Publisher's Synopsis
Kerouac scholar, Paul Maher jr. (Kerouac: His Life and Work; Empty Phantoms: Interviews and Encounters with Jack Kerouac; Tom Waits on Tom Waits) details the last years of Jack Kerouac during the 1960s. Using Kerouac's published books and unpublished diaries and journals, Drunken Dumbshow details the year-by-year disintegration of Kerouac during the tumultuous 1960s, and how that decade of ferment affected his life and writing. Here's what others have written about Maher's books on Kerouac: EMPTY PHANTOMS: Interviews & Encounters with Jack Kerouac (Thunder's Mouth Press Trade Paperback, 2005)"This is definitely a book for Beat Generation junkies. Practically every printed, recorded, and filmed interview with Kerouac is collected in this 505-page book.'" -San Diego Tribune"Empty Phantoms is the best thing yet produced. It's as if Maher allows us to see Kerouac in the midst of a long battle, during which he never fights back, yet each sling and arrow helps reveal his peculiar genius." -Jim Christy, Toronto Star, and author of THE LONG SLOW DEATH OF JACK KEROUAC"In reading this book my image of Kerouac began to change from phony to idol." -New York Press"The recent publication of EMPTY PHANTOMS: Interviews & Encounters with Jack Kerouac, a hefty volume edited by Paul Maher, Jr., offers an opportunity not only to reflect on whether the author interview constitutes an actual genre of literary performance but also to experience immersion in a single writer's oral tradition. . . . Interviewers, who had previously been mere ink-stained wretches, were now often well-known authors or journalists.." -Albert Mobilio, BookforumKEROUAC: THE DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHY (Taylor Trade Hardcover, 2005; Taylor Trade Paperback, 2007)Selected by Biography magazine and Vanity Fair for their "Hot Lists"Finalist for Foreword Magazine's Biography of the Year Award"[A] thoroughly researched and worthy biography. . . . Kerouac is an engaging mix of anecdote and archive.Tales of ecstasy and and despair, of drugs and drunkenness and poetry, are counterbalanced by Maher's perceptive commentary and criticism. Kerouac himself comes over as a confused romantic perpetually in danger of self-destruction, a man driven by the twin demons of wanderlust." -Times Literary Supplement"Kerouac research was for decades limited because his personal journals were unavailable to scholars. That has all changed now that the New York Public Library holds the Kerouac archive, which forms the basis of Maher's work. . . . A useful piece in a difficult puzzle [that] sheds new light on a writer of considerable interest." -Library Journal"Unique among Kerouac biographers for his prodigious archival research, Paul Maher Jr. tells a magnificent American story of a small-town boy who read books, created himself as a writer, and destroyed himself. Spot-check Maher for his rigorously chronological documentation, or, better, seat yourself for the whole inspiring, infuriating, appalling story which the ruthlessly non-judgmental Maher unscrolls (taking his hint from Kerouac's famous roll of paper)-a long panorama of squalid literary settings thickly peopled by a gaudy, self-indulgent, yet profoundly literary generation and by a bewildered set of powerful editors, reviewers, and publishers." -Hershel Parker, Pulitzer Prize Finalist and author of HERMAN MELVILLE: A Biography"Mixing sheer detail with a sympathetic eye to Kerouac's foibles, Maher gives his subject's final years a tragic humanity. His biography breaks new ground. Maher largely achieves an ambitious goal: he brings Kerouac to life as a fascinating but fallible man and artist who reflected and shaped his times. Like the many roads Kerouac traveled, it's a worthy trip." -Boston Herald and New York Daily News"In this methodical extensive biography the gory details of Kerouac's life stack up." -Gerald Dawe, Irish Times
