Today (Tuesday, August 13) sees the official publication-date for the new posthumous Jack Kerouac collection (from Rare Bird Books and Sal Paradise Press – Self-Portrait – Collected Writings – edited by Paul Maher Jr. and Charles Shuttleworth, with a foreword by Jonathan Evison.)
We wrote about the book earlier this year – see here
Jim Sampas, Literary Executor of the Jack Kerouac Estate writes:
“Sifting through Jack Kerouac’s extensive archive, Paul Maher and Charles Shuttleworth have compiled this masterfully conceived, enchanting volume. The main subject of Jack’s writing was always himself -a probing and exposing of his own consciousness – and Self-Portrait offers us an intimate view of Kerouac at every stage of his life. It’s a wild ride, ping-ponging through emotional extremes: his excitements and search for ecstatic experience, his insecurities, his fears of madness and death, and through it all his commitment to his craft. Within these fiction and nonfiction pieces, Kerouac’s thoughts burn on the page in an infectious style and rhythm that’s all his own.”
The publishers go on:
Jack Kerouac’s archive is vast. Throughout his life he was constantly writing, and he meticulously saved and catalogued his material. The result is that beyond the work published in his lifetime there has been a rich stream of posthumous writing that is far from tapped, adding depth to his lifework—the Duluoz Legend—and our understanding of Kerouac the man. Far from being the adrenalized thrill-seeker that he depicted in On the Road’s Dean Moriarty, Kerouac himself was deeply spiritual, shy, and reclusive. He sought adventures for the sake of experience, needing them to fuel his writing, which according to him was his sole reason for living. Few people sacrificed more for their art.
This collection of previously unpublished writing culled from the Kerouac archive, and as a companion to Paul Maher Jr.’s Becoming Kerouac, spans Kerouac’s adult life, from a journal written at age seventeen to autobiographical reflections a few years before his death. Self-Portrait is a blend of fictional and nonfictional pieces, a few abandoned starts burned t most complete in themselves and all of them chosen for the revelations they contain.
Self-Portrait is the third of Sal Paradise/Red Bird titles, (following Desolation Peak and Truth and Beautiful Meaningful Lies). Their next volume, The Buddhist Years, has just recently been announced. The combination of Red Bird and the Kerouac Estate. This important work. We salute this extraordinary collaborative project.