The Subterraneans - Softcover

Jack Kerouac

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0586048855 ISBN 13: 9780586048856

Publisher: Grove Press Inc., 1981

Synopsis

Regarded by many as Jack Kerouac's most touching works, The Subterraneans and Pic are an evocative and poignant pair of novels from the author of On the Road. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Ann Douglas.Leo Percepied, aspiring writer and self-styled free-wheeling bum, gravitates to the Subterraneans, impoverished intellectuals who haunt the bars and clubs of San Francisco, surviving on a diet of booze and benzedrine, Proust and Verlaine. Living among them is Mardou Fox, beautiful and a little crazy, whose dark eyes, full of suffering and sweetness, find recognition in Leo. But, afraid of his growing involvement, Leo sets out to destroy their love. Exuberant and melancholy, Kerouac's spontaneous prose flows across the pages. Written in three days, The Subterraneans is, like all Kerouac's work, closely related to his own life while encapsulating his great vision of America. Also included here is the novel Pic, the story of a young black boy who makes his own journey on the road.Jack Kerouac (1922-69) was an American novelist, poet, artist and part of the Beat Generation. His first published novel, The Town and the City, appeared in 1950, but it was On the Road, published in 1957, that made Kerouac famous. Publication of his many other books followed, among them The Subterraneans, Big Sur, and The Dharma Bums. Kerouac died in Florida at the age of forty-seven.If you enjoyed The Subterraneans and Pic, you might like Kerouac's Maggie Cassidy, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.'The tender and achingly poetic account of a love affair'Lester Bangs, Rolling Stone

About this title

About the Author:

Jack Kerouac wrote a number of highly influential and popular novels - most famously the international best-seller ON THE ROAD - and is remembered as one of the key figures of the legendary Beat generation. As much as anything, he came to represent a philosophy, a way of life.

Review:

"The first clear development of the American Romantic prose since Hemingway, Kerouac's writing is full of mad sex, comedy, widescreen travel writing, and long lyrical evocations of American childhood and adolescent memories."—The Times (London)

"Kerouac's work represents the most extensive experiment in language and literary form undertaken by an American writer of his generation."—Ann Douglas

"Each book by Kerouac is unique, a telepathic discord. Such rich, natural writing is nonpareil in the later twentieth century."—Allen Ginsberg

"An outsider in America, Jack Kerouac was a true original."—Ann Charters

About this edition

• Publisher: Grove Press Inc.
• Publication date: 1981
• ISBN 10: 0586048855
• ISBN 13: 9780586048856
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 152