Book of Sketches
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A luminous, intimate, and transcendental glimpse into the mind of Jack Kerouac, one of the most original voices of the twentieth century
“Sketching . . . Everything activates in front of you in myriad profusion, you just have to purify your mind and let it pour the words and write with 100% personal honesty.”
In 1951, it was suggested to Jack Kerouac by his friend Ed White that he “sketch in the streets like a painter but with words.” In August of the following year, Kerouac began writing down prose poem “sketches” in small notebooks that he kept in the breast pockets of his shirts. For two years he recorded travels, observations, and meditations on art and life as he moved across America and down to Mexico and back. The poems are often strung together so that over the course of several of them, a little story—or travelogue—appears, complete in itself.
In 1957, Kerouac sat down with the fifteen handwritten sketch notebooks he had accumulated and typed them into a manuscript called Book of Sketches. Published for the first time, this work offers a detailed portrait of Kerouac at a key period of his literary career.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Somewhere between diary, verbal sketchbook and play-by-play account of whatever passed before his eyes, this collection of poems transcribed from notebooks Kerouac kept in his pocket between 1952 and 1954 turns out to rank with his most interesting work. From clipped descriptions of America's underbelly ("a pile of junk, & the/ girders of the viaduct have / great black bolt heads/ like knobs of a / sweating steel black/ city") to vague hipster prophesying ("The next great con-/ flict will be between/ Hip & Christ"), Whitmanesque embraces of his fellow man ("...I have cared/ for ye dutchmen"), love notes to famous beatnik friends ("O Allen Sad Allen Ah / Mystery") and sad, self-deprecating prayers ("Drink is good for/ love good for/ music let it/ be good for writing"), Kerouac hits all the notes for which he and his fellow beats are known. While not everything here is golden, the immediacy and unpretentiousness of this off-the-cuff writing makes it an intimate glimpse into the consciousness of a man who simply couldn't stop observing. A short, aggrandizing introduction by painter George Condo sets the tone.
