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In this first biography of Jack Kerouac to fully portray the intense inner life that inspired his work, Kerouac's last editor addresses the writer's homosexual relationships with men, and sheds a new light on their profound impact upon his life. of photos.
'The tender and achingly poetic account of a love affair' Lester Bangs, Rolling Stone Leo Percepied, aspiring writer and self-styled freewheeling bum, gravitates to the subterraneans, impoverished intellectuals who haunt the bars of San Francisco. One of 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. 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.
Drawing upon original interviews and his own relationship with Kerouac, Ellis Amburn reveals an inner man who has not appeared in any previous biography-a man torn by his conflicting desires and beliefs. Subterranean Kerouac has been singled out as one of the most significant biographies to appear in years, and it shows how Kerouac struggled throughout his life with poverty, alcoholism, and his doubts about his own lifestyle of substance abuse, indolence, and promiscuity.
Beatdom is a magazine for all fans of Beat Generation literature. This is the very first issue of Beatdom, containing interviews with Barry Gifford, Paul Krassner, Ken Babbs and Zane Kesey. We also have a talented group of writers and photographers, who have put together a magazine with features relating the Beat Generation to Buddhism, Bob Dylan, Hunter S Thompson and Walt Whitman; and guides to Beat books, websites and stories.
A poignant masterpiece of wrenching personal expression from the acclaimed author of On the Road “In many ways, particularly in the lyrical immediacy that is his distinctive glory, this is Kerouac’s best book . . . certainly he has never displayed more ‘gentle sweetness.’”—San Francisco Chronicle Jack Kerouac’s alter ego Jack Duluoz, overwhelmed by success and excess, gravitates back and forth between wild binges in San Francisco and an isolated cabin on the California coast where he attempts to renew his spirit and clear his head of madness and alcohol. Only nature seems to restore him to a sense of balance. In the words of Allen Ginsberg, Big Sur “reveals consciousness in all its syntactic elaboration, detailing the luminous emptiness of his own paranoiac confusion.”
A “wonderful” (The New York Times Book Review) and unique collection of love letters between Joyce Johnson and Jack Kerouac “A touching commentary not only on the Beat Generation but on what it’s like to be a young woman who loves a gifted, troubled guy with other things—besides love—on his mind.”—Elle On a blind date in Greenwich Village set up by Allen Ginsberg, Joyce Johnson (then Joyce Glassman) met Jack Kerouac in January 1957, nine months before he became famous overnight with the publication of On the Road. She was an adventurous, independent-minded twenty-one-year-old; Kerouac was already running on empty at thirty-five. Door Wide Open, containing the many letters the two of them wrote to each other, reveals a surprisingly tender side of Kerouac. It also shares a vivid and unusual perspective on what it meant to be young, Beat, and a woman in the Cold War fifties. Reflecting on those tumultuous years, Johnson seamlessly interweaves letters and commentary, bringing to life her love affair with one of American literature’s most fascinating and enigmatic figures.
"Be Not Content is a coming-of-age novel set in San Jose, California, in the mid 1960s-describing William Craddock's experiences as a young acid-head. This is a hip, profound, and wonderfully-written book, a unique chronicle of the earliest days of the great psychedelic upheaval. Be Not Content is filled with warmth and empathy, tragic at times, and very funny in spots, a wastrel masterpiece where laughter plays counterpoint against the oboes of doom."--Publisher's description.
This authoritative biography of writer, poet, and beat generation icon Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) recounts in gripping detail the story of his exceptional life and the key relationships that affected Kerouac's development as an artist, including those with his three wives, numerous girlfriends, and beloved mother. Kerouac presents a fresh and more accurate account of the author of On the Road, one that neither ignores nor wallows in his flaws.
