spirit of a generation.
Download or read book Desolate Angel written by Dennis McNally and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2020-03-24 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A blockbuster of a biography . . . absolutely magnificent."--San Francisco Chronicle Jack Kerouac--"King of the Beats," unwitting catalyst for the '60s counterculture, groundbreaking author--was a complex and compelling man: a star athlete with a literary bent; a spontaneous writer vilified by the New Critics but adored by a large, youthful readership; a devout Catholic but aspiring Buddhist; a lover of freedom plagued by crippling alcoholism. Desolate Angel follows Kerouac from his childhood in the mill town of Lowell, Massachusetts, to his early years at Columbia where he met Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Neal Cassady, beginning a four-way friendship that would become a sociointellectual legend. In rich detail and with sensitivity, Dennis McNally recounts Kerouac's frenetic cross-country journeys, his experiments with drugs and sexuality, his travels to Mexico and Tangier, the sudden fame that followed the publication of On the Road, the years of literary triumph, and the final near-decade of frustration and depression. Desolate Angel is a harrowing, compassionate portrait of a man and an artist set in an extraordinary social context. The metamorphosis of America from the Great Depression to the Kennedy administration is not merely the backdrop for Kerouac's life but is revealed to be an essential element of his art . . . for Kerouac was above all a witness to his exceptional times.
Download or read book Nobody s Wife written by and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It was 1950. Strikingly beautiful, 20-year-old Joan Haverty had arrived in New York and was working as a seamstress. During a deteriorating attempt to reconcile with her lover, fate intervened when Joan heard a stranger's voice calling up to her loft from the street below -- It was Jack Kerouac, needing directions to a party Thus began Joan's stormy romance with and brief marriage to the leather-jacketed archangel of the Beat Generation. She bore his tirades, his passion, his troubled poetic genius, and also bore his child while Kerouac was writing his great signature novel, On the Road.
Download or read book Beatific Soul written by Isaac Gewirtz and published by Scala Books. This book was released on 2007 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jack Kerouacs "On the Road" was a touchstone for a generation and the centerpiece of the Beat movement in literature and art. This text by Isaac Gewirtz examines Kerouacs life and career, his counter-culture vision, and his relationships with Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and other Beats.Scala Publishers
Download or read book The Beats written by Harvey Pekar and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2010-04-13 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Details the history of the Beat movement, which began in the 1940s, and describes the lives of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs; along with other writers, artists, and events in a graphic novel format.
Download or read book Conversations with Jack Kerouac written by Kevin J. Hayes and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2005 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are few writers about whom it can be said that they write just like they speak, but Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) is clearly one of them. In 1958, Kerouac was a struggling writer trying to create a new literary aesthetic based on the rhythms of human speech, jazz-based improvisation, autobiography, and American slang. That year saw the publication of his second novel On the Road, which would instantly propel him to fame and ensconce him in the literary establishment. By 1969, he was dead of internal hemorrhaging brought on by excessive drinking. Though his literary reputation may have faded, the revolutionary zeal of his novels and the originality of his voice ensure that his books are continually popular. Whether because of his literary merits or his status as the voice of a new generation of writers, Kerouac is the unchallenged king of the Beat generation. Conversations with Jack Kerouac features interviews ranging from 1957 to 1969, covering the breadth of the author's fame and literary output. Including a piece from the Paris Review and a confrontational interview with CBS's Mike Wallace, the collection reveals Kerouac-whether drunk or sober, erudite or infantile, guarded or convivial-as a thoughtful writer and complex thinker who resisted all labels placed on him. The interviews show how Kerouac revitalized American literature, but they also trace his artistic and physical decline. The final interviews show how much the writer had crippled himself emotionally with too much alcohol and how his art became more unfocused as a result. Ultimately, Kerouac emerges as a tragic figure whose early greatness in such books as On the Road, The Dharma Bums, and The Subterraneans was subsequently consumed by his inability to evolve aesthetically and by his reliance on substance abuse for inspiration. Kevin J. Hayes, Oklahoma City, is professor of English at the University of Central Oklahoma. His previous books include Poe and the Printed Word, Folklore and Book Culture, and An American Cycling Odyssey, 1887, among others.
Download or read book The Beat Book written by Anne Waldman and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An anthology of the best of the beats edited by Anne Waldman (who should know) and containing a chronology of the movement from Kerouac to Snyder. The emphasis is on the the poetry and prose excerpts; However, the volume includes brief biographical sketches, an introduction by Ginsberg, a recommended beat vacation guide of the places where the gang passed out or recovered, and more scholarly references. The writers selected for inclusion represent the core of beat: Corso, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Orlovsky, di Prima, Burroughs, Baraka, Ferlinghetti, Kyger, Kandel, Kaufman, Whalen, McClure, and Snyder. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Beat Generation written by Jack Kerouac and published by . This book was released on 2012-07 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No Marketing Blurb
Download or read book Understanding Jack Kerouac written by Matt Theado and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theado offers close readings of the works that make up the "Duluoz Legend" - Kerouac's series of barely fictionalized re-creations of his life - and reveals how his awareness of his writing self increased over the course of his career.".
Download or read book Door Wide Open written by Jack Kerouac and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2001-06-01 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a blind date in Greenwich Village set up by Allen Ginsberg, Joyce Johnson (then Joyce Glassman) met Jack Kerouac in January 1957, nine months before he became famous overnight with the publication of On the Road. She was an adventurous, independent-minded twenty-one-year-old; Kerouac was already running on empty at thirty-five. This unique book, containing the many letters the two of them wrote to each other, reveals a surprisingly tender side of Kerouac. It also shares the vivid and unusual perspective of what it meant to be young, Beat, and a woman in the Cold War fifties. Reflecting on those tumultuous years, Johnson seamlessly interweaves letters and commentary, bringing to life her love affair with one of American letters' most fascinating and enigmatic figures.
Download or read book The Voice Is All written by Joyce Johnson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-09-13 with total page 651 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking portrait of Kerouac as a young artist—from the award-winning author of Minor Characters In The Voice is All, Joyce Johnson, author of her classic memoir, Door Wide Open, about her relationship with Jack Kerouac, brilliantly peels away layers of the Kerouac legend to show how, caught between two cultures and two languages, he forged a voice to contain his dualities. Looking more deeply than previous biographers into how Kerouac’s French Canadian background enriched his prose and gave him a unique outsider’s vision of America, she tracks his development from boyhood through the phenomenal breakthroughs of 1951 that resulted in the composition of On the Road, followed by Visions of Cody. By illuminating Kerouac’s early choice to sacrifice everything to his work, The Voice Is All deals with him on his own terms and puts the tragic contradictions of his nature and his complex relationships into perspective.
Download or read book Jack Kerouac s On the Road written by Harold Bloom and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2004 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents ten critical essays published between 1973 and 2001 on Jack Kerouac's "On the Road," and includes a chronology, a bibliography, and an introduction by Harold Bloom.
Download or read book Seeing the Beat Generation written by Raj Chandarlapaty and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2019-05-10 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beat generation writers dismantled mainstream America. They wrote under the influence of psychedelic drugs; they crossed and navigated multicultural boundaries and questioned the American dream; and they explored homosexuality, feminism and hyper-masculinity, redefining America's marital and familial codes. Teaching such a history can be daunting, but film adaptations of Beat literature have proven to engage students. This book looks closely at the film adaptations of works by such authors as Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Gary Snyder, Carolyn Cassady, Amiri Baraka and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, as they relate to American history and literary studies.
Download or read book The Role of Jack Kerouac s Identity in the Development of his Poetics written by Stefano Maffina and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2012-06-01 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work revolves round the analysis of Jack Kerouac's complex identity and his main artistic inspirations. Even though the writer was born in Lowell, MA, he was raised in a Franco-American family with strong bonds with the Quebec region. The resultant split identity led to deep existential doubts that Kerouac was never able to overcome. However, the awareness of his cultural dichotomy proved extremely important for his own work. Indeed, the Beat author was able to reach an original poetics which was inspired by both American and French writers. Despite Kerouac's innovative style and writing method, an analysis of the artists who influenced his work could help contextualize and better understand his literary and linguistic genius.
Download or read book Jack Kerouac written by Alison Behnke and published by Twenty-First Century Books. This book was released on 2006-12-28 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biography of author Jack Kerouac, well-known writer and leader of the "Beat Generation" of the 1950s.
Download or read book The Beat Generation written by Christopher Gair and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-12-01 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Without them, the Hippies and the Punks would never have existed. The Beat Generation were a radical group of American writers whose relaxed, gritty and candid writing inspired generations. In his chronicle of the origins, adventures, and inner workings of the Beat movement, Christopher Gair reveals how it sparked one of the most important revolutions in American literature, influencing everything from bebop to the Beastie Boys.
