Desolation Peak: Collected Writings

Kerouac, Jack (with Introduction, Transcriptions, and Notes by Charles Shuttleworth)

ISBN 10: 1644282860 / ISBN 13: 9781644282861

Edité par Rare Bird Books / Sal Paradise Press, Los Angeles, 2022

A propos de cet article

Octavo. Black boards and spine with white lettering on the spine. Book has a faint bump at the head and tail of the spine. Black endpapers. Binding is straight adn tight. Pages are all clean, white, and crisp. 277 pages. Illustrated in the rear of the book with a section of color photographs, document facsimiles, some of Kerouac's doodles and notes, etc. Dust Jacket - has just a trace of rubbing at the head and tail of the spine and at the very tips of the outside corners. Includes Desolation Adventure with timeline, journal transcription notes, transcription, Ozone Park with deleted chapters and notes, the Martin Family, Desolation Blues, Desolation Pops, The Diamondcutter of Perfect Knowing, and other assorted writings.

N° de réf. du vendeur 012903

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: Desolation Peak: Collected Writings
• Éditeur: Rare Bird Books / Sal Paradise Press, Los Angeles
• Date de parution: 2022
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN à 10 chiffres: 1644282860
• ISBN à 13 chiffres: 9781644282861
• Reliure: Hard Cover
• Édition: First Edition, First Printing.
• État de l'article: NF
• État de la jaquette: NF
• Catalogues du vendeur:
  • Literary Nonfiction
  • Literature & Fiction

A propos de ce titre

Synopsis

"Something will happen to me on Desolation Peak…I can feel it."

In the summer of 1956, Jack Kerouac hitchhiked from Mill Valley, CA, to the North Cascades to spend two months serving as a fire lookout for the US Forest Service. Taking only the Diamond Sutra for reading material, he intended to spend his time in deep contemplation and to achieve enlightenment. He wrote in his journal that he planned "to concentrate on emptiness of self, other selves, living beings, and universal self." Kerouac's experience on Desolation Peak forms the climax of his novel The Dharma Bums and has also been depicted in part 1 of Desolation Angels and a chapter in his nonfiction book Lonesome Traveler. None of these versions offers a full, true picture, however; and for that reason, Desolation Peak is essential reading. What separates Kerouac from all other writers is the depth that he went in exploring his own consciousness, and what will prove his most enduring legacy is the record he left of that exploration, revealing the psyche of a sensitive, tortured artist grappling with himself in the mid-20th Century. The highlight of Desolation Peak is the journal he kept, starkly revealing the depth of his poverty, the extremity of his mood swings, and the ongoing arguments with himself over the future direction of his life, his writing, and faith. Along with the journal, he worked on a series of projects, including "Ozone Park," another installment of the Duluoz Legend beginning in 1943, after his discharge from the Navy; "The Martin Family," an intended sequel to The Town and the City, and "Desolation Adventure," a series of sketches that became part 1 of Desolation Angels,. In writing it, Kerouac was re-committing himself to his more experimental, then-unpublishable style, declaring in the journal that "the form of the future is no-form." Also included in Collected Writings is "The Diamondcutter of Perfect Knowing," Kerouac's "transliteration" of the Diamond Sutra, his "Desolation Blues" and "Desolation Pops" poems, and assorted prose sketches and dreams.

À propos de l'auteur

Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1922, the youngest of three children in a Franco-American family. He attended local Catholic and public schools and won a scholarship to Columbia University in New York City, where he first met Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs. His first novel, The Town and the City, appeared in 1950, but it was On the Road, published in 1957 and memorializing his adventures with Neal Cassady, that epitomized to the world what became known as the “Beat generation” and made Kerouac one of the most best-known writers of his time. Publication of many other books followed, among them The Dharma Bums, The Subterraneans, and Big Sur. Kerouac considered all of his autobiographical fiction to be part of “one vast book,” The Duluoz Legend. He died in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1969, at the age of forty-seven.