Kerouac, Jack

Osamely Poutnik (Czech-Language Edition of “Lonesome Traveler”)

Czech Republic: Votobia, 1993. First Edition. Softcover. “Lonesome Traveler” brings together numerous gems from Jack Kerouac’s now-classic accounts of his early travels across the American continent & the world, recounted in his inimitably excited yet ultimately melancholy manner—a milestone work by the Founding Father of the Beat Generation. Scenes of Mexico, Morocco, the United Kingdom and France appear throughout the work—as do the flings, relationships and jobs he encountered during his travels. Offered here is the First Czech Edition, and the story of the Beat Generation in (first) Czechoslovakia and (then) the Czech Republic is a historic tale of the counterculture colliding with geopolitics and censorship. Czech enthusiasm for American literature essentially begins in 1945, when American troops liberated the western part of Czechoslovakia. The Communist takeover came three years later in 1948, and American Literature became the literature of The Imperialist Enemy. Ironically, “The Angry Young Men” in Britain were widely translated, but the (on average) further left Beats—whose politics would have been closer to the Communists—were not widely translated. The first translation of Allen Ginsberg’s “HOWL” was by Jan Zabrana—who, along with Josef Skvorcky—were two of the most important translators of the Communist era. Richard Olehla of Prague’s Charles University has called Kerouac’s prose “…a symbol of freedom,” writing: “You have to imagine that Czech people were not allowed to travel abroad for forty years, and ‘On the Road’ represents a lifestyle based on traveling, so it did become a symbol of freedom and free moving, I’d say….when the translation came it did become a sort of Bible of modern fiction.” Czechoslovakia did not split into the liberated, no-longer-Communist Slovakia and Czech Republic until the Velvet Revolution of 1989, so this first Czech Edition of “Lonesome Traveler” took 29 years and one massive cultural and geopolitical revolution to appear. Amazing! Trade-format softcover, the First Czech Edition. [ISBN: 80-85619-68-7]. Book in very fine condition with only minor rubbing to front, back covers; minor-to-moderate shelf-wear to fine-edges; minute bumps to corners. Very Fine. [Item #4667]

Price: $100.00