Kerouac, Jack

Doctor Sax

New York, NY: Grove Press, Inc., 1959. First Softcover Edition. Softcover. "DOCTOR SAX is a story of awakening youth in a grey, colorless New England mill town. It is the story of Jack Duluoz, like Kerouac himself a French-Canadian, growing up among the shadowy doorways and brown tenements of Lowell, Mass. Above all, it is the story of the mystery and terror of an intensely felt adolescence...Always lurking behind the corner of Jack's mind is the shadow of Doctor Sax, his cape flowing, his slouch hat half concealing a malevolent leer. He is one of a host of ghosts, monsters and demons that inhabit his fantasy-ridden world. Memory and dream are intermixed in a mad universe which at last erupts in an apocalyptic vision that destroys the reincarnation of evil, and with it Jack's shadowy world." (from back cover) This is the now-classic memoir by Jack Kerouac, Founding Father of the Beat Generation. Based on his actual childhood experiences, impressions & fantasies, Kerouac employs his younger alter ego, Jack Duluoz, to conjure a time & place from the perspective of youthful but very sensitive & penetrating eyes & mind. Offered here is a copy of the first softcover edition, first printing, published by Barney Rosset's legendary & heroic Grove Press as an "Evergreen Original," which usually would indicate a status of softcover original without a hardcover version. In this case, a hardcover edition was produced, in smaller numbers & now quite rare, simultaneously or within the same year as this Evergreen edition (1959). As quoted in Ann Charters' definitive Kerouac bibliography, an executive at Grove Press wrote: "We don't remember whether the Evergreen edition was published at the same time as the cloth edition, but we believe it was...(it) was definitely published during 1959." (A5(b), pgs. 26-27) Also in this entry, Charter notes that "A variant paperback binding has "DOCTOR SAX by JACK KEROUAC" on spine reduced from 6 7/16" to 5 1/16"." This copy has the larger title & author text on spine. With all other points noted in Charters, including $1.75 price. Trade-format softcover in sewn binding. An immortal Kerouac masterpiece, a key collectible in his canon in its penultimately rarest form. In relatively fine condition with only mild-to-moderate rubbing, scratching & a few short, faint creases to front, back covers & spine; mild wear & some very small-to-tiny bumps, chips at edges & corners of same; mild rubbing & very light browning to edges of text block; one faded, horizontal line through upper area of side edge of same (possibly the remains of a remainder mark). Interior very fine with only tiny bumps at corners of a few page leaves. Fine. [Item #3351]

Price: $200.00