Good Blonde & Others
<DIV><B>Beat Generation great Jack Kerouac traverses the vast landscape of American counterculture in this raucous and insightful collection</B><BR /><BR /> In these collected articles, essays, and wild autobiographical tales, Jack Kerouac, author of <I>On the Road</I>, leads readers down the highways and through the myriad subcultures of mid-twentieth-century America, guiding them along with his ingenious observations and brilliant command of language. He cruises to San Francisco high on Benzedrine with a barefoot blond model in a white bathing suit; traipses from New York to Florida with photographer Robert Frank and a $300 German camera; takes a bus ride along the edge of a precipice in Montana; and revels in the swampy blues of an old Southern bum at a Des Moines diner.<BR /><BR /> On a journey of the mind, Kerouac courses through the philosophy, origins, and dreams of the Beats, those “crazy illuminated hipsters†of post-war America; describes his theory of experimental prose with the “Essentials of Spontaneous Writingâ€; and gives a tour of the San Francisco Renaissance, pointing out the new American poets who are “childlike graybeard Homers singing on the street.†This sweeping portrait of the art, sounds, and people of a nation in transition could only be told with Kerouac’s inimitable wisdom and charm.</DIV>