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On the Road
by Kerouac, Jack
- Used
- near fine
- first
- Condition
- Near Fine/Very Good +
- Seller
-
Pasadena, California, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
New York: The Viking Press, 1957. First edition. Near Fine/Very Good +. A Near Fine copy with a small spot to the closed foredge of the text block, internally clean and unmarked. In a Very Good+ unrestored first issue jacket. Spine a bit faded, small chips and tears at the spine ends and extremities, otherwise an attractive example. Housed in a blue clamshell case.
"It changed my life like it changed everyone else's," Bob Dylan said of On The Road. Jack Kerouac's classic Roman A Clef, published in 1957, was the defining work of the beat generation. It follows the travels of Sal Paradise, a stand in for Kerouac himself, and is based on a series of journeys Kerouac took from 1947 to 1950. The work was typed up on a continuous "scroll" of sheets that Kerouac had taped together. On The Road appears on both Modern Library's list of the 100 best novels of the century and on Time Magazine list of the 100 best English language novels from 1923-2005. "[I]ts publication is a historic occasion... the most beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac himself named years ago as 'beat,' and whose principal avatar he is" (Contemporary New York Times review). Near Fine in Very Good + dust jacket.
"It changed my life like it changed everyone else's," Bob Dylan said of On The Road. Jack Kerouac's classic Roman A Clef, published in 1957, was the defining work of the beat generation. It follows the travels of Sal Paradise, a stand in for Kerouac himself, and is based on a series of journeys Kerouac took from 1947 to 1950. The work was typed up on a continuous "scroll" of sheets that Kerouac had taped together. On The Road appears on both Modern Library's list of the 100 best novels of the century and on Time Magazine list of the 100 best English language novels from 1923-2005. "[I]ts publication is a historic occasion... the most beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac himself named years ago as 'beat,' and whose principal avatar he is" (Contemporary New York Times review). Near Fine in Very Good + dust jacket.
Synopsis
Perhaps the most famous and influential of the Beat novels, Jack Kerouac's On the Road represents much of what made the Beat and Counterculture movements so unique and important. The plot concerning the road trips and adventures experienced by Kerouac and his friends is well-known, as are the rumors and tall tales of the books' production. Kerouac often claimed that the wrote On the Road in a mere three weeks on a single 120-foot scroll of paper. Although that scroll does indeed exist and is featured in museums, Kerouac kept detailed journals of his travels that would later become passages and chapters in the finished product. The book was first published by Viking in 1957. Viking Press would go on to publish an edited version of On the Road in 2007 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first printing. They substituted the fictional names for the real Beat protagonists, and they even included some of the more sexually explicit passages that were edited out of the 1957 edition. Due to the cultural significance of the book, true first editions/first printings of On the Road are quite valuable. But be warned: it is easy to mistake reprints or book club editions for the real thing, so always check with an expert before making a significant purchase.
Read More: Identifying first editions of On the Road
Reviews
On Sep 3 2011, West of Eden Books said:
A few years ago, 50 years after its initial publication, and 35 years since I had read it for the first time myself, I loaned my battered paperback copy of On The Road to a young friend of mine who had asked me "What should I read next?". Her reaction was, as I would have hoped, overwhelmingly positive. "It made me want to go hitchhiking" she told me. She didn't go, of course, that's considered too dangerous these days, but she caught the spirit of Kerouac from those yellowed old pages and that made me happy. It made me remember myself from the days before I was twenty. When the world was wide-open in front of me with all my limitless imagination and inexhaustible energy to carry me forward. Those two-and-a-half-hundred pages created in a Benzedrine-fueled typing frenzy spoke to both of us across generations as great writing is meant to do. Jack's tales of Casady, Ginsberg, Burroughs, and the rest would continue in his books that followed but the spirit and zest of On The Road stand alone. Bob Dylan said of On The Road, "It changed my life like it changed everyone else's". Myself and my young friend were lucky enough to experience it that same way.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Whitmore Rare Books
(US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 5614
- Title
- On the Road
- Author
- Kerouac, Jack
- Book Condition
- Used - Near Fine
- Jacket Condition
- Very Good +
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- First edition
- Publisher
- The Viking Press
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 1957
- Keywords
- Because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time
Terms of Sale
Whitmore Rare Books
15 day return guarantee, with full refund if an item arrives damaged or not matching the description.
About the Seller
Whitmore Rare Books
Biblio member since 2009
Pasadena, California
About Whitmore Rare Books
We operate a retail shop in "Old Town" Pasadena open normal business hours Tuesday through Saturday.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- First Edition
- In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
- Fine
- A book in fine condition exhibits no flaws. A fine condition book closely approaches As New condition, but may lack the...
- Text Block
- Most simply the inside pages of a book. More precisely, the block of paper formed by the cut and stacked pages of a book....
- Good+
- A term used to denote a condition a slight grade better than Good.
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
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This Book’s Categories
- Bindings & Editions Modern First Editions
- Fiction & Literature Action & Adventure
- Fiction & Literature Fiction by Region American Fiction
- Fiction & Literature Beat Literature
- Fiction & Literature Classic Literature
- Fiction & Literature Literary Studies Literary Criticism
- Fiction & Literature Modern Fiction
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