Book description
Described by Kerouac as being about "man's simple revolt from
society as it is, with the inequalities, frustration, and
self-inflicted agonies", the 158-page handwritten manuscript was
Kerouac's first novel, but was not published during his lifetime. He
wrote in his notes for the project that the characters were "the
vanishing American, the big free by, the American Indian, the last of
the pioneers, the last of the hoboes". The novel follows the
fortunes of Wesley Martin, a man who Kerouac said "loved the sea
with a strange, lonely love; the sea is his brother and sentences. He
goes down."
Jack began this work not long after his first tour as a Merchant
Marine on the S. S. Dorchester in the late summer of 1942 during which
he kept a journal detailing the gritty daily routine of life at sea.
Inspired by the trip, which exemplified Jack's love for adventure and
the character traits of his fellow shipmates, the journals were
spontaneous sketches of those experiences that were woven into a short
novel soon after disembarking from the S. S. Dorchester in October of 1942.
Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1922. In 1947,
enthused by bebop, the rebel attitude of his friend Neal Cassady, and
the throng of hobos, drug addicts and hustlers he encountered in New
York, he decided to discover America and hitchhike across the country.
His writing was openly autobiographical and he developed a style he
referred to as 'spontaneous prose' which he used to record the
experiences of the Beat Generation. Among his many novels are
On the
Road, Visions of Cody
,
The Subterraneans
,
The Dharma Bums
and
Big Sur.
He died in 1969.
