On the Road
by Jack Kerouac
- Used
- very good
- Paperback
- Condition
- Very Good/No Jacket
- Seller
-
Shelbyville, Indiana, United States
Item Price
NZ$127.66NZ$102.13
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
New York, NY: New American Library, 1958. Book. Very Good. Soft cover. 12mo - over 6¾ - 7¾" tall. Fifth Printing, November 1958, so stated. Signet Paperback , D1619, 50c. This copy is NEAR FINE. Exterior just a touch of curling at tips, top page edges are faded red. Inside has neat PO signature to title page dated Dec. 1958. Otherwise unmarked, crisp, and tight Text has the expected noticeable toning. Simply lovely..
Synopsis
Perhaps the most famous and influential of the Beat novels, Jack Kerouac's On the Road represents much of what made the Beat and Counterculture movements so unique and important. The plot concerning the road trips and adventures experienced by Kerouac and his friends is well-known, as are the rumors and tall tales of the books' production. Kerouac often claimed that the wrote On the Road in a mere three weeks on a single 120-foot scroll of paper. Although that scroll does indeed exist and is featured in museums, Kerouac kept detailed journals of his travels that would later become passages and chapters in the finished product. The book was first published by Viking in 1957. Viking Press would go on to publish an edited version of On the Road in 2007 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first printing. They substituted the fictional names for the real Beat protagonists, and they even included some of the more sexually explicit passages that were edited out of the 1957 edition. Due to the cultural significance of the book, true first editions/first printings of On the Road are quite valuable. But be warned: it is easy to mistake reprints or book club editions for the real thing, so always check with an expert before making a significant purchase.
Read More: Identifying first editions of On the Road
Reviews
On Sep 3 2011, West of Eden Books said:
A few years ago, 50 years after its initial publication, and 35 years since I had read it for the first time myself, I loaned my battered paperback copy of On The Road to a young friend of mine who had asked me "What should I read next?". Her reaction was, as I would have hoped, overwhelmingly positive. "It made me want to go hitchhiking" she told me. She didn't go, of course, that's considered too dangerous these days, but she caught the spirit of Kerouac from those yellowed old pages and that made me happy. It made me remember myself from the days before I was twenty. When the world was wide-open in front of me with all my limitless imagination and inexhaustible energy to carry me forward. Those two-and-a-half-hundred pages created in a Benzedrine-fueled typing frenzy spoke to both of us across generations as great writing is meant to do. Jack's tales of Casady, Ginsberg, Burroughs, and the rest would continue in his books that followed but the spirit and zest of On The Road stand alone. Bob Dylan said of On The Road, "It changed my life like it changed everyone else's". Myself and my young friend were lucky enough to experience it that same way.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Bailey Bonzo Books
(US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 002624
- Title
- On the Road
- Author
- Jack Kerouac
- Format/Binding
- Paperback
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good
- Jacket Condition
- No Jacket
- Publisher
- New American Library
- Place of Publication
- New York, NY
- Date Published
- 1958
- Size
- 12mo - over 6¾ - 7¾
- Bookseller catalogs
- Americana;
Terms of Sale
Bailey Bonzo Books
30 day return guarantee, with full refund including original shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged.
About the Seller
Bailey Bonzo Books
Biblio member since 2020
Shelbyville, Indiana
About Bailey Bonzo Books
Bailey Bonzo Books....Specializing in collectble First Editions, SIGNED copies, Science Fiction/Fantasy, and RARE copies of all kinds.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Fine
- A book in fine condition exhibits no flaws. A fine condition book closely approaches As New condition, but may lack the...
- Tight
- Used to mean that the binding of a book has not been overly loosened by frequent use.
- Crisp
- A term often used to indicate a book's new-like condition. Indicates that the hinges are not loosened. A book described as crisp...
- Edges
- The collective of the top, fore and bottom edges of the text block of the book, being that part of the edges of the pages of a...
- 12mo
- A duodecimo is a book approximately 7 by 4.5 inches in size, or similar in size to a contemporary mass market paperback. Also...
- Title Page
- A page at the front of a book which may contain the title of the book, any subtitles, the authors, contributors, editors, the...
This Book’s Categories
Collecting One Book
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