JACK KEROUAC (1922-1969) was an American novelist and poet, a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation, although he actively disliked such labels.

Kerouac's early writing, particularly his first novel THE TOWN AND THE CITY (1950), was considered derivative of the novels of Thomas Wolfe.  Unhappy with the pace of his prose, Kerouac developed a technique that was heavily influenced by jazz, especially the Bebop genre, and later incorporated ideas developed from his Buddhist studies.  He often referred to this style as "spontaneous prose" -- a quest for pure, unadulterated language, the truth of the heart unobstructed by the lying of revision.

His new technique is clearly seen in his most famous novel, ON THE ROAD (1957), which featured many key figures of the Beat movement, such as William S. Burroughs (Old Bull Lee), Allen Ginsberg (Carlo Marx) and Neal Cassady (Dean Moriarty) represented by characters in the novel, including Kerouac himself as the narrator Sal Paradise.  It captured the spirit of its time as no other work of the 20th century had since F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925) and became a defining work of the postwar Beat and Counterculture generations, with its nonconformist celebration of sex, jazz, poetry, and drug use.

Kerouac, who once described himself as a "strange solitary crazy Catholic mystic", turned to Buddhist study and practice from 1953 to 1956, immersing himself in the study of Zen.  His genre-defying SOME OF THE DHARMA (1953) is a compilation of spiritual material, meditations, prayers, haiku, and musings on the teaching of Buddha.  His experience of spending 63 days atop Desolation Peak in Washington state is recounted in DESOLATION ANGELS (1965) using haiku as bridges (connectives in jazz) between sections of spontaneous prose.  In 1956 he wrote a sutra, THE SCRIPTURE OF THE GOLDEN ETERNITY.  He began to think of his entire oeuvre as a "Divine Comedy of the Buddha," thereby combining Eastern and Western traditions.

While best known for his novels, Kerouac is also noted for his poetry.  He said that he wanted "to be considered as a jazz poet blowing a long blues in an afternoon jazz session on Sunday."  Many of Kerouac's poems follow the style of his free-flowing, uninhibited prose, ranging across Western poetic traditions, and also incorporating elements of jazz and Buddhism.  In his pocket notebooks, Kerouac wrote and rewrote haiku, revising and perfecting them.  He also incorporated his haiku into his prose.  His mastery of the form is demonstrated in his novel THE DHARMA BUMS (1958).


The following books are in ePUB format unless otherwise noted:

== FICTION ==

* And the Hippos Were Boiled in their Tank (Grove, 2008) [with Wm Burroughs]
* Big Sur (Penguin, 1992)
* Big Sur (Penguin Classics, 2012)
* Book of Dreams (City Lights, 2001) -- PDF
* Desolation Angels (Open Road, 2016)
* Dharma Bums, The (Penguin Classics, 2006).  Ann Douglas, intro. -- ePUB + PDF
* Doctor Sax (Grove, 1987)
* Electrocution of Block 38383939383 (Elektron, 2013)
* Haunted Life and Other Writings (Da Capo, 2014). Todd Tietchen, ed.
* Lonesome Traveler (Grove, 1988)
* Maggie Cassidy (Penguin, 1993)
* Maggie Cassidy ("Annotated") (Devault-Graves, 2013)
* On the Road (Penguin Classics, 2000).  Ann Charters, intro.
* On the Road: The Original Scroll (Viking, 2007). H. Cunnell, ed. -- ePUB + PDF
* Orpheus Emerged (LiveREADS, 2000) -- PDF
* Road Novels 1957-1960 (Library of America, 2007) -- PDF (by @Mohamed5438)
* Satori in Paris and Pic (Grove, 1988)
* Sea Is My Brother: The Lost Novel (Da Capo, 2013). Expanded critical edition.
* Subterraneans, The (Grove, 1988)
* Town and the City, The (Open Road, 2016)
* Tristessa (Penguin, 1992)
* Vanity of Duluoz: An Adventurous Education, 1935-46 (Penguin, 1994)
* Visions of Cody (Penguin, 1993)
* Visions of Gerard (Penguin, 1991)

== POETRY ==

* Book of Blues (Penguin, 1995)
* Book of Haikus (Penguin, 2003)
* Book of Sketches, 1952-57 (Penguin, 2006)
* Heaven & Other Poems (Grey Fox, 1977) -- PDF
* Mexico City Blues (Grove, 1990)
* Old Angel Midnight (Open Road, 2016)
* Poetry of Jack Kerouac (Open Road, 2017)
* Pomes All Sizes (City Lights, 1992) -- PDF
* San Francisco Blues (Penguin, 1995) -- PDF
* Scattered Poems (Open Road, 2016)
* Scripture of the Golden Eternity (Open Road, 2016)

== OTHER WORK & NON-FICTION ==

* Atop an Underwood: Early Stories & Other Writings (Penguin, 2000). P. Marion, ed.
* Good Blonde & Others (Open Road, 2016)
* Portable Jack Kerouac (Viking, 1995).  Ann Charters, ed. -- PDF
* Unknown Kerouac: Rare, Unpublished ... Writings (LoA, 2016).  T. Tietchen, ed.
* Wake Up: A Life of the Buddha (Penguin, 2008)

== LETTERS, JOURNALS, INTERVIEWS ==

* Door Wide Open: A  Beat Love Affair in Letters 1957-1958 (Penguin, 2000) -- PDF
* Empty Phantoms: Interviews and Encounters (n.p., 2015). Paul Maher Jr. ed.
* Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: Letters (Viking, 2010). Morgan and Stanford eds.
* Paris Review Interview (from Writers at Work IV, ed. Plimpton [Viking, 1976]) -- PDF
* Windblown World: Journals, 1947-1954 (Viking, 2004). Douglas Brinkley, ed. -- PDF

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