Understanding Jack Kerouac
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Understanding Jack Kerouac
（Understanding contemporary American literature）
University of South Carolina Press, 2009, c2000
- : pbk
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Note
"Paperback edition published ... by the University of South Carolina Press, 2009"--T.p. verso
Chronology: p. [xiii]
Includes bibliographical references (p. [189]-196) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
This is a concise companion to the novels of the king of the Beats. ""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.
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