Lonesome Traveller [Import] [Hardcover]

Jack Kerouac (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 183 pages
• Publisher: Andre Deutsch; First UK Printing edition (1962)
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0000CLCW5
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), the central figure of the Beat Generation, was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1922 and died in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1969. Among his many novels are On the Road, The Dharma Bums, Big Sur, and Visions of Cody.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great Kerouac Sampler, September 17, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Lonesome Traveler (Kerouac, Jack) (Paperback)

Though it has been a while since I have read this book, I found it distressing that there were no reviews of it in this area.
I know very many of you love Kerouac's works and styles, so I hope that this book will be given it's due attention. Its contents are five short stories or sketches that move around the central theme of travel. A sketch about the "railroad earth" written in spontaneous style is quite riveting, and here you will have a chance to read what seems to be an early sketch of the fire tower section from "Dharma Bums".
I hope these suggestions will have you picking up a copy of this wonderful book

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another roller coaster ride from Kerouac, this non-fiction, January 2, 2001

By 

C. Ebeling "ctlpareader" (PA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lonesome Traveler (Kerouac, Jack) (Paperback)

"Creative non-fiction" is a come lately term but it fits Jack Kerouac's 1960 account of his real life travels and experiences. The spontaneous, experimental style that marks his fiction is in high use in Lonesome Traveler, particularly in the chapter devoted to the railroad. In that piece, language becomes a mimic of the sounds and rhythms of the environment in which he works, the Southern Pacific runs between San Francisco and San Jose in the early 1950's. Forget words and structure as you know it, but don't worry about getting lost in the prose. If you trust Kerouac, he won't let you get lost, he brings you home in the end. As he visits Mexico, the shipping lanes, the streets of New York, a lone fire look-out on Desolation Peak in Washington State, and Europe, he speaks openly of what drives him. The last chapter is an ode to the vanishing hobo whose ethic he has embraced; as this was written, our changing society was transforming hobos into vagrant criminals and the homeless problem, extinguishing their culture with suspicion and policing. Kerouac is both Thoreau and the hobo, the fine or wide line depending upon how you look at it being his education and pursuit of spirituality.

17 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Wanderer's Bible, February 16, 2002

By 

Patrick Julian Cassidy (San Francisco...Author of "A Journey to Bohemia") - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lonesome Traveler (Kerouac, Jack) (Paperback)

I recently bought this book as a present for my daughter
to read and that prompted me to fish out my old road worn
copy which I carried around religiously during the days her
mother and I bummed around the western US & Mexico.
Kerouac always had the ability to spiritualize the
experience for me. This book exemplifies his respect
and admiration for those individuals who have forsworn the
luxuries of a normal life for the intrisically demanding
rigors of the spiritual quest. Rereading this book had
me aching to be back on the road once again. Want to do
Mexico again, Angela?