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From Publishers Weekly
This new edition of the primary beat's private dream diaries presents the whole of Kerouac's original manuscript, including some 200-odd dreams not published in the initial selection (1961). More or less liberated from the requirements of the Beat swagger, Kerouac's writing is at times blissfully uncool, evoking an almost na ve and sentimental sensibility: " this kitty was an angel, and spoke the truth"; "nobody loves me 'cause there's no me." Correspondences between some dream characters and their counterparts in the novels are not accidental, and are correlated in a prologue (and by poet Robert Creeley, in an insightful introduction). But many facets of Kerouac's oeuvre appear here much less polished, and more naked and powerful: " My mother and I are arm in arm on the floor, I'm crying afraid to die, she's blissful and has one leg in pink sexually out between me, and I'm thinking 'Even on the verge of death women think of love & snaky affection' Women? who's dreaming this?" Lost love, madness, castration, cats that speak, cats in danger of their lives, people giving birth to cats, grade school classrooms, Mel Torme, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Tolstoy and Genet all make repeated appearances, lending the collection a repetitive, nonprogrammatic logic and exposing an unfamiliar sort of vulnerable beauty in Kerouac's iconic persona. One only wonders, in the end, whether anyone, even Jack Kerouac, really has such fantastic dreams. (June 30) Forecast: With memoir still a dominant beach-read genre, and with Kerouac still a Dean-like name, proper promotion and review attention could lead to significant sales. City Lights, still the premier publisher of Beatiana, will also bring out a collection of interviews, San Francisco Beat: Talking with the Poets (including Joanne Kyger, Kenneth Rexroth and Gary Snyder), in June ($19.95 paper 384p ISBN 0-87286-379-4).
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Description

"In the Book of Dreams I just continue the same story but in the dreams I had of the real-life characters I always write about."

Excerpt:

WALKING THROUGH SLUM SUBURBS of Mexico City I'm stopped by smiling threesome of cats who've disengaged themselves from the general fairly crowded evening street of brown lights, coke stands, tortillas-Unmistakably going to steal my bag-I struggled a little, gave up-Begin communicating with them my distress and in fact do so well they end up just stealing parts of my stuff. We walk off leaving the bag with someone-arm in arm like a gang to the downtown lights of Letran, across a field-

Jack Kerouac (19221969) was a principal actor in the Beat Generation, a companion of Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady in that great adventure. His books include On the Roa, The Dharma Bums, Mexico City Blues, Lonesome Traveler, Scattered Poems, Visions of Cody, Pomes All Sizes, and Scripture of the Golden Eternity.

See all Editorial Reviews

First Sentence:
OH! THE HORRIBLE VOYAGES I've had to take across the country and back with gloomy railroads and stations you never dreamed of---one of em a horrible pest of bats and crap holes and incomprehensible parks and rains, I can't see the end of it on all horizons, this is the book of dreams. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (