Books by Jack Kerouac
“The young Kerouac was a superb letter writer, and this first volume is really the record of a young man hopelessly in love with writing: ambitious, interested in everything, his energy is irresistible.” Read more...
Howard Cunnell, Novelist
“It’s a remarkable meditation and profoundly tender, mythopoetic account of Kerouac’s older brother Gerard, who died in childhood. Gerard is conceptualised as a Catholic child saint or martyr figure. Gerard’s death was perhaps the signature event in Kerouac’s life, and his guilt in being the ‘wrong son’ who survived and the psychic and actual debt he felt he owed to his mother, is central to understanding him. Kerouac tells a story of Gerard’s story that he needs to believe.” Read more...
Howard Cunnell, Novelist
“Visions of Cody is a non-linear collage text centred around the figure of Cody Pomeray (a version of his muse and friend Neal Cassady), comprising a sequence of brilliantly realised sketches, linear narrative, taped conversations, fictional representations of those tapes, culminating in a differently-told account of the events that make up the narrative of On the Road.“ Read more...
Howard Cunnell, Novelist
“This is the essential post-Road, post-celebrity Kerouac novel, in which his alter ego Jack Duluoz, alcoholic, overwhelmed by success, excess and fame, is caught between drunkenness in San Francisco and a fragile, paranoid sobriety in Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s isolated cabin on the California coast.” Read more...
Howard Cunnell, Novelist
“It’s hard to have a road trip list without On the Road. I am not much of a beatnik, but you can’t help but admire the appetite for life that this book celebrates. Or, ‘celebrates’ is too strong, because they go through lots of miserable times. Even though it’s not an unmixed celebration, still, at the heart of it, there’s this appetite for life. He wants to see America, he wants to experience the world. That is, as we talked about earlier, what the road trip is about.” Read more...
Benjamin Markovits, Novelist
Interviews where books by Jack Kerouac were recommended
The Best Road Trip Novels, recommended by Benjamin Markovits
Why do so many people fantasise about getting in their cars and driving away from everything they know? The novelist Ben Markovits reflects on the near-universal urge to get out on the open road, as he recommends five of the best road trip novels—from Jack Kerouac to Anne Tyler.
The Best Novels on Drug Addiction, recommended by Shazia Omar
Author and social psychologist discusses the nature of drug addiction and the problems associated with it. Discusses books by Coelho, Welsh and Kerouac
The Best Jack Kerouac Books, recommended by Howard Cunnell
Jack Kerouac—drifter, drinker, giant of American literature—became a Beat Generation icon after the publication of On the Road in 1957. But his experimental, improvisatory prose is often misinterpreted as artless “typing,” as Howard Cunnell, Kerouac scholar and author of new memoir Sun Country, explains. Here he recommends five books that offer a better understanding of Kerouac’s ambition and range as a writer.
