> Skip to content
  • Published: 26 April 2012
  • ISBN: 9780141971971
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 272

Vanity of Duluoz




The story of Kerouac's sporting alter-ego, new to Penguin Modern Classics

The tale of Kerouac's alter-ego, Vanity of Duluoz presents Jack Duluoz's high school experiences as a sporting jock in Massachusetts and his time at Columbia University on a football scholarship. Just as Jack's glamorous new adult life begins, so does World War II, and he joins the US Navy to travel the world. As Jack experiences more, he realizes the limits of his former plans and returns to New York at the start of the Beat movement, to a riot of drugs, sex and writing. Vanity of Duluoz was Kerouac's final work published before his death in 1969.

  • Published: 26 April 2012
  • ISBN: 9780141971971
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 272

About the author

Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1922. In 1947, enthused by bebop, the rebel attitude of his friend Neal Cassidy, and the throng of hobos, drug addicts and hustlers he encountered in New York, he decided to discover America and hitchhhike across the country. His writing was openly autobiographical and he developed a style he referred to as 'spontaneous prose' which he used to record the experiences of the Beat Generation. Among his many novels are On the Road, Maggie Cassidy, The Subterraneans, The Dharma Bums and Big Sur. He died in 1969.

Also by Jack Kerouac

See all

Praise for Vanity of Duluoz

A loud-mouthed novel... A frontal assault on life, a total abandonment to feeling

Guardian