His first novel is a revelation ... the writing is vivid serious and extraordinary ... wonderful The Times The Sea is My Brother is Jack Kerouacs very first novel begun shortly after his tour as a merchant sailor in 1942. Lost during his lifetime it is an intense portrait of friendship and brotherhood and a meditation on the desire to escape society following the fortunes of two men as they impulsively decide to work their passage on the S.S. Westminster: drinking arguing playing cards dodging torpedoes and contemplating the vast terrible beauty of the sea. Published with fragments of early stories and letters this visceral work gives a unique insight into the young Kerouac and the formation of his genius. Whats clear from this newly published first novel is that Kerouac was positively fizzing with talent at an early age Sunday Times About the Author Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell Massachusetts where he said he roamed fields and riverbanks by day and night wrote little novels in my room first novel written at age eleven also kept extensive diaries and newspapers covering my own-invented horse-racing and baseball and football worlds (as recorded in the novel Doctor Sax). He was educated by Jesuit brothers in Lowell. He said that he decided to become a writer at age seventeen under influence of Sebastian Sampas local young poet who later died on Anzio beach head; read the life of Jack London at eighteen and decided to also be a lonesome traveler; early literary influences Saroyan and Hemingway; later Wolfe (after I had broken leg in Freshman football at Columbia read Tom Wol... See more
His first novel is a revelation ... the writing is vivid serious and extraordinary ... wonderful The Times The Sea is My Brother is Jack Kerouacs very first novel begun shortly after his tour as a merchant sailor in 1942. Lost during his lifetime it is an intense portrait of friendship and brotherhood and a meditation on the desire to escape society following the fortunes of two men as they impulsively decide to work their passage on the S.S. Westminster: drinking arguing playing cards dodging torpedoes and contemplating the vast terrible beauty of the sea. Published with fragments of early stories and letters this visceral work gives a unique insight into the young Kerouac and the formation of his genius. Whats clear from this newly published first novel is that Kerouac was positively fizzing with talent at an early age Sunday Times About the Author Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell Massachusetts where he said he roamed fields and riverbanks by day and night wrote little novels in my room first novel written at age eleven also kept extensive diaries and newspapers covering my own-invented horse-racing and baseball and football worlds (as recorded in the novel Doctor Sax). He was educated by Jesuit brothers in Lowell. He said that he decided to become a writer at age seventeen under influence of Sebastian Sampas local young poet who later died on Anzio beach head; read the life of Jack London at eighteen and decided to also be a lonesome traveler; early literary influences Saroyan and Hemingway; later Wolfe (after I had broken leg in Freshman football at Columbia read Tom Wolfe and roamed his New York on crutches).Kerouac wished however to develop his own new prose style which he called spontaneous prose. He used this technique to record the life of the American traveler and the experiences of the Beat generation of the 1950s. This may clearly be seen in his most famous novel On the Road and also in The Subterraneans and The Dharma Bums. His first more orthodox published novel was The Town and the City. Jack Kerouac who described himself as a strange solitary crazy Catholic mystic was working on his longest novel a surrealistic study of the last ten years of his life when he died in 1969 aged forty-seven.Other works by Jack Kerouac include Big Sur Desolation Angels Lonesome Traveler Visions of Gerard Tristessa and a book of poetry called Mexico City Blues. On the Road: The Original Scroll the full uncensored transcription of the original manuscript of On the Road is published by Penguin Modern Classics.