Kerouac: Selected Letters: Volume 2: 1957-1969

Product Description

The first volume of Jack Kerouac’s selected letters, published in 1995, was hailed as an important and revealing addition to Kerouac scholarship. This second and final volume, comprising letters written between 1957, the year
On the Road was published, and the day before his death in 1969 at age forty-seven, tells Kerouac’s life story through his candid correspondence with friends, confidants, and editors—among them Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Philip Whalen, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Joyce Johnson, and Malcolm Cowley. Documenting his continuing development as a writer and his travels, love affairs, and complicated family life, the letters also reveal Kerouac’s amazing courage in the force of criticism and his never-ending quest to be the best writer possible.
Jack Kerouac Selected Letters 1957-1969 offers unparalleled insight into the life and mind of this giant of the American landscape.

Review

“Reveals the boldness and originality of Kerouac’s artistic vision.”
—
The Boston Globe
“It remains clear from his later letters that Kerouac understood what he was doing as a writer. He consistently explains his aesthetic, his plan to create the Duluoz Legend of books, and the essentially benign charity of his vision.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“Rambunctious and energetic . . . the letters convey the genius of that special American type—the perpetual motion man.” —The Washington Post
“Kerouac’s letters and early stories supplement his legend, providing a fuller portrait of a true American original.” —The Boston Globe

About the Author

Jack Kerouac(1922-1969), the central figure of the Beat Generation, was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1922 and died in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1969. Among his many novels are
On the Road,
The Dharma Bums,
Big Sur, and
Visions of Cody.
Ann Charters is the editor of
The Portable Sixties Reader,
The Portable Jack Kerouac, two volumes of Jack Kerouac’s
Selected Letters, and
Beat Down to Your Soul. She teaches at the University of Connecticut.