Jack Kerouac's American Journey: The Real-Life Odyssey of "On the Road"
This straightforward recounting of the travels that inspiredOn the Roadattempts to fill in some of the gaps left by the already extensive chronicles of the famous beat's life. Though no period of the beat time line has been more fully documented, Maher (Kerouac: His Life and Work) tackles the details with a clear-eyed objectivity that is refreshingly focused and relatively devoid of the spin that often plagues these endeavors. Maher draws on a wide range of sources, most notably some of Kerouac's less read works such asVisions of Cody, to gain insight into little-explored aspects of the writer's personality. For example, while Kerouac's Thomas Wolfe–obsession has been exhausted by scholars and biographers, Maher delves into Kerouac's experiences with Dostoyevski and Tolstoy, and, on a related tangent, explores Kerouac's Catholicism more comprehensively than most. Maher's book also fulfills the promise of its subtitle by showing the reader how real-life events corresponded to the famous passages ofOn the Road,with Maher's impressive research uncovering small gems like the appearance of a cowboy in a Colorado diner. Moments like these render this work another fine tool in the growing arsenal of the true Kerouac obsessive.(Oct. 9)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.