On the Road (For Further Study)

For Further Study

• Lee Bartlett, "The Dionysian Vision of Jack Kerouac," in The Beats: Essays of Criticism, edited by Lee Bartlett, McFarland, 1981, pp. 115-23.

  Lee uses psychoanalyst C. G. Jung's theories to illuminate the connection Kerouac makes between the jazz musician and the Dionysian writer.

• Jim Burns, "Kerouac and Jazz," in The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Vol. III, No. 2, Summer, 1983.

  Explicates the references to jazz pieces and musicians in On the Road and other Kerouac works.

• Carolyn Cassady, Off the Road: My Years with Kerouac, Cassady, and Ginsberg, New York, 1990.

  The memoirs of Neal Cassady's wife.

• Ann Charters, Kerouac: A Biography, Straight Arrow Books, 1973, 419 p.

  The first biography of Jack Kerouac.

• Warren French, Jack Kerouac, Twayne, 1986, 147 p.

  Analyzes the novels that comprise "The Duluoz Legend" as an extended effort by Kerouac to recast his life in the form of a literary legend analogous to the Stephen Dedalus novels of James Joyce.

• Barry Gifford and Lawrence Lee, Jack's Book, St. Martin's Press, 1978, 339 p.

  An oral history of Kerouac and his friends.

• John Clellon Holmes, "The Philosophy of the Beats," in Esquire Vol. 99, No. 6, June, 1983, pp. 158-67.

  Early analysis originally published in the February 1958 issue of Esquire that emphasizes the importance of the spiritual quest to the Beats.

• Granville H. Jones, "Jack Kerouac and the American Conscience," in Lectures on Modern Novelists, edited by Arthur. Broes, et. al., Books for Libraries Press, 1972, pp. 25-39.

  Defines the individualistic philosophy Kerouac advocated in his fiction and life as a distinctly American phenomenon.

• Jack Kerouac, Selected Letters 1940 – 1956, edited by Ann Charters, Viking, 1995.

  Annotated letters from Kerouac's pre-fame period.

• Gerald Nicosia, Memory Babe: A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac, Grove Press, 1983, 767 p.

  The most exhaustive Kerouac biography. Includes critical analysis of his novels.