E-Book Overview
Understanding Jack Kerouac introduces readers to what Matt Theado calls Kerouac’s “unwieldy accretion of published work”—fiction, poetry, nonfiction, selected letters, religious writing, and “true-story novels.” Presenting this cultural icon of the Beat Generation primarily as a writer rather than as a social rebel or media celebrity, Theado elucidates the reasons Kerouac’s reputation has outlived disparaging beatnik associations and why his writings continue to attract an expanding readership. Theado takes a book-by-book approach to the sometimes-confusing canon and develops a framework for understanding Kerouac’s thematic concerns, writing techniques, and artistic evolution. Proposing that the real legend of Jack Kerouac is the saga of a writer at work, Theado suggests that as recognition of Kerouac’s artistic achievement grows, the Duluoz Legend—Kerouac’s series of barely fictionalized re-creations of his life—outgrows the genre of autobiography and becomes an intimate chronicle of a writer’s stylistic maturation. Theado traces Kerouac’s development as a crafter of language and contends that spontaneous prose, Kerouac’s literary hallmark, may prove to be his chief claim to literary longevity.
E-Book Content
UNDERSTANDING
JACK KEROUAC
Understanding Contemporary American Literature Matthew J. Bruccoli, Series Editor Volumes on Edward Albee • Nicholson Baker • John Barth • Donald Barthelme The Beats • The Black Mountain Poets • Robert Bly Raymond Carver • Chicano Literature Contemporary American Drama Contemporary American Horror Fiction Contemporary American Literary Theory Contemporary American Science Fiction • James Dickey E. L. Doctorow • John Gardner • George Garrett • John Hawkes Joseph Heller • Lillian Hellman • John Irving • Randall Jarrell William Kennedy • Jack Kerouac • Ursula K. Le Guin Denise Levertov • Bernard Malamud • Jill McCorkle Carson McCullers • W. S. Merwin • Arthur Miller Toni Morrison’s Fiction • Vladimir Nabokov • Gloria Naylor Joyce Carol Oates • Tim O’Brien • Flannery O’Connor Cynthia Ozick • Walker Percy • Katherine Anne Porter Reynolds Price • Thomas Pynchon • Theodore Roethke Philip Roth • Hubert Selby, Jr. • Mary Lee Settle Isaac Bashevis Singer • Jane Smiley • Gary Snyder William Stafford • Anne Tyler • Kurt Vonnegut • James Welch Eudora Welty • Tennessee Williams • August Wilson
UNDERSTANDING
JACK KEROUAC Matt Theado
University of South Carolina Press
© 2000 University of South Carolina Published in Columbia, South Carolina, by the University of South Carolina Press Manufactured in the United States of America 04 03 02 01 00
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Theado, Matt, 1959– Understanding Jack Kerouac / Matt Theado. p. cm. — (Understanding contemporary American literature) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 1-57003-272-6 1. Kerouac, Jack, 1922–1969—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Beat generation in literature. I. Title. II. Series. PS3521.E735 Z9 2000 813'.54—dc21 98-40291
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CONTENTS
Editor’s Preface ix Acknowledgments xi Chronology xiii Introduction 1 Chapter One Biography and Background 9 Chapter Two Kerouac’s Technique 27 Chapter Three The Town and the City (1950) 38 Chapter Four On the Road (1957) 53 Chapter Five Visions of Cody (1972) 72 Chapter Six Doctor Sax: Faust Part Three (1959) Chapter Seven Maggie Cassidy (1959) and The Subterraneans (1958) 103 Chapter Eight Tristessa (1960), Visions of Gerard (1963), and Buddhism 123 Chapter Nine Desolation Angels (1965) and The Dharma Bums (1958) 141 Chapter Ten Big Sur (1962) 159 Chapter Eleven Later Work 171 Notes 185 Bibliography 189 Index 197
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EDITOR’S PREFACE
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