Subterranean Kerouac: The Hidden Life of Jack Kerouac
by Ellis Amburn
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Drawing upon original interviews, his own relationship with Kerouac, Kerouac's recently published letters, and still-unpublished journals from the Kerouac archives, Ellis Amburn reveals an inner Kerouac that has not appeared in any previous biography. This is the "subterranean" Kerouac whom Amburn, the editor of his last two novels, knew personally, having witnessed the legendary Beat writer's decline into alcoholic despair during the last few years of his life. Perhaps the greatest of show more Kerouac's conflicts centered around his sexual relationships with men. Amburn recounts what Kerouac himself told him about these experiences, which other biographers have never before reported, and sheds new light on their profound impact on the man who remained convinced until his death that he was not bisexual, and that homosexuality was in fact immoral. show lessTags
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Drawing upon original interviews and his own relationship with Kerouac, Ellis Amburn reveals an inner man who has not appeared in any previous biography-a man torn by his conflicting desires and beliefs. Subterranean Kerouac has been singled out as one of the most significant biographies to appear in years, and it shows how Kerouac struggled throughout his life with poverty, alcoholism, and his doubts about his own lifestyle of substance abuse, indolence, and promiscuity.
Lots of lies in this one.
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Author Information
7 Works 525 Members
Ellis Amburn was born in Texas on August 2, 1933. He graduated from Texas Christian University in 1954. He worked as a reporter-researcher at Newsweek before becoming a book editor at Putnam, where he edited John le Carré and Jack Kerouac. Amburn was also an editor-in-chief at Delacorte and William Morrow. He worked as a ghostwriter with show more Priscilla Presley, Shelley Winters, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and Sammy Davis, Jr. He wrote several biographies including Buddy Holly: A Biography, Dark Star: The Roy Orbison Story, The Sexiest Man Alive: A Biography of Warren Beatty, Subterranean Kerouac, and Pearl: The Obsessions and Passions of Janis Joplin. He died after a long illness on August 18, 2018 at the age of 85. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Subterranean Kerouac: The Hidden Life of Jack Kerouac
- Original publication date
- 1998-08
- People/Characters
- Jack Kerouac
- Epigraph
- I was torn between Carolyn and Neal, and I married Stella because she's Sammy's sister. Figure that out and you've got the secret to my life and work.
-- Jack Kerouac to the author, 1967 - Dedication
- To the memory of
F. W. Dupee
and
Lionel Trilling
my Columbia mentors
who set me on my life's course - First words
- Jack Kerouac's childhood and adolescence were lived at a pitch of romantic intensity and fulfillment rarely equaled in his adulthood, when he became tormented, and often paralyzed, by conflicting sexual passions.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Only in death, he once told me, would he stop vacillating between "wranglers and poets, and find wholeness at last."
- Blurbers
- Gold, Herbert; Dickstein, Morris; Schmidgall, Gary
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 145
- Popularity
- 225,924
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.67)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 2
- ASINs
- 2
