Vanity of Duluoz by Jack Kerouac [FIRST EDITION] 1968

Vanity of Duluoz by Jack Kerouac

FIRST EDITION / SECOND IMPRESSION [1968] COWARD MCCANN INC. 

2nd printing.  Hardcover with dust jacket.  DJ has shelf wear and a few minor nicks / tears to edges,  but is otherwise in very good condition and in strong shape.  Price of $5.50.   

Book is in very good condition.  Cover has some fading to title on an otherwise clean cloth spine.  Pages are bright, and unmarked and read beautifully w/ a hint of tanning.  Upper-outer page edges have some very minor spot stains, only visible when closed [see last photo].  No foxing. 

A key volume in Jack Kerouac's lifework, the series of autobiographical novels he referred to as The Legend of Duluoz, shares the same tender humor and intoxicating wordplay he brought to his masterpieces On the Road and The Dharma Bums, Kerouac takes his alter ego from the football fields of small-town New England to the playing fields and classrooms of Horace Mann and Columbia, out to sea on a merchant freighter plying the sub-infested waters of the North Atlantic during World War II, and back to New York, where his friends are the writers who would one day become known as the Beat generation and where he published his first novel.

Written in 1967 from the vantage point of the psychedelic sixties, Vanity of Duluoz gives a fascinating portrait of the young Kerouac, dedicated and disciplined in his determination from an early age to be an important American writer.