Jack Kerouac

Ann Charters

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Massachusetts

Fictionalized narrative of travels by Kerouac and his friend Neal Cassady under pseudonyms of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty.

On the Road

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Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Texas

Novel of adolescent love in a New England mill town.

Maggie Cassidy

b1993d97-ad00-4fc0-b0e7-97aacf7c84b6-1

Connecticut

Minnesota

Vermont

Jack Kerouac’s classic novel about friendship, the search for meaning, and the allure of nature 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 and mountain climbing in the High Sierras.

The Dharma Bums

18624d66-8198-4dbd-bf27-1bfd63b471f4-1

California

(Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

The legendary novel of freedom and the search for authenticity that defined a generation, now in a striking new Pengiun Classics Deluxe Edition Inspired by Jack Kerouac's adventures with Neal Cassady, On the Road tells the story of two friends whose cross-country road trips are a quest for meaning and true experience. Written with a mixture of sad-eyed naiveté and wild ambition and imbued with Kerouac's love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz, On the Road is the quintessential American vision of freedom and hope, a book that changed American literature and changed anyone who has ever picked it up.

A Novel

"[A] pleasant and underrated surprise . . . [Visions of Gerard] has a winning simplicity and sweetness." --The Washington Post

The first book in Kerouac's Duluoz Legend, a novella detailing the writer's early life as refracted through the prism of the untimely loss of his brother

Unique among Jack Kerouac's novels, Visions of Gerard captures the scenes and sensations of earliest childhood, the first four years in the life of Ti Jean Duluoz as they unfold in the short, tragic-happy life of his brother, Gerard. Set in Kerouac's hometown of Lovell, Massachusetts, childhood's intensity, innocence, suffering, and delight unfold as Gerard interacts with animals, has visions of Our Lady in heaven, astonishes the priest in the church confessional, and observes his family as they laugh and drink and weep--that is, when he isn't sick and confined to bed.

A novel that Kerouac called "my best most serious sad and true book yet," Visions of Gerard is a beautiful, unsettling, and melancholic exploration of the meaning and precariousness of existence. 

Visions of Gerard

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William S. Burroughs

BreifBooks

Illinois

A fictional account of the 1944 murder of David Kammerer by Lucien Carr, a friend of William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, features the two authors writing in alternating voices from the perspectives of a bartender and a hard-drinking merchant marine.

And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks

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Aram Saroyan

A poignant masterpiece of wrenching personal expression from the author of On the Road and The Dharma Bums

In this 1962 novel, Kerouac's alter ego Jack Duluoz, overwhelmed by success and excess, gravitates back and forth between wild binges in San Francisco and an isolated cabin on the California coast where he attempts to renew his spirit and clear his head of madness and alcohol. Only nature seems to restore him to a sense of balance. In the words of Allen Ginsberg, Big Sur "reveals consciousness in all its syntactic elaboration, detailing the luminous emptiness of his own paranoiac confusion."

Big Sur

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Really nice condition. Kerouac’s infamous poetic spin into Buddhism!

🌟 BONUS: Use my code STAR at checkout for $5 off your first purchase of $10 or more!🌟

Written during a critical period of his life, Some of the Dharma is a key volume for understanding Kerouac and the spiritual underpinnings of his work. While his future masterpiece, On the Road, languished on the desks of unresponsive editors, Kerouac turned to Buddhist practice, and in 1953 began compiling reading notes on the subject intended for his friend Allen Ginsberg. As Kerouac's Buddhist meditation practice intensified, what had begun as notes evolved into a vast and all-encompassing work of nonfiction into which he poured his life, incorporating poems, haiku, prayers, journal entries, meditations, fragments of letters, ideas about writing, overheard conversations, sketches, blues, and more. The final manuscript, completed in 1956, was as visually complex as the writing: each page was unique, typed in patterns and interlocking shapes. The elaborate form that Kerouac so painstakingly gave the book on his manual typewriter is re-created in this typeset facsimile. Passionate and playful, filled with humor, insight, sorrow, and struggle, Some of the Dharma is one of Kerouac's most profound and original works.

Some of the Dharma

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Regina Weinreich

Highlighting a lesser-known aspect of one of America's most influential authors, this new collection displays Jack Kerouac's interest in and mastery of haiku. Experimenting with this compact poetic genre throughout his career, Kerouac often included haiku in novels, correspondence, notebooks, journals, sketchbooks, and recordings. In this collection, Kerouac scholar Regina Weinreich supplements an incomplete draft of a haiku manuscript found in Kerouac's archives with a generous selection of Kerouac's other haiku, from both published and unpublished sources. With more than 500 poems, this is a must-have volume for Kerouac enthusiasts everywhere.

Book of Haikus

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Indiana

Howard Cunnell

Penny Vlagopoulos

George Mouratidis

Joshua Kupetz

New York

A reproduction of Kerouac's original 1951 scroll draft of "On the Road" offers insight into the writer's thematic vision and narrative voice as influenced by the American literary, musical, and visual arts of the post-World War II period.

On the Road: the Original Scroll

Tennessee

An Adventurous Education, 1935-46

Written in 1967 from the vantage point of the psychedelic sixties, Vanity of Duluoz is a fascinating portrait of the artist as a young man

Originally subtitled "An Adventurous Education, 1935-1946," Vanity of Duluoz presents the formative years in the life of Jack Duluoz--Kerouac's alter ego--beginning with his high school experiences as a sporting jock in small-town New England and his time at Columbia University on a football scholarship. Just as Jack's glamorous new adult life begins, so does World War II, and he joins the US Navy to travel the world. The more he experiences, the more he realizes the limits of his former plans, and decides to and return to New York, where he collides with the start of the Beat movement, and a riot of drugs, sex and writing. Vanity of Duluoz was Kerouac's final work published before his death in 1969.

Vanity of Duluoz

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Florida

The classic novel of freedom and the search for authenticity that defined a generation On the Road chronicles Jack Kerouac's years traveling the North American continent with his friend Neal Cassady, "a sideburned hero of the snowy West." As "Sal Paradise" and "Dean Moriarty," the two roam the country in a quest for self-knowledge and experience. Kerouac's love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz combine to make On the Road an inspirational work of lasting importance. Kerouac’s classic novel of freedom and longing defined what it meant to be “Beat” and has inspired every generation since its initial publication more than fifty years ago. This Penguin Classics edition contains an introduction by Ann Charters. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Utah

(Penguin Orange Collection)

Part of the Penguin Orange Collection, a limited-run series of twelve influential and beloved American classics in a bold series design offering a modern take on the iconic Penguin paperback

Winner of the 2016 AIGA + Design Observer 50 Books | 50 Covers competition

For the seventieth anniversary of Penguin Classics, the Penguin Orange Collection celebrates the heritage of Penguin's iconic book design with twelve influential American literary classics representing the breadth and diversity of the Penguin Classics library. These collectible editions are dressed in the iconic orange and white tri-band cover design, first created in 1935, while french flaps, high-quality paper, and striking cover illustrations provide the cutting-edge design treatment that is the signature of Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions today.

On the Road

Jack Kerouac's masterpiece of the Beat era was first published in 1957 and continues to provide a vital portrait of a generation adrift, as well as inspiration for travelers, dreamers, and artists in every generation that has followed.

Louisiana

Early Stories and Other Writings

Before Jack Kerouac expressed the spirit of a generation in his 1957 classic, On the Road, he spent years figuring out how he wanted to live and, above all, learning how to write. Atop an Underwood brings together more than sixty previously unpublished works that Kerouac wrote before he was twenty-two, ranging from stories and poems to plays and parts of novels, including an excerpt from his 1943 merchant marine novel, The Sea Is My Brother. These writings reveal what Kerouac was thinking, doing, and dreaming during his formative years, and reflect his primary literary influences. Readers will also find in these works the source of Kerouac's spontaneous prose style.

Uncovering a fascinating missing link in Kerouac's development as a writer, Atop an Underwood is essential reading for Kerouac fans, scholars, and critics.

Atop an Underwood

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Shelf wear, bumped corners, yellowing pages. Please see all photos. 

Good condition, clean text, 1981 City Lights 20th printing 

A record of the writer's actual dreams is populated by characters from his novels

Book of Dreams

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Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

Beautiful classic by the Beat author, invoking childhood memories and loss. Very good condition, no markings. Only mild wear on the cover. 

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Jack Kerouac; Ann Charters

On the Road

Jack Kerouac

Maggie Cassidy

Jack Kerouac

On the Road

Jack Kerouac

On the Road

Jack Kerouac

The Dharma Bums

Jack Kerouac

On the Road

Jack Kerouac

Visions of Gerard

William S. Burroughs; Jack Kerouac

And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks

Jack Kerouac; Aram Saroyan

Big Sur

Jack Kerouac

Some of the Dharma

Jack Kerouac; Regina Weinreich

Book of Haikus

Jack Kerouac

On the Road

Jack Kerouac; Howard Cunnell; Penny Vlagopoulos; George Mouratidis; Joshua Kupetz

On the Road: the Original Scroll

Jack Kerouac

On the Road

Jack Kerouac

Vanity of Duluoz

Jack Kerouac; Howard Cunnell; Penny Vlagopoulos; George Mouratidis; Joshua Kupetz

On the Road: the Original Scroll

Jack Kerouac; Ann Charters

On the Road

Jack Kerouac

On the Road

Jack Kerouac

Atop an Underwood

Jack Kerouac; Ann Charters

On the Road

Jack Kerouac

On the Road

Jack Kerouac

Book of Dreams

Jack Kerouac; Ann Charters

On the Road

Jack Kerouac

Visions of Gerard