The Portable Jack Kerouac

A collection of excerpts from Kerouac's "Legend of Duluoz" offers a chronological tour of his life and includes Visions of Gerard, Doctor Sax, Vanity of Duluoz, On the Road, Visions of Cody, Tristessa, and The Dharma Bums. 15,000 first printing. Tour.

Much as Viking's Portable William Faulkner rekindled interest in Faulkner because his editor, Malcolm Cowley, had the brainstorm of pulling together a map of Faulkner's epic Yoknapatawpha County series of novels and stories in order to give the work a new coherence, so Kerouac gains new stature as a result of labors by his biographer, Charters (Kerouac: A Biography). Here she chronologically excerpts the perhaps 16 volumes of the Legend of Duluoz to create a map of Kerouac's oeuvre, which, according to the publisher, he had planned before his death. She supports it not only with fat slices of Kerouac's best writing but also with an investigation into his bop prosody that gives his jazz-riff style a new currency. In fact, this volume may deal a fist in the face of the English sentence, because Kerouac's revamping of the sentence is so song-filled and emotion-ridden that its properties could well do for American prose what Whitman did for verse: give it new life. An alcoholic jamming by candlelight with scotch and pot on the kitchen table, he mixes jazz with Rimbaud's derangement of the senses to create a vehicle for his own anguish as he recollects his life on the run. The Portable shows Kerouac at his best as a riff artist but also gathers to stronger effect than any single Kerouac novel. Includes selections from his poetry and experimental novels.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

It is a sure sign that an author has been embraced by the gods when a collection of his letters and a portable works are published simultaneously. The Portable illustrates Kerouac's skill as a jack-of-all-forms by presenting chronological selections from his novels, plus poetry, essays on the Beat Generation and other subjects, and several letters. The Selected Letters to family, friends, and fellow Beats-Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, etc.-cover the critical period from Kerouac's arrival at Columbia University to the troubled publication of his literary springboard, On The Road. The letters convey both the lamentations of a writer without readers and the lighthearted raillery of goofing with pals. Both volumes feature introductions and commentary notes by editor and Kerouac biographer Charters, which help readers navigate through the Kerouac legend. While most readers associate his name with hitchhiking, dope smoking, and the anti-establishment, these volumes show the tremendous, deep-rooted Americanism in his writing. Kerouac's contribution to our nation's literature is as great as that of Wolfe, Faulkner, and Steinbeck, and both these long-overdue volumes are recommended for public and academic libraries.
Michael Rogers, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.