{"product_id":"book-of-sketches-9780142002155","title":"Book of Sketches","description":"\u003cb\u003eA luminous, intimate, and transcendental glimpse into the mind of Jack Kerouac, one of the most original voices of the twentieth century\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003e\"Sketching . . . Everything activates in front of you in myriad profusion, you just have to purify your mind and let it pour the words and write with 100% personal honesty.\"\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn 1951, it was suggested to Jack Kerouac by his friend Ed White that he \"sketch in the streets like a painter but with words.\" In August of the following year, Kerouac began writing down prose poem \"sketches\" in small notebooks that he kept in the breast pockets of his shirts. For two years he recorded travels, observations, and meditations on art and life as he moved across America and down to Mexico and back. The poems are often strung together so that over the course of several of them, a little story--or travelogue--appears, complete in itself. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn 1957, Kerouac sat down with the fifteen handwritten sketch notebooks he had accumulated and typed them into a manuscript called \u003ci\u003eBook of Sketches\u003c\/i\u003e. Published for the first time, this work offers a detailed portrait of Kerouac at a key period of his literary career.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eJack Kerouac\u003c\/b\u003e was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1922, the youngest of three children in a Franco-American family. He attended local Catholic and public schools and won a scholarship to Columbia University in New York City, where he first met Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs. His first novel, \u003ci\u003eThe Town and the City\u003c\/i\u003e, appeared in 1950, but it was \u003ci\u003eOn the Road\u003c\/i\u003e, published in 1957 and memorializing his adventures with Neal Cassady, that epitomized to the world what became known as the \"Beat generation\" and made Kerouac one of the most best-known writers of his time. Publication of many other books followed, among them \u003ci\u003eThe Dharma Bums\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Subterraneans\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eBig Sur\u003c\/i\u003e. Kerouac considered all of his autobiographical fiction to be part of \"one vast book,\" \u003ci\u003eThe Duluoz Legend\u003c\/i\u003e. He died in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1969, at the age of forty-seven. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eGeorge Condo\u003c\/b\u003e is a painter and sculptor who has exhibited extensively in both the United States and Europe. He has received an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Penguin Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50727759773970,"sku":"9780142002155","price":13.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_c9f09ea1-e5dc-4885-b4d1-25537f38d18d.jpg?v=1734921473","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/book-of-sketches-9780142002155","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}