Paul Maher – författare

Jack Kerouac was one of America's great writers of the latter half of the 20th century, yet he endured a life characterized by persistent hardship and disillusion. Leading Kerouac scholar Paul Maher Jr. targets the writer's embattled insight of self as central to his life and work. He reveals how Kerouac's troubled interactions with alcohol, drugs, and spirituality stamped its importance on his autobiographical prose and poetry and created a singular language that united thoughts on the human condition and spiritual liberation. Becoming Kerouac: A Writer In His Time affixes Kerouac's life and art in a fresh way, giving readers a rich perspective from which to understand this 20th-century literary genius.

Using unpublished archival material, Becoming Kerouac focuses on the writer's critical formative years ––1940 to 1957–– to demonstrate his growth as a novelist and poet. Maher contends that Kerouac developed his singular language to capture human consciousness as it never had before. His futilities catapulted American literature to reflect its restless post-World War II anxieties. Narrating the events that comprised Kerouac's life, biographers have long struggled to illustrate his complexness and the contradictions that shaped his determinations and dogged his relationships. But without consideration of the writing, the troubles in life fail to reveal their deeper resonances by skillfully analyzing the work while tracing the events. Maher achieves a full portrait, revealing struggles that problematize his work. Becoming Kerouac fuses Kerouac's life and art to comprehend this misunderstood literary genius.

Miles on Miles collects the thirty most vital Miles Davis interviews. Essential reading for anyone who wants to know what Miles Davis thought about his music, life, and philosophy, Miles on Miles reveals the jazz icon as a complex and contradictory man, secretive at times but extraordinarily revealing at others.

Miles was not only a musical genius, but an enigma, and nowhere else was he so compelling, exasperating, and entertaining as in his interviews, which vary from polite to outrageous, from straight-ahead to contrarian. Even his autobiography lacks the immediacy of the dialogues collected here. Many were conducted by leading journalists like Leonard Feather, Stephen Davis, Ben Sidran, Mike Zwerin, and Nat Hentoff. Others have never before seen print, are newly transcribed from radio and television shows, or appeared in long-forgotten magazines.

Since Miles Davis''s 1991 death, his influence has continued to grow. But until now, no book has brought back to life his inimitable voice--contemplative, defiant, elegant, uncompromising, and humorous. Miles on Miles will long remain the definitive source for anyone wanting to really encounter the legend in print.

Miles on Miles collects the thirty most vital Miles Davis interviews. Essential reading for anyone who wants to know what Miles Davis thought about his music, life, and philosophy, Miles on Miles reveals the jazz icon as a complex and contradictory man, secretive at times but extraordinarily revealing at others.

Miles was not only a musical genius, but an enigma, and nowhere else was he so compelling, exasperating, and entertaining as in his interviews, which vary from polite to outrageous, from straight-ahead to contrarian. Even his autobiography lacks the immediacy of the dialogues collected here. Many were conducted by leading journalists like Leonard Feather, Stephen Davis, Ben Sidran, Mike Zwerin, and Nat Hentoff. Others have never before seen print, are newly transcribed from radio and television shows, or appeared in long-forgotten magazines.

Since Miles Davis''s 1991 death, his influence has continued to grow. But until now, no book has brought back to life his inimitable voice--contemplative, defiant, elegant, uncompromising, and humorous. Miles on Miles will long remain the definitive source for anyone wanting to really encounter the legend in print.