First published in 1958, a year after On the Road put the Beat Generation on the map, The Dharma Bums stands as one of Jack Kerouac's most powerful and influential novels. The story focuses on two ebullient young Americans--mountaineer, poet, and Zen Buddhist Japhy Ryder, and Ray Smith, a zestful, innocent writer-- whose quest for Truth leads them on a heroic odyssey, from marathon parties and poetry jam sessions in San Francisco's Bohemia to solitude...

"In late 1944, under rather mysterious circumstances, aspiring writer Jack Kerouac lost a novella-length manuscript titled The Haunted Life. Set in Galloway, a fictionalized version of Kerouac's hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts, the coming-of-age story of Peter Martin-a character based on the author's recently departed friend Sebastian Sampas-tackles the pressing issues of the day. At home in the working-class town the summer before his sophomore...

"All three [novels] were seen by Kerouac as forming part of The Duluoz Legend, a multivolume autobiographical saga recording the major events of the author's life"--Page 761.

Although he is best known as a writer of prose, Jack Kerouac was an important poet, his work described by Michael McClure as "startling in its majesty and comedy and gentleness and vision". These eight extended poems, composed between 1954 and 1961, offer exuberant forays into language and consciousness that combine rich imagery, complex internal rhythms, and a reverent attentiveness to the moments.

In the summer of 1944, a shocking murder rocked the fledgling Beats. William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, both still unknown, we inspired by the crime to collaborate on a novel, a hard-boiled tale of bohemian New York during World War II, full of drugs and art, obsession and brutality, with scenes and characters drawn from their own lives. Finally published after more than sixty years, this is a captivating read, and incomparable literary artifact,...