Jack Kerouac: an illustrated biography by David Sandison was a large-format book, more suitable for a coffee table versus reading on a tight seat while on public transit (which I nonetheless did). Though richly supplemented with photos, many of which were full-page, the text was not an afterthought. The tiny print told a full Kerouac biography and took me three days to finish.
The pages were filled with youthful photos of Kerouac and his contemporaries like Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady, as well as Kerouac’s first two wives, but not a single photo of his widow Stella was included. As this was a British imprint the book covers that were featured were UK editions, complete with 2/6 or 3/6 pricing on the covers. The title Lonesome Traveller was given an extra L for its UK printing, yet in the quotation I included near the bottom of this review the author did in fact spell the word recognized with the Z.
Kerouac drank himself to death during the sixties and the photos during the last nine years of his life were sad to look at. Jack was sitting or sleeping and obviously drunk to the gills. He could not deal with the fame that followed him after On the Road. While an author might bask in praise following the publication of such a groundbreaking work, Kerouac felt that “it was about time” that critics took notice, so he wasn’t coming to his accolades with gratitude. Furthermore, the various publishers who had rejected his earlier novels all jumped onto the Beat bandwagon and published a total of seven older works by 1960, so there was a glut of Kerouac in the bookstores in as little as two years. I wonder if publishers would flood the market today instead of deciding to space out the releases of new (yet earlier written) novels. Not all of these works were as good as On the Road, and the backlash of what amounted to a massive follow-up failure stung Kerouac:
“Besides the negative frustration that his talents had been recognized so belatedly, he had to live with the even greater volume of criticism that poured scorn on his more challenging literary works. Doctor Sax and Maggie Cassidy, both of which were published in 1959, had been severely dealt with by most reviewers.
“Jack took such criticism hard, for he had never in any respect been thick-skinned. Every unfavourable review he took as a personal attack. He simply responded in kind, with verbal onslaughts that were usually as ill-considered as they were virulent.”
Carolyn Cassady wrote the foreword and also contributed text. She was part of the On the Road scene and stated the facts in a no-nonsense manner, dispelling baseless rumours about the times.