Duluoz Legend

A quintessential American family is pulled apart by war and the rapidly changing tides of society in Jack Kerouac's captivating first novel Published seven years before his iconic On the Road, Jack Kerouac's debut novel follows the experiences of one family as they navigate the seismic cultural shifts following World War II. Inspired by Kerouac's own New England youth, the eight Martin children enjoy an idyllic upbringing in a small Massachusetts mill-town. Middle son Peter, a budding intellectual and promising athlete, most strongly feels the lure of the future. When war breaks out, the siblings' lives are interrupted by military service; their parents must sell their house after the family business goes bankrupt; and Peter, eager to see the world, voyages overseas as a Merchant Marine. After returning home, Peter is drawn to the kinetic energy of New York City and the progressive, bohemian ideas springing from its denizen young poets, writers, and artists. His new friends are fictionalized versions of Kerouac's contemporaries: Allen Ginsberg (as Leon Levinsky), Lucien Carr (as Kenneth Wood), and William Burroughs (as Will Dennison), and other members of the Beat Generation. Seen by Peter's parents as hoodlums and junkies, the Beats challenge conventional American ideas of everything from authority and religion to marriage and domestic life.

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 mainstream America's field of vision.

In 1955 novelist Jack Kerouac detoured from his cross-country American travels to Mexico City where a group of junkie expatriates he had known from the New York City post-War scene had gone for the cheap and plentiful supply of heroin and morphine. Fellow Beat writer William S. Burroughs, who had been a part of the Mexican expatriate community, had introduced Kerouac to Bill Garver (named Old Bull Gaines in the novel), a much-older long-term addict who had in turn introduced Kerouac to Esperanza Villanueva, whom Kerouac named Tristessa in the novel. Kerouac fell under the spell of Esperanza's dark allure and exotic surroundings and hoped to re-experience the "fellaheen nights" of his joyous adventures with Mexicans in his past. Esperanza/Tristessa, however, proved to be a far more troubled and contentious companion than Kerouac had bargained for. Kerouac had entered a particularly contemplative time in his life-he had discovered an inner peace through Zen Buddhism and was practicing an ascetic lifestyle that included celibacy-a choice he later regretted. Although Kerouac managed to control his alcoholic tendencies much of the time in Mexico, Tristessa sank deeper and deeper into the belly of morphine addiction. Kerouac returned to Mexico City a year later (1956) hoping to resume his platonic friendship with Tristessa and perhaps even pursuing a physical relationship with her only to find a desperately junk-sick, emaciated Tristessa who could barely function. Shocked, disappointed, and largely ignored by his brown-skinned goddess, Kerouac left Tristessa trembling and barely coherent, taking only his notebooks and memories from the unpleasant experience. Blending his incandescent, highly-evocative, careening prose with alternately blissful and rueful meditations based on his Zen and Catholic teachings, Jack Kerouac in Tristessa documents a painful episode in the beatest of his Beat style. Tristessa remains a Kerouac classic-an iconic work emblematic of the world that existed far outside the living rooms of '50s America. The new Devault-Graves Digital Editions version of Tristessa contains a wealth of new material for both the casual reader and the student of Beat Generation literature. Included are: extensive annotations and endnotes, an original Afterword by author Tom Graves, a bibliography of Jack Kerouac's literary works, a guide for further study on works about Jack Kerouac, a guide for further study of books by other key Beat Generation writers, and an annotated Character Key to identify the characters in Tristessa.

Satori in Paris and Pic, two of Jack Kerouac's last novels, showcase the remarkable range and versatility of his mature talent. Satori in Paris is a rollicking autobiographical account of Kerouac's search for his heritage in France, and lands the author in his familiar milieu of seedy bars and all-night conversations. Pic is Kerouac's final novel and one of his most unusual. Narrated by ten-year-old Pictorial Review Jackson in a North Carolina vernacular, the novel charts the adventures of Pic and his brother Slim as they travel from the rural South to Harlem in the 1940s.

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 most tender recollections of his past, focusing on his first true love when he was a high-school senior and a local star athlete. Filled with the sweet innocence of youth and the daily heartbreak of quarrels and unfulfilled sexual yearnings, Kerouac employs his stylishly Beat observations toward the nostalgic time period of pre-World War II Lowell, Massachusetts, when he was torn between the companionship of his gang of buddies and the sirens' call of the opposite sex. In addition to his romance with the title character, Kerouac is especially evocative in reproducing the slangy teen-speak of the late 1930's and in detailing how he went from a precocious local boy in Lowell to an exclusive New York prep school where he was to later meet the brilliant young men who would begin the Beat Movement. The new Devault-Graves Digital Editions version of Maggie Cassidy contains a wealth of new material for both the casual reader and the student of Beat Generation literature. Included are: extensive annotations and endnotes, an original Afterword by author Tom Graves, a bibliography of Jack Kerouac's literary works, a guide for further study on works about Kerouac, a guide for further study of books by other key Beat Generation writers, and an annotated Character Key to identify the characters in Maggie Cassidy.

Description of Big Sur Jack Kerouac shot to literary fame in 1957 with the publication of his iconic book of the Beat Generation, On the Road. Kerouac was termed "King of the Beats," a mantle he was entirely uncomfortable with. Along with Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, and several others forged a new literary voice and attitude — it was a movement that often mocked and challenged the American status quo. Prior to the publication of On the Road, Kerouac had written several novels and poems. With the almost overnight success of On the Road, publishers clamored for his other books and a Kerouac industry was born. Within only a few years of being heralded as the voice of a new generation, however, Kerouac was aging, severely alcoholic, and suffering from a death of the spirit. Arguably his finest post-On the Road novel, Big Sur captures Kerouac (here named Jack Duluoz) trying to escape the clamor of beatnik adulation by retreating to Lawrence Ferlinghetti's peaceful cabin in Big Sur. What begins as a pastoral regeneration descends into a personal hell when Kerouac suffers an alcoholic breakdown. Written in Kerouac's elegantly poetic and rapid-fire prose, Big Sur is both beautiful and horrific, a clear-eyed recollection of facing down his many demons and willing himself to survive them. The new Devault-Graves Digital Editions version of Big Sur contains a wealth of new material for both the casual reader and the student of Beat Generation literature. Included are: extensive annotations and endnotes, an original Afterword by author Tom Graves, a bibliography of Jack Kerouac's literary works, a guide for further study on works about Jack Kerouac, a guide for further study of books by other key Beat Generation writers, and an annotated Character Key to identify the characters in Big Sur.

In this haunting novel of intensely felt adolescence, Jack Kerouac tells the story of Jack Duluoz, a French-Canadian boy growing up, as Kerouac himself did, in the dingy factory town of Lowell, Massachusetts. Dr. Sax, with his flowing cape, slouch hat, and insinuating leer, is chief among the many ghosts and demons that populate Jack's fantasy world. Deftly mingling memory and dream, Kerouac captures the accents and texture of his boyhood in Lowell as he relates Jack's adventures with this cryptic, apocalyptic hipster phantom.