Screenshot (Apr 4, 2025 10:47:16 AM) Kirkus Review and WIKI article

[ VANITY OF DULUOZ AN ADVENTUROUS EDUCATION, 1935-46 by Jack Kerouac ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 1967 Kerouac has already passed into legend, but the legend grows dimmer with each "new" book. Allen Ginsberg, his much more public-minded friend, continues as press agent, ("a long page of oceanic Kerouac is sometimes as sublime as epic line...the best poet in the United States is Kerouac still"), yet the pronouncements sound like singing telegrams and not even the teenyboppers pay them much attention. Vanity of Duluoz is Kerouac's twelfth novel, hardly very much different or better than the other eleven, radiant with the same spontaneous "word slinging," the same apostrophes to the whole mad bad wonderful world, at moments remarkably vivid, eager, and funny, but more often just tiresome, burpy, and quaint. Time has not dealt fondly with the Kerouac style: it's almost as dated as Saroyan's. Kerouac, the innocent of the Fifties; Saroyan, the innocent of the Thirties. For the record, the celebration here is of service with the Merchant Kerouac's years as a Columbia undergraduate, and his involvement with another of Marine and the Navy during WWII, those beautiful young men who so often appear in his tales. This section, the longest and best, includes thinly disguised glimpses of Burroughs, drugs, Kerouac's first marriage, homosexuality, and murder—but all done with such boyish elan and roughhouse "truth" that it seems an engaging Beat fantasia which might even appeal to the lady in Dubuque.] Vanity of Duluoz encyclopedia Vanity of Duluoz First edition Author Jack Kerouac Language English Genre Semi-autobiographical novel Publisher Coward-McCann Publication date 1968 Publication place United States Media type Print (hardback & paperback) Pages 272 pp ISBN 0-14-023639-2 OCLC 30493294 Dewey Decimal 813/.54 20 LC Class PS3521.E735 V36 1994 Preceded by Satori in Paris (1966) Followed by Pic (1971) Vanity of Duluoz: An Adventurous Education, 1935–46 is a 1968 semi-autobiographical novel by Jack Kerouac. The book describes the adventures of Kerouac's alter ego, Jack Duluoz, covering the period of his life between 1935 and 1946. The book includes reminiscences of the author's high school experiences in Lowell, Massachusetts, his education at Columbia University, and his subsequent naval service during World War II. It culminates with the beginnings of the beat movement. It was Kerouac's last work published during his life. The tone of the book has been noted for its stark contrast to On the Road.[1] Background When Kerouac wrote Vanity of Duluoz in 1967, he had already been disenchanted and suffered alcoholism for several years, and his literary output had decreased. Typical of his memoir-style writing (but using a more structured grammar style he had abandoned after his first novel, The Town and the City), the book delves into his past in Lowell and New York, and narrates his various travels and other living situations. It revolves around the time of the pre-WWII and war years, and his time in college and the merchant marines, and concludes with his life in the early renaissance of the Beat Generation. However, due to Kerouac's rambling style, the book is frequently laced with comments on his contemporary world, his mid-life musings, and jabberwocky-like wordplay. Through certain portions of the book, he addresses the narration to "wifey". Towards the end of the book, in Book 13, Kerouac identifies the meaning of his vanity with the words of King Solomon found in Ecclesiastes: "There is nothing new under the sun;" "All is vanity."