In On the Road and other iconic works, Jack Kerouaccreated a
quintessentially American voice and a revolutionaryprose style. This
remarkable gathering ofpreviously unpublished writings reveals as
neverbefore the extraordinary literary journey that led to hisphenomenal
success a journey with deep roots inthe language and culture of Kerouac s
French Canadianchildhood. Edited and published with unprecedented access
tothe Kerouac archives, The Unknown Kerouac presentstwo lost novels, The
Night Is My Woman and Old Bullin the Bowery, which Kerouac wrote in
French duringthe especially fruitful years of 1951 and 1952.
Discoveredamong his papers in the mid-nineties, they havebeen translated
into English for the first time by Jean-Christophe Cloutier, who
incorporates Kerouac sown partial translations. Also included are two
journals from the heart of thissame crucial period. In Private
Philologies, Riddles, and a Ten-Day Writing Log, Kerouac recounts a
briefstay in Denver where he works on an early version ofOn the Road,
reads dime novels, and even rides in arodeo and shows him contemplating
writers likeChaucer and Joyce and playing with riddles andetymologies.
Journal 1951, begun during a stay in aBronx VA hospital, charts, in
ecstatic, moving, andself-revealing pages, the wave of insights and
breakthroughsthat led Kerouac to the most singular transformationof
American prose style since Hemingway. This landmark volume is rounded out
with thememoir Memory Babe, a poignant evocation of childhoodplay and
reverie in a robust immigrant community, in which Kerouac uncannily
retrieves and distillsthe subtlest sense impressions. And finally, in an
interviewwith his longtime friend and fellow Beat JohnClellon Holmes and in
the late fragment Beat SpotlightKerouac reflects on his meteoric career
and unlookedfor celebrity.