Atop an Underwood : Early Stories and Other Writings

by Jack Kerouac; Paul Marion

• ISBN13: 9780670885367
• ISBN10: 0670885363
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-11-01
• Publisher: Viking Pr

Summary

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 Atop an Underwood brings together more than sixty previously unpublished works that Kerouac wrote before he was twenty-two, ranging from stories and poems to plays and parts of novels, including an excerpt from his 1943 merchant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.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. xiii
Pine Forests and Pure Thought 1936-1940
from Background	p. 3
Repulsion May Race Here in Exhibition Feature!!	p. 6
from Football Novella	p. 8
Jack Lewis's Baseball Chatter	p. 17
[One Long Strange Dream]	p. 19
Count Basie's Band Best in Land; Group Famous for "Solid" Swing	p. 21
Go Back	p. 24
Nothing	p. 26
A Play I Want to Write	p. 28
Concentration	p. 30
We Thronged	p. 33
[A Day in September]	p. 35
[I Know I Am August]	p. 41
Radio Script: The Spirit of '14	p. 44
[I Remember the Days of My Youth]	p. 50
from Raw Rookie Nerves	p. 52
Where the Road Begins	p. 57
New York Nite Club--	p. 61
An Original Kicker 1941
from Background	p. 65
There's Something About a Cigar	p. 66
God	p. 72
If I Were Wealthy	p. 79
[One Sunday Afternoon in July]	p. 82
The Birth of a Socialist	p. 85
No Connection: A Novel That I Don't Intend to Finish	p. 93
On the Porch, Remembering	p. 97
The Sandbank Sage	p. 99
Farewell Song, Sweet from My Trees	p. 104
[I Have to Pull Up My Stakes and Roll, Man]	p. 113
Odyssey (Continued)	p. 116
[At 18, I Suddenly Discovered the Delight of Rebellion]	p. 118
Observations	p. 119
Definition of a Poet	p. 121
America in the Night	p. 123
Woman Going to Hartford	p. 126
Old Love-Light	p. 127
I Tell You It Is October!	p. 129
[Here I Am at Last with a Typewriter]	p. 130
[Atop an Underwood: Introduction]	p. 132
The Good Jobs	p. 135
From Radio City to the Crown	p. 138
... The Little Cottage by the Sea....	p. 140
The Juke-Box Is Saving America	p. 142
... Hartford After Work....	p. 143
... Legends and Legends....	p. 145
... A Kerouac That Turned Out Sublime....	p. 148
The Father of My Father	p. 150
Credo	p. 153
... Hungry Young Writer's Notebook....	p. 155
A Young Writer's Notebook	p. 157
[I Am Going to Stress a New Set of Values]	p. 160
[I Am My Mother's Son]	p. 162
[Howdy!]	p. 164
Today	p. 167
This I Do Know--	p. 169
Search by Night	p. 170
To Portray Life Accurately 1942-1943
from Background	p. 179
Sadness at Six	p. 181
The Joy of Duluoz	p. 184
Famine for the Heart	p. 188
[The Very Thing I Live For]	p. 198
The Mystery	p. 200
Thinking of Thomas Wolfe on a Winter's Night	p. 204
from The Sea Is My Brother (Merchant Mariner)	p. 205
Beauty as a Lasting Truth	p. 225
My Generation, My World	p. 228
The Wound of Living	p. 230
Wounded in Action	p. 232
The Romanticist	p. 235
The Boy from Philadelphia	p. 237
The Two Americans	p. 242
Acknowledgments	p. 247
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