Tomasz Sawczuk - Böcker

The book is the first monograph which examines the correspondences between the oeuvre of Jack Kerouac and the thought of Jacques Lacan, the two apparently incompatible worlds which prove to be complementary when taking a closer look. The study demonstrates a number of points. Firstly, with Jacques Lacan as a silent partner, it helps to better understand why psychoanalysis won Kerouac’s enmity in the mid-1950s. It also delves into Lacan’s reflections on spontaneous free-association to prove their convergence with Beats’ literary tactics. In its final part, by employing Lacanian theory, the book offers an extensive insight into Kerouac’s oeuvre to excavate the problematic status of the father figure, a crucial matter not yet given a rigorous critical attention.

This long overdue reevaluation of Jack Kerouac gives fresh perspectives on his unique literary output, his vexed relation to issues of race, class, and gender, as well as his continuing cultural afterlife. This collection of essays by esteemed Beat commentators reassesses one of the 20th century’s most emblematic but often misunderstood American writers. Despite amassing a substantial body of influential work and becoming a recognizable icon globally, Kerouac has often suffered critical neglect, and this volume seeks to offer a range of fresh perspectives on his unique artistic output as well as his continuing cultural afterlife. Through an examination of classic texts like On the Road to more obscure ones like Pic, these essays recalibrate our understanding of the writer by placing his creative output into dialogue with current cultural issues to provide a rethinking of how concerns such as race, gender relations, artificial intelligence, populist rhetoric, and queerness inform his work and its contemporary reception. These essays also examine how the peculiarities of global circulation and social media influence the ongoing cultural appropriation of Kerouac in popular music, literature, and online. Through these varied approaches, Rethinking Kerouac: Afterlives, Continuities, Reappraisals provides an indispensable account of the continued relevance of both Kerouac the writer and Kerouac the cultural icon in the 21st century.