About the book
Set between the bohemian parties of San Francisco and the mountains of the High Sierras, Jack Kerouac's 1958 novel follows the narrator Ray Smith, a version of Kerouac, and Japhy Ryder, a poet, mountaineer and Zen Buddhist modeled on Gary Snyder. Ray is searching for a Buddhist frame for his experiences, and Japhy drives much of his story. The action moves between city life, with jazz clubs, poetry readings and drunken parties, and the outdoors, with hiking, hitchhiking and a climb of Matterhorn Peak. An early chapter recreates the Six Gallery reading, where Alvah Goldbook, based on Allen Ginsberg, reads a poem called Wail. The novel later shaped the hippie counterculture of the 1960s.
Author Josh Waitzkin said on a podcast that Kerouac's books, which he read at seventeen, had a huge impact on him and showed him that life could be ecstatically beautiful.
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This book has 1 recommendation
Josh Waitzkin (Author)
If we go back to when I was seventeen, Jack Kerouac has had a huge impact in my life on the road. His books tapped me into the idea that life could be ecstatically beautiful.
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