Jack Kerouac

Ethan Hawke

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Driven mad by three years of endless telegrams, phonecalls, mail, reporters and snoopers in the wake of his hugely successful novel On the Road, Jack Kerouac, 'King of the Beats', needs peace, quiet and sobriety: surrounded and outnumbered he has to 'get away to solitude again or die'. Amidst the wild beauty of the Californian landscape, Kerouac struggles to come to terms with his own myth and its malign impact upon his life. The result is a moving account of a man struggling with inner demons: blessed by great talent and cursed with an urge towards self-destruction - a path lined with double bourbons, Manhattans and scotch ... 
 
'Kerouac's grittiest novel ... sensual and uninhibited' The New York Times 
 
© Jack Kerouac 1962 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Jack Kerouac (Author) Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1922. Educated by Jesuit brothers in Lowell, he decided to become a writer at age seventeen and developed his own writing style, which he called 'spontaneous prose'. He used this technique to record the life of the American 'traveler' and the experiences of the Beat Generation, most memorably in On the Road and also in The Subterraneans and The Dharma Bums. His other works include Big Sur, Desolation Angels, Lonesome Traveler, Visions of Gerard, Tristessa, and a book of poetry called Mexico City Blues. Jack Kerouac died in 1969. Ethan Hawke (Reader) A four-time Academy Award nominee, twice for writing and twice for acting, ETHAN HAWKE has starred in the films Dead Poets Society, Reality Bites, Gattaca and Training Day, as well as Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise trilogy and Boyhood. He is the author of Rules for a Knight, The Hottest State, Ash Wednesday and A Bright Ray of Darkness. He lives in Brooklyn with his four children and his wife.

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', so he withdrew to a cabin in Big Sur on the Californian coast. The resulting novel, in which his autobiographical hero Jack Duluoz wrestles with doubt, alcohol dependency and his urge towards self-destruction, is one of Kerouac's most personal and searingly honest works. Ending with the poem 'Sea: Sounds of the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur', it shows a man coming down from his hedonistic youth and trying to come to terms with fame, the world and himself.

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