Understanding Jack Kerouac Paperback / softback
by Matt Theado
Part of the Understanding Contemporary American Literature series
Paperback / softback
Description
This is a concise companion to the novels of the king of the Beats. ""Understanding Jack Kerouac"" introduces readers to what Matt Theado calls Kerouac's 'unwieldy accretion of published work' - fiction, poetry, nonfiction, selected letters, religious writing, and 'true-story novels'.
Presenting this cultural icon of the Beat Generation primarily as a writer rather than as a social rebel or media celebrity, Theado elucidates the reasons Kerouac's reputation has outlived disparaging beatnik associations and why his writings continue to attract an expanding readership.
Theado takes a book-by-book approach to the sometimes-confusing canon and develops a framework for understanding Kerouac's thematic concerns, writing techniques, and artistic evolution.
Proposing that the real legend of Jack Kerouac is the saga of a writer at work, Theado suggests that as recognition of Kerouac's artistic achievement grows, the Duluoz Legend - Kerouac's series of barely fictionalized re-creations of his life - outgrows the genre of autobiography and becomes an intimate chronicle of a writer's stylistic maturation.
Theado traces Kerouac's development as a crafter of language and contends that spontaneous prose, Kerouac's literary hallmark, may prove to be his chief claim to literary longevity.
Information
-
Out of stock
- Format:Paperback / softback
- Pages:224 pages
- Publisher:University of South Carolina Press
- Publication Date:30/05/2009
- Category:
- ISBN:9781570038464
Information
-
Out of stock
- Format:Paperback / softback
- Pages:224 pages
- Publisher:University of South Carolina Press
- Publication Date:30/05/2009
- Category:
- ISBN:9781570038464
