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Autobiographical novel by Jack Kerouac, published in 1958.
Penguin
June 1971
On Sale: May 27, 1971
Featuring: Raymond Smith
256 pages
ISBN: 0140042520
EAN: 9780140042528
Trade Size (reprint)
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Fiction
The story's narrator, Raymond Smith, is based on Kerouac himself, and the poet-woodsman-Buddhist, Japhy Ryder, is a thinly disguised portrait of the poet Gary Synder. The book contains a number of other characters who are drawn from actual poets and writers. The plot unfolds when Smith, who is suffering spiritual conflicts amid the emptiness of middle-class American life, meets Ryder, whom he immediately recognizes as a spiritual model. The novel tells of the growth of their friendship and Smith's groping toward personal understanding. Much of the story occurs on the American West Coast.
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