The Haunted Life, and Other Writings

work by Kerouac

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July 21, 2026

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The Haunted Life, and Other Writings is a posthumously published collection by Jack Kerouac, a key figure in the Beat movement. This work includes a novella about his childhood, reflecting his ambition to write "the great American novel." Kerouac's writing style, influenced by bebop jazz, is characterized by "spontaneous prose," a technique he developed to capture the immediacy of thought and experience without revision. He believed revision was a form of "literary lying." The collection also features notes and letters, offering insight into his early literary endeavors and personal reflections.1

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Jack Kerouac
On the Road and other early work
…letters to his father, as The Haunted Life, and Other Writings in 2014. That novella was just one expression of Kerouac’s boyhood ambition to write “the great American novel.” His first published novel, The Town & the City (1950), received favorable reviews but was considered derivative of the novels of…
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…letters to his father, as The Haunted Life, and Other Writings in 2014. That novella was just one expression of Kerouac’s boyhood ambition to write “the great American novel.” His first published novel, The Town & the City (1950), received favorable reviews but was considered derivative of the novels of…
Read More