Sur la route

8vo of 380 pp., (2) ll., (1) blk. l. Publisher’s wrappers.

208 x 142 mm.

Kerouac, Jack. Sur la route.
Gallimard, Paris, 1960.

First French edition of the defining work of the Beat Generation which influenced many American writers and« marked an entire generation ».

One of the 42 first copies on pur fil Lafuma-Navarre, only large paper printed.

It follows the travels of Sal Paradise, a stand in for Kerouac himself, and is based on a series of journeys Kerouac took from 1947 to 1950. The work was typed up on a continuous "scroll" of sheets that Kerouac had taped together. "On The Road" appears on both Modern Library's list of the 100 best novels of the century and on Time Magazine list of the 100 best English language novels from 1923-2005. "[I]ts publication is a historic occasion. the most beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac himself named years ago as 'beat,' and whose principal avatar he is." (Contemporary New York Times review)

“The spread of American road literature in France has certainly contributed to a change in the traditional image of wandering. It is not so much fictional novels as autobiographical accounts. The seminal text is the famous and sublime novel by Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), published in the United States in 1957 and entitled “On the Road.” It quickly spread in France under the title “Sur la route” (1960). In Kerouac's work, the road becomes a grandiose actor in the journey. Kerouac's writing, truly sumptuous, is that of a great author. The lyricism with which he describes the landscapes and grandiose skies worthy of Turner resonates with the reader's sensibility. This “road” is an integral part of the American mythology of the quest for the West, and even foreign readers are compelled to feel its thrill” (A. Gueslin, D’ailleurs et de nulle part).

“As soon as it was published, On the Road made Jack Kerouac famous. The legend of the scandalous, vagabond “beatnik” was born. In fact, Sal Paradise and his friends are misfits who, far from advocating puritanical ethics, are quite content with a life of wandering, claim Walt Whitman as their spiritual father, drift from one odd job to another, willingly associate with criminals, and admit to a fondness for alcohol and various drugs as a means of achieving "ecstasy ." (...) The car is the vehicle of choice for this almost mystical quest, as it is synonymous with travel and speed, a speed that, for better or worse, characterizes the writing of this novel that marked an entire generation. Jazz and poetry are two other sources of inspiration that give rhythm and modulation to the narrator's voice. A great “oral” novel, On the Road contains not only a portrait of a new way of life and a new morality, but also that of a secret America: in this sense, Kerouac follows in the footsteps of Mark Twain and Herman Melville” (Dictionnaire des œuvres).

“When “On the Road” came out, in September, 1957, it was praised in the New York Times as the novel of the Beat Generation, equivalent in stature and significance to “The Sun Also Rises,” the novel of the Lost Generation. The book was a best-seller, and it made Jack Kerouac, who had worked on it for ten years, a celebrity. It is sometimes said of Kerouac that fame killed him—that he was driven crazy by being continually addressed as the spokesman for a generation and by endless unwelcome requests to explain the meaning of the term “Beat.” Kerouac was certainly undone by something. After the success of “On the Road,” he continued to write at a manic pace, as he always had, but he became a suicidal alcoholic, and he died, of a hemorrhage caused by acute liver damage, in 1969, at the age of forty-seven. (He had by then written more than twenty-five books.) The notion of the Beat Generation was hardly thrust upon him, though” (Louis Menand).

“His personal chronicle of America in the 1940s and 1950s is coupled with a formidable evocation of the American landscape, linking Kerouac to the tradition of bardic poets such as Walt Whitman: the author of On the Road wanted to invent a novelistic form on the scale of the continent, a style of writing as supple and energetic as a jazz solo, as expansive and fluid as the Mississippi. This is the incomparable originality and success of Jack Kerouac” (Dictionnaire des auteurs).

One of the 42 first copies on pur fil Lafuma-Navarre, only large paper printed.

A beautiful copy in publisher’s wrappers.