Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters

by Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Bill Morgan (Editor), David Stanford (Editor)

Overview

"[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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143119548
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/28/2011
Pages:	528
Sales rank:	217,537
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.20(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Jack Kerouac(1922-1969), the central figure of the Beat Generation, was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1922 and died in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1969. Among his many novels are On the Road, The Dharma Bums, Big Sur, and Visions of Cody.

Bill Morgan is a painter and archival consultant. He is the author of The Beat Generation in New York: A Walking Tour of Jack Kerouac’s City, The Beat Generation in SanFrancisco: A Literary Tour, and edited Deliberate Prose: Selected Essays of Allen Ginsberg 1952–1995. Also for October 2006 publication, he has edited Ginsberg’s The Book of Martrydom and Artifice: First Journals and Poems, 1937–1952, with Jaunita Lieberman-Plimpton, as well as Howl on Trial: the Battle for Free Expression.

Editorial Reviews

"The Kerouac-Ginsberg letters are marvelous and lively. The exchange ranks among the best examples of completely engaged literary correspondence we know in the past 50 years."
-The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Open-hearted and richly detailed. . . Rich in news about fellow Beat writers, including John Clellon Holmes, William Burroughs, and Gregory Corso, among others, their correspondence provides a bird's-eye view of what went into the making and marketing of the Beat Generation. The publication of these letters between two of America's leading 20th-century authors is an extraordinary event in American literature, particularly welcome in this era of chat and Twitter."
-Library Journal

"Documenting the adventures of "Old Bean" (Allen) and "Jackiboo" from their days at Columbia through October 1969, weeks before Kerouac's death, the letters form a kind of essential Beat masterpiece, and offer hilarious behind-the-scenes commentary on all the "mad ones" involved."
-The Village Voice

"[E]ditors Stanford and Morgan showcase 200 high-voltage letters, most never before published, that embody the energy and psychic hunger that fueled the creativity of these giants of American literature . . . This incandescent collection deepens our understanding of an essential literary revolution."
-Booklist

"The collection reads like a Dostoyevsky novel"
-The New York Observer

"In the seductive collection they've called Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters, the editors Bill Morgan and David Stanford stake out a distinct piece of literary turf. They do this despite the fact that Kerouac and Ginsberg were expansive letter writers, that each wrote to many correspondents, and that reams of these other letters have already shown up elsewhere."
-The New York Times (Daily Review)

"The depth of their [Kerouac and Ginsberg's] development as friends but especially as writers has never been shown more clearly than in this stunning new collection, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters. . . Ginsberg biographer Bill Morgan and David Stanford, a longtime editor at Viking, provide readers with a volume as illuminating as it is indispensable for understanding these writers and their work."
-The Los Angeles Times

"Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters is destined to become an indispensable item on any fan's bookshelf. . . The collected Kerouac-Ginsberg correspondence is pure literary gold that fans and scholars will mine for decades."
-San Francisco Chronicle

From the Publisher

These letters can be as long-winded, rambling, visionary and impenetrable as each man's writing style would suggest. But they can also be sharp, lucid, funny, tender, intimate, gossipy, jubilant and absolutely honest about the two aspiring authors' gigantic ambitions.
—The New York Times

Janet Maslin

Kerouac and Ginsberg first met on Columbia University's campus in 1943, both tyro authors drawn to each other by a love of literature. This remarkable collection of letters—two-thirds of which are published here for the first time—documents their friendship through 1963, six years before Kerouac's untimely death. Open-hearted and richly detailed, the letters discuss the authors' personal lives and loves, their investigations into Buddhism, their ongoing creative projects, and their struggle to find outlets for their works leading up to the publication of Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems in 1956 and Kerouac's On The Road in 1957. Rich in news about fellow Beat writers, including John Clellon Holmes, William Burroughs, and Gregory Corso, among others, their correspondence provides a bird's-eye view of what went into the making and marketing of the Beat Generation. VERDICT The publication of these letters between two of America's leading 20th-century authors is an extraordinary event in American literature, particularly welcome in this era of chat and Twitter.—William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNY

Library Journal