Jesse Marinoff Reyes:
A Happy 90th Birthday remembrance to the Beat Generation icon and one of the great post-war American writers. The impact that Kerouac—and the Beats—had on both American literature and pop culture goes beyond what I can relate here and has already filled volumes of cultural criticism.
Jack Kerouac
The Dharma Bums
Signet (First U.S. paperback edition), 1959
Design: uncredited
Illustration: Barye Phillips (1924-1969)
JMR Design
The Dharma Bums
Avon (First US paperback ed.), 1959
Illustration: (still researching this!)
Personal grievance: I absolutely despise booksellers who black-out the original pre-printed price with marker or pen, so as to dissuade argument from the dummies who would contest the used bookstore price (trust me, I’ve heard this explanation). Normally, I wouldn’t buy a book marked this way and have scolded booksellers for the practice, but for a hard-to-find Kerouac first edition I had to bite the bullet. Grrrr…
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