Kerouac's 'Vast Dimensions' Quarto Volume Published by Gallimard

Gallimard has published a Quarto volume collecting the principal novels of Jack Kerouac's autobiographical Duluoz Legend cycle, as he envisioned a single vast work comparable to Proust's. The volume includes a preface by Yves Buin and translations by eight translators. Kerouac, who died in October 1969 at age 47, wrote in a September 11, 1955 letter to Malcolm Cowley that his legend would eventually cover all years of his life, like Proust but at a running pace, using spontaneous prose influenced by Joyce and Faulkner. His novel 'On the Road' waited four years for publication, while 'Visions of Cody' was deemed unreadable and published posthumously 21 years after writing, and 'The Subterraneans' faced multiple rejections. Kerouac attributed his editorial struggles to his 'new vision' that contradicted established ideas and his jazz-like rapid prose, which allowed him to write seven books in five years, including 'Big Sur' in ten nights and 'The Subterraneans' in three nights. His Catholicism also provoked hostility from the literary establishment, with friend Lawrence Ferlinghetti defending him against a 'repugnant' 1962 Times review of 'Big Sur' that he saw as anti-Catholic. Kerouac acknowledged debts to Melville, Dostoevsky, Proust, Pound, and Céline. The Quarto volume aims to free Kerouac from the mythological baggage of the Beat Generation and place him among the great lyrical prose writers of the past century.