This experimental novel centres on Cody Pomeray, a charismatic friend of the narrator, Jack Duluoz, and covers much of the same ground as On the Road. Rather than telling a smooth story, it uses fragments, sketches, transcribed tape-recorded conversations and long passages of dreamlike prose. It aims to capture a person and an era in all their texture, from American roads and diners to late-night talk. Written in the 1950s but published only in 1972, it is admired by many readers as Kerouac's boldest and most inventive work.
Quotes
It no longer makes me cry and die and tear myself to see her go because everything goes away from me like that now — girls, visions, anything, just in the same way and forever and I accept lostness forever.