Desolation Peak: Collected Writings

Jack Kerouac

Nov 2022 · Highbridge Audio · Narrated by Christian Rummel

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7 hr 10 min

Unabridged

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About this audiobook

In the summer of 1956, Jack Kerouac hitchhiked from Mill Valley, California, to the North Cascades to spend two months serving as a fire lookout for the US Forest Service. Taking only the Diamond Sutra for reading material, he intended to spend his time in deep contemplation and to achieve enlightenment. Kerouac's experience on Desolation Peak forms the climax of his novel The Dharma Bums and has also been depicted in part 1 of Desolation Angels and a chapter in his nonfiction book Lonesome Traveler. None of these versions offers a full, true picture, however; and for that reason, Desolation Peak is essential listening. The highlight of Desolation Peak is the journal he kept, starkly revealing the depth of his poverty, the extremity of his mood swings, and the ongoing arguments with himself over the future direction of his life, his writing, and faith. Along with the journal, he worked on a series of projects, including "Ozone Park," "The Martin Family," and "Desolation Adventure." Also included in this collection are "The Diamondcutter of Perfect Knowing," Kerouac's "transliteration" of the Diamond Sutra, his "Desolation Blues" and "Desolation Pops" poems, and assorted prose sketches and dreams.

About the author

Jack Kerouac's first novel, The Town and the City, appeared in 1950, but it was On the Road, published in 1957, that made Kerouac one of the most best-known writers of his time. Publication of many other books followed, among them The Dharma Bums, The Subterraneans, and Big Sur. He died in 1969.

Christian Rummel is a classically trained stage actor with over twenty-five years of experience. He has narrated over 300 audiobooks and is the voice of Ruin in Call of Duty: Black Ops III, COD: Black Ops 4, and COD: Mobile, as well as the voice of Stryker in COD: Black Ops Cold War and COD: Warzone.

Charles Shuttleworth has been studying the work of Jack Kerouac since the late-1980s and first taught a senior elective course on Kerouac and the Beat Generation at the Horace Mann School in New York City in 1994. He currently teaches Kerouac and the Beats at the Harker School in San Jose, California.

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