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On the Road
Series: Penguin Modern Classics
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?
Sal Paradise, a young innocent, joins his hero Dean Moriarty, a traveller and mystic, the living epitome of Beat, on a breathless, exuberant ride back and forth across the United States. Their search for release or fulfilment through drink, sex, drugs and jazz becomes an exploration of personal freedom, a test of the limits of the American dream.
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Description
"The most beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac himself named years ago as 'beat.'" - The New York Times
On the Road swings to the rhythms of 1950s underground America, jazz, sex, generosity, chill dawns, and drugs, with Sal Paradise and his hero Dean Moriarty, traveller and mystic, the living epitome of Beat. Now recognised as a modern classic, its American Dream is nearer that of Walt Whitman than Scott Fitzgerald, and it goes racing towards the sunset with unforgettable exuberance, poignancy, and autobiographical passion.
Series: Penguin Modern Classics
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Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?
The writing is celebrated for its vividness and raw edges, offering a sense of immediacy and modernity. Critics appreciate the novel's stripped-down style, though some mention moments where the narrative's emotive quality risks becoming overly sentimental.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780141182674
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 24 February 2000
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Penguin Classics
Contributors:
- Introduction by Ann Charters
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 19.0mm
Width: 130.0mm
Height: 198.0mm
Weight: 238g
Pages: 320
About the Author
Jack Kerouac (1922 - 1969) was an American novelist, poet, artist and part of the Beat Generation. Most of his life was spent in the vast landscapes of America or living with his mother, with whom he spent most of his life. Kerouac's best known works are On the Road and The Dharma Bums. Ann Charters, professor of English at the University of Connecticut, has been interested in Beat writers since 1956, when as an undergraduate English major she attended the repeat performance of the Six Gallery poetry reading in Berkeley where Allen Ginsberg gave his sencond public reading of Howl. After his death she wrote the first Kerouac biography and edited his posthumous collection, Scattered Poems. She was the general editor of the two-volume encyclopaedia The Beats- Literary Bohemians In Postwar America and has published a collection of her photographic portraits of well-known writers in the book Beats & Company.
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On the Road
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Kerouac's famed freewheeling poem joins the Penguin Modern Classics. 'I want to be considered a jazz poet blowing a long blues in an afternoon jam session on Sunday' Freewheeling and spontaneous, Mexico City Blues is Jack Kerouac's most significant and emblematic poem. Consisting of 242 loosely linked 'choruses', it takes in life, death, spirituality, jazz improvisation, memory, fantasies and dreams,...Paperback$2200Elsewhere:$2400Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Big Sur
Big Sur is Jack Kerouac's stunningly vivid and gritty second novel, newly added to the Penguin Modern Classics series. In 1960, Jack Kerouac was near breaking point. Driven mad by constant press attention in the wake of the publication of On the Road, he needed to 'get away to solitude again or die'. Seeking refuge, he withdrew to a cabin...Paperback$2400Elsewhere:$2600Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
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Fifty new books at Β£1 each, celebrating the pioneering spirit of the Penguin Modern Classics series, from inspiring essays to groundbreaking fiction and poetry. See my hand up-tipped, learn the secret of my human heart... Soaring, freewheeling snapshots of life on the road across America, from the Beat writer who inspired a generation.Paperback$299Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
On the Road
The exhilarating novel that defined the Beat Generation. What's your road, man? - holyboy road, madman road, rainbow road, guppy road, any road. It's an anywhere road for anybody anyhow. Sal Paradise, young and innocent, joins the slightly crazed Dean Moriarty on a breathless, exuberant ride back and forth across the United States. Their hedonistic search for release or fulfilment...Paperback$2400Elsewhere:$2600Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
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Another addition to Penguin Modern Classics' key Kerouac holdings. The Dharma Bums appeared just one year after the author's explosive On the Road had put the Beat Generation on the literary map and Kerouac on the best-seller list. The same expansiveness, humour, and contagious zest for life that sparked the earlier novels sparks this one too, but through a more...Paperback$2400Elsewhere:$2600Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
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One of Kerouac's most enduring and touching works. The Subterraneans haunt the bars and clubs of San Francisco, surviving on a diet of booze and benzedrine, Proust and Verlaine. Living amongst them is Leo, an aspiring writer, and Mardou, half-Indian, half-Negro, beautiful and neurotic. Their bittersweet and ill-starred love affair sees Kerouac at his most evocative. Many regard this as...Paperback$2700Elsewhere:$3000Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
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