The letters in this volume, written between 1940 and 1956, offer valuable insights onto Kerouac's family life, friendships, travels, love affairs, and literary apprenticeship. They also provide accounts of the events that inspired "On the Road", "Visions of Cody" and "The Dharma Burns".
The life and craft of Jack Kerouac are traced through some of his most personal and mesmerizing letters. Written between 1940, when he was a freshman in college, and 1956, immediately before his leap into celebrity with the publication of On the Road, these letters offer valuable insights into Kerouac's family life, friendships with Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs, and others.
"The most exhilirating book of the year."
—
Chicago Tribune"As we just now begin to map full the fallout of [the Beat Generation's] creative explosion, these letters offer an invaluable blueprint to the intricate, high-yield ballistics that went into creating it."
—San Francisco Examiner
"The greatest addition to the Kerouac canon in recent years"
—Steven Moore, Review of contemporary Fiction
"To have [his letters] gathered in one place . . . is to be overwhelmed by his passion for the printed word, by his hunger for experience and by his ability to describe both in language that sings. . . . The most exhilirating book of the year."
—Thomas McGonigle, Chicago Tribune
