Kerouac's Search For Lost Time

It seemed natural to assume that the Kerouac books published after On the Road were written after it became a bestseller in 1957. But many were written well before, as part of a huge history Kerouac had first envisaged 14 years earlier, when he was just 21, called The DuluozLegend. According to biographer Gerald Nicosia, it was during a stopover in war-torn Liverpool, while he was serving in the merchant navy, that inspiration struck: "On his last morning in Liverpool that vision of 'beatness' as he later called it, prompted him to conceive of The Duluoz Legend. Sitting at his typewriter in the purser's office, he suddenly foresaw as his life's work the creation of a 'contemporary history record' MORE