Jack Kerouac has 7 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 6 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.3★ across 74 ratings. The most-rated is On the Road.
On the Road
Summary
Few novels have had as profound an impact on American culture as On the Road. Pulsating with the rhythms of 1950s underground America, jazz, sex, illicit drugs, and the mystery and promise of the open road, Kerouac's classic novel of freedom and longing defined what it meant to be "beat" and has inspired generations of writers, musicians, artists, poets, and seekers who cite their discovery of the book as the event that "set them free". Based on Kerouac's adventures with Neal Cassady, On the Road tells the story of two friends whose four cross-country road trips are a quest for meaning and true experience. Written with a mixture of sad-eyed naïveté and wild abandon, and imbued with Kerouac's love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz, On the Road is the quintessential American vision of freedom and hope, a book that changed American literature and changed anyone who has ever picked it up.
©1955, 1957 John Sampas, Literary Representative, the Estate of Stella Sampas Kerouac (P)2007 Penguin Audio, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
On the Road: The Original Scroll
Summary
The legendary 1951 scroll draft of On the Road, published word for word as Kerouac originally composed it. Though Jack Kerouac began thinking about the novel that was to become On the Road as early as 1947, it was not until three weeks in April 1951, in an apartment on West 20th Street in Manhattan, that he wrote the first full draft that was satisfactory to him. Typed out as one long, single-spaced paragraph on eight long sheets of tracing paper that he later taped together to form a 120-foot scroll, this document is among the most significant, celebrated, and provocative artifacts in contemporary American literary history. It represents the first full expression of Kerouac's revolutionary aesthetic, the identifiable point at which his thematic vision and narrative voice came together in a sustained burst of creative energy. It was also part of a wider vital experimentation in the American literary, musical, and visual arts in the post-World War II period. It was not until more than six years later, and after several new drafts, that Viking published, in 1957, the novel known to us today. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of On the Road, Viking will publish the 1951 scroll in a standard book format. The differences between the two versions are principally ones of significant detail and altered emphasis. The scroll is slightly longer and has a heightened linguistic virtuosity and a more sexually frenetic tone. It also uses the real names of Kerouac's friends instead of the fictional names he later invented for them. The transcription of the scroll was done by Howard Cunnell who, along with Joshua Kupetz, George Mouratidis, and Penny Vlagopoulos, provides a critical introduction that explains the fascinating compositional and publication history of On the Road and anchors the text in its historical, political, and social contexts.
©2007 Jack Kerouac (P)2007 Penguin Audio
The Dharma Bums
Summary
Jack Kerouac’s classic novel about friendship, the search for meaning, and the allure of nature First published in 1958, a year after On the Road put the Beat Generation on the map, The Dharma Bums stands as one of Jack Kerouac's most powerful and influential novels. The story focuses on two ebullient young Americans - mountaineer, poet, and Zen Buddhist Japhy Ryder, and Ray Smith, a zestful, innocent writer - whose quest for Truth leads them on a heroic odyssey, from marathon parties and poetry jam sessions in San Francisco's Bohemia to solitude and mountain climbing in the High Sierras.
©1958 Jack Kerouac (P)2020 Penguin Audio
On the Road
Summary
"The only people for me are the mad ones," wrote Jack Kerouac, "the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars." On the Road is the classic story of two such characters: Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, who set off on an odyssey through mid-century underground America, fueled by jazz, sex, drugs, mystical philosophy, and a limitless passion for experience.
©1955 Jack Kerouac (original material) . Copyright renewed © Stella Kerouac 1983. Copyright renewed © Stella and Jan Kerouac 1985 (P)1986 LFP Holding, Inc.
Wake Up
Summary
In the mid-1950s, Jack Kerouac, a lifelong Catholic, became fascinated with Buddhism, an interest that had a profound impact on his ideas of spirituality andlater found expression in books such as Mexico City Blues and The Dharma Bums. Originally written in 1955 and now published for the first time in audiobook form, Wake Up is Kerouac's retelling of the life of Prince Siddartha Gotama, who as a young man abandoned his wealthy family and comfortable home for a lifelong searchfor Enlightenment. Distilled from a wide variety of canonical scriptures, Wake Up serves as both a penetrating account of the Buddha's life and a concise primer on the principal teachings of Buddhism.
©2008 Jack Kerouac; 2008 Penguin Audiobooks
Visions of Cody
Summary
Hear Jack Kerouac's most radical experiment in language and storytelling - an "enormous paean" to that singular and influential figure Neal Cassady. A fusion of radical improvisation, bold reportage, and oracular voice, it is Kerouac's ultimate version of his ultimate masterpiece, On the Road. The selections featured in this recording capture Kerouac's astonishing spontaneity, a quality that inspired Allen Ginsberg to dub Visions of Cody "the most sincere and holy writing I know of our age."
©1960 Jack Kerouac; 1972 The Estate of Jack Kerouac, All Rights Reserved (P)1996 Penguin Books USA Inc.; 16 9
Big Sur
Summary
A poignant masterpiece of wrenching personal expression from the author of On the Road and The Dharma Bums. In this 1962 novel, Kerouac's alter ego, Jack Duluoz, overwhelmed by success and excess, gravitates back and forth between wild binges in San Francisco and an isolated cabin on the California coast where he attempts to renew his spirit and clear his head of madness and alcohol. Only nature seems to restore him to a sense of balance. In the words of Allen Ginsberg, Big Sur "reveals consciousness in all its syntactic elaboration, detailing the luminous emptiness of his own paranoiac confusion".
©1962 Jack Kerouac (P)2020 Penguin Audio