a book
Desolation Angels
Jack Kerouac · 1995 · 409 pages
The classic autobiographical novel, “one of the most true, comic, and grizzly journeys in American literature” (Time), from acclaimed author Jack Kerouac
“If the Pulitzer Prize were given for the book that is most representative of American life, I would nominate Desolation Angels.”—Dan Wakefield, The Atlantic
Desolation Angels covers a key year in Jack Kerouac’s life—the period that led up to the publication of On the Road in September of 1957. After spending two months in the summer of 1956 as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak in the North Cascade Mountains of Washington, Kerouac’s fictional self Jack Duluoz comes down from the isolated mountains to the wild excitement of the bars, jazz clubs, and parties of San Francisco, before traveling on to Mexico City, New York, Tangiers, Paris, and London. Duluoz attempts to extricate himself from the world but fails, for one must “live, travel, adventure, bless, and don’t be sorry.” Desolation Angels is quintessential Kerouac.
“If the Pulitzer Prize were given for the book that is most representative of American life, I would nominate Desolation Angels.”—Dan Wakefield, The Atlantic
Desolation Angels covers a key year in Jack Kerouac’s life—the period that led up to the publication of On the Road in September of 1957. After spending two months in the summer of 1956 as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak in the North Cascade Mountains of Washington, Kerouac’s fictional self Jack Duluoz comes down from the isolated mountains to the wild excitement of the bars, jazz clubs, and parties of San Francisco, before traveling on to Mexico City, New York, Tangiers, Paris, and London. Duluoz attempts to extricate himself from the world but fails, for one must “live, travel, adventure, bless, and don’t be sorry.” Desolation Angels is quintessential Kerouac.
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sourced from public statements
Ralph Steadman
“A fantastic experimental work, in which Kerouac spends two months alone on a mountaintop trying to find himself, travels with his mom to California, and joins his pals Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and William Burroughs in Tangiers—and does away with punctuation, which I found absolutely mind-blowing. After reading it, I went back to On the Road, finding it wonderfully honest and disarming, but oddly quaint.”↗