Jack Kerouac

Two ebullent young men are engaged in a passionate search for dharma, or truth. Their pursuit of the Zen way takes them climbing into the high Sierras to seek the lesson of solitude--a lesson that has a hard time surviving their forays into the pagan groves of San Francisco's Bohemia, with its marathon wine-drinking bouts, poetry jam sessions, experiments in "yabyum," and similar non ascetic pastimes.

Written over the course of three days and three nights, The Subterraneans was generated out of the same kind of ecstatic flash of inspiration that produced another one of Kerouac's early classics, On The Road. Centering around the tempestuous breakup of Leo Percepied and Mardou Fox-two denizens of the 1950s San Francisco underground-The Subterraneans is a tale of dark alleys and smoky rooms, of artists, visionaries, and adventurers existing outside...

"In the spring of 1943, during a stint in the Merchant Marine, twenty-one-year old Jack Kerouac set out to write his first novel. Working diligently day and night to complete it by hand, he titled it The Sea Is My Brother. Now, nearly seventy years later, its long-awaited publication provides fascinating details and insight into the early life and development of an American literary icon. Written seven years before The Town and The City officially...

In Jack Kerouac's teenage years his friends gave him a nickname that was prescient and stuck with him throughout his life-Memory Babe. Kerouac was able to conjure up scenes from his childhood and adolescence that astounded his friends with their precision and detail. This talent was to serve him well as a novelist, enabling him to recall long segments of conversation that he could instantly pound out on his typewriter. Maggie Cassidy is one of Kerouac's...

Though raised Catholic, in the early 1950s Jack Kerouac became fascinated with Buddhism, an interest that would have a profound impact on his ideas of spirituality and their expression in his writing. Published for the first time in book form, this is Kerouac's retelling of the story of Prince Siddhartha Gautama, who as a young man abandoned his wealthy family and comfortable home for a lifelong search for enlightenment. As a compendium of the teachings...

In the summer of 1944, a shocking murder rocked the fledgling Beats. William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, both still unknown, we inspired by the crime to collaborate on a novel, a hard-boiled tale of bohemian New York during World War II, full of drugs and art, obsession and brutality, with scenes and characters drawn from their own lives. Finally published after more than sixty years, this is a captivating read, and incomparable literary artifact,...

"In late 1944, under rather mysterious circumstances, aspiring writer Jack Kerouac lost a novella-length manuscript titled The Haunted Life. Set in Galloway, a fictionalized version of Kerouac's hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts, the coming-of-age story of Peter Martin-a character based on the author's recently departed friend Sebastian Sampas-tackles the pressing issues of the day. At home in the working-class town the summer before his sophomore...