Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969) was an American novelist, writer, poet, artist, and one of the most prominent members of the Beat Generation. While enjoying popular but little critical success during his own lifetime, Kerouac is now considered one of America's most important authors. Kerouac's spontaneous, confessional language style inspired other writers, including Tom Robbins, Richard Brautigan, Hunter S. Thompson, Ken Kesey, and Bob Dylan.

Published works

Kerouac's most familiar work is On the Road. During his years of rejection by publishers, he wrote a number of mostly autobiographical books, some of which he carried around in manuscript form in his rucksack. His body of work includes:

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• Book of Haikus
• Good Blonde and Others
• Some of the Dharma
• Old Angel Midnight
• Heaven and Other Poems
• Scattered Poems
• Book of Blues
• Mexico City Blues
• Pomes All Sizes
• Safe In Heaven Dead
• '
• Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters, 1940-1956
• Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters, 1957-1969
• The Town and the City
• The Scripture of the Golden Eternity
• '
• ' (ISBN 0670888222)
• Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac
• On The Road (ISBN 0140042598)
• The Subterraneans (ISBN 0802131867)
• Tristessa (ISBN 0140168117)
• Visions of Gerard (ISBN 0140144528)
• Doctor Sax (ISBN 0802130496)
• Maggie Cassidy (ISBN 0140179062)
• Visions of Cody (ISBN 0140179070)
• The Dharma Bums (ISBN 0140042520)
• Desolation Angels (ISBN 1573225053)
• Big Sur (ISBN 0140168125)
• Satori in Paris (ISBN 0394174372, out of print; currently available in ISBN 0802130615)
• Pic (ISBN 0704311224, out of print; currently available in ISBN 0802130615)
• Vanity of Duluoz (ISBN 0140236392)
• Orpheus Emerged (ISBN 0743475143)
• "Lonesome Traveler" (ISBN 0802130747)
• The Jack Kerouac Collection (Audio CD Collection)
• Reads On The Road (Audio CD)
• Dr Sax & Great World Snake (Play Adaptation with Audio CD)

Kerouac's writings maintain a sense of urgency while embarking on a journey during which he explores the society surrounding him by mystifying those experiences. Kerouac's writings contained a social and sexual recklessness (and descriptions of quasi-criminal activities) that surprised and upset readers at the time they were published.

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There is a book featuring much of Jack's early writings when he was first beginning as a writer, entitled Atop an Underwood. A journal of some his dreams was also published after his death, in a book called Book of Dreams.

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