Matt Theado

Investigates the complex and puzzling diversity of a writer who became a legend.

5 x 7, 232 pages
cloth, ISBN 1-57003-272-6, $34.95s

Understanding Contemporary American Literature, Matthew J. Bruccoli, series editor

ABOUT THE BOOK

Understanding Jack Kerouac introduces a new generation of readers to what Matt Theado calls Kerouac's "unwieldy accretion of published work"—fiction, poetry, nonfiction, selected letters, religious writing, and "true-story novels." Presenting this cultural icon of the Beat Generation primarily as a writer rather than as a social rebel or media celebrity, Theado elucidates the reasons Kerouac's reputation has outlived disparaging beatnik associations and why his recently published works have attracted an expanding readership. Theado takes a book-by-book approach to the sometimes confusing canon and develops a framework for understanding Kerouac's thematic concerns, writing techniques, and artistic evolution.

Theado contends that despite Kerouac's goal of becoming a legend through his writing, his work has never satisfactorily fit into a unified scheme. Theado finds, however, that when the books are considered in the order they were written, themes and motifs appear, mutate, and reappear. He shows that The Town and the City, Kerouac's first published novel, introduces basic thematic concerns that are developed and explored in later books. Theado offers close readings of the works that make up the "Duluoz Legend"—Kerouac's series of barely fictionalized re-creations of his life—and reveals how his awareness of his writing self increased over the course of his career.

Proposing that the real legend of Jack Kerouac is the saga of a writer at work, Theado suggests that as recognition of Kerouac's artistic achievement grows, the Duluoz Legend outgrows the genre of autobiography and becomes an intimate chronicle of a writer's stylistic maturation. Theado traces Kerouac's development as a crafter of language and contends that spontaneous prose, Kerouac's literary hallmark, may prove to be his chief claim to literary longevity.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Matt Theado teaches English at Gardner-Webb University in Boiling Springs, North Carolina. He has published articles on Kerouac and other Beat Generation writers.