Synopses & Reviews
Jack Kerouac and the Literary Imagination explores Kerouacs fiction, poetry, religious writing, private journals, and correspondence to reveal his aesthetic vision for American belle-lettres. The vision encompasses his fictional rewriting of his personal history, his life-long quest for spiritual enlightenment—both Christian and Buddhist—and his resolute belief in the blending of popular and academic cultural artifacts. The book features chapters on Some of the Dharma, Doctor Sax, On the Road, Desolation Angels, and Mexico City Blues and includes a discussion of Kerouac's influence on later writers, including Hunter Thompson and Bob Dylan.
Review
“Grace's extensively researched and crisp, lucid prose makes Kerouac come alive as an interdisciplinary artist whose work implores America to reclaim its spiritual folk heritage.”--Tony Trigilio, Columbia College Chicago and author of Allen Ginsberg's Buddhist Poetics
“Grace's scholarship illuminates Kerouac's achievement and explains how his writing reflects the diverse cultural traditions that nourished his genius. A most helpful book.”--Ann Charters, Professor of English, University of Connecticut
“Grace has given us the most powerful and comprehensive account to date of why Kerouac was right to claim that ‘Beat is at root ‘beatitude. Through her rich interrogation of Kerouac's sustained dialogue with his Catholicism, Buddhism, and his faith in American possibility past and present, we are privileged to see not simply Kerouac the seeker after kicks but Kerouac the religious seeker and Kerouac the religious thinker.”—Timothy Hunt, Professor of English, Illinois State University and author of Kerouac's Crooked Road: Development of a Fiction
Synopsis
An exploration of Kerouac's fiction, poetry, religious writing, journals, and correspondence. It encompasses his fictional rewriting of his personal life, his life-long quest for spiritual enlightenment, and his resolute belief in the blending of popular and academic cultural artifacts to create voices and forms to speak of and to a new age.
About the Author
Nancy M. Grace is Professor of English at The College of Wooster. She is the co-author of Breaking the Rule of Cool: Interviewing and Reading Beat Women Writers, the co-editor of Girls Who Wore Black: Women Writing the Beat Generation, and author of The Feminized Male Character in Twentieth-Century Fiction. She is one of the founding members of the Beat Studies Association.
Table of Contents
Introduction: The Shape Shifter * The Paraclete * The Bard * The Culture Clown