Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters

"[An] essential Beat masterpiece." --The Village Voice.

Perhaps one of the last great dual correspondences of the twentieth century, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters reveals not only the process of creation of the two most celebrated members of the Beat Generation, but also the unfolding of a remarkable friendship of immense pathos and spiritual depth. Through this exhilarating exchange of letters, two-thirds of which have never been published before, Kerouac and Ginsberg emerge first and foremost as writers of artistic passion, innovation, and genius. Vivid and enthralling, the letters, which date from their first meeting in 1944 to Kerouac's untimely death in 1969, chronicle the endless struggle, anguish, and sacrifice involved in giving form to their literary visions.

Author: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 06/28/2011
Pages: 528
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.13lbs
Size: 8.88h x 6.08w x 1.17d
ISBN: 9780143119548

Review Citation(s):
New York Times Book Review 07/24/2011 pg. 24

About the Author

Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1922, the youngest of three children in a Franco-American family. He attended local Catholic and public schools and won a scholarship to Columbia University in New York City, where he first met Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs. His first novel, The Town and the City, appeared in 1950, but it was On the Road, published in 1957 and memorializing his adventures with Neal Cassady, that epitomized to the world what became known as the "Beat generation" and made Kerouac one of the most best-known writers of his time. Publication of many other books followed, among them The Dharma Bums, The Subterraneans, and Big Sur. Kerouac considered all of his autobiographical fiction to be part of "one vast book," The Duluoz Legend. He died in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1969, at the age of forty-seven.

Bill Morgan is an archival consultant, editor, and writer. He is the author and editor of more than 40 books including I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg; The Typewriter Is Holy: The Complete, Uncensored History of the Beat Generation; William S. Burroughs' Rub Out the Word; and The Letters of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. He has worked as the archivist for Allen Ginsberg, Arthur Miller, Oliver Sacks, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, among many others.