Name: The town and the city
ISBN: 9780704320239

The town and the city

The Town and the City is a novel by Jack Kerouac, published by Harcourt Brace in 1950. This was the first major work published by Kerouac, who later became famous for his second novel On the Road (1957). Like all of Jack Kerouac's major works, The Town and the City is essentially an autobiographical novel, though less directly so than most of his other works. The Town and the City was written in a conventional manner over a period of years, and much more novelistic license was taken with this work than after Kerouac's adoption of quickly written "spontaneous prose". The Town and the City was written before Kerouac had developed his own style, and it is heavily influenced by Thomas Wolfe (even down to the title, reminiscent of Wolfe titles such as The Web and the Rock). The novel is focused on two locations (as suggested by the title): one, the early Beat Generation circle of New York in the late 1940s, the other, the nearly rural small town of Galloway, Massachusetts that the main character comes from, before going off to college on a football scholarship. Galloway represents the town of Lowell, Massachusetts, which the Merrimack river runs through, and where Kerouac was raised. The experiences of the young "Peter Martin" struggling for success on the high school football team are largely those of Jack Kerouac (he returns to the subject again in his last work Vanity of Duluoz, published in 1968).

What Hacker News says

dluanFeb 2026

A lot of people will say to start with the most well known stuff - Naked Lunch, On the Road. I never liked Naked Lunch much, but On the Road is still probably the best gestalt depiction of the post-war America that was smack in the middle of transitioning from post-depression NYC jazz to California hippie. Once you have a feel for what that time and context was, then the poetry makes more sense.

It's been a while, but I remember enjoying a lot the very early writings that were collected posthumously in Atop an Underwood, very easy to pick up arbitrarily. Other good ones - Desolation Angels, Dharma Bums, The Town and the City, Subterraneans, Satori in Paris. Those are all formative. There was another posthumous release And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks which was just a funny and ridiculous retelling of a murder of a friend.

Of course, lots of fun stuff from Bukowski, Gregory Corso, Gary Snyder, Phil Lamantia, John Clellon Holmes, Richard Brautigan, short stories and poems. Neal Cassady Collected Letters, 1944-1967 was probably my single favorite book back then. I'm sure I'm forgetting lots of stuff.

Oh and Dog https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hk8cMyCUnoo

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bmjNov 2008

I read, and as Daniel noted above, I tend to read several at a time. Generally, I read philosophy and theology (my undergraduate degree is in philosophy), though most recently I've been picking up some of the collections of essays my wife is reading for her graduate work. I'm also a huge fan of anything about the history of Pittsburgh.

Current reading list: Christianity and Anarchy Jacques Ellul The Gulag Archipelago Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Third Ways Allan Carlson

My reading time seems to come in fits. Some days I won't pick up a book, and others I'll read for several hours. As for my favorites:

The Town and the City Jack Kerouac The Death of Adam Marilynne Robinson The Presence of the Kingdom Jacques Ellul

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