The Haunted Life Audiobook By Jack Kerouac cover art

The Haunted Life

And Other Writings

Preview

Try for $0.00
Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

The Haunted Life

By: Jack Kerouac
Narrated by: Liev Schreiber, Luke Daniels
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $16.00

Buy for $16.00

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

Jack Kerouac wrote The Haunted Life in 1944 when he was 22 years old and attending Columbia University. Originally intended as a three-part novel, only this first 20,000-word section was ever finished. Upon its completion, Kerouac promptly lost his only hand-written final draft in a New York taxi cab, remaining unknown to the public until its appearance at Christies about ten years ago.

Kerouac’s family has now decided to share this manuscript with the world.

While the entirety of the novel remained unfinished, the surviving manuscript successfully works alone as a novella with a satisfying, if open-ended, conclusion. It features a scaled-down version of the Martin family and is set in Lowell, Massachusetts, as was Kerouac’s first novel The Town and The City. Kerouac had planned on writing a cycle of novels tentatively titled An American Passed Here, which was to be set primarily in the fictional town of Galloway (based on Lowell). That cycle was to contain The Haunted Life and The Sea is My Brother, tracing the story of the Martin family throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Eventually Kerouac’s plans for his Martin cycle materialized into his first novel, The Town and the City, shortly before he moved on to compose his iconic On the Road.

Todd Tietchen, the editor of the project and the Jack Kerouac/Beat Scholar in residence at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, has assembled a number of archival documents to thicken out the context of this lost novella, documents that attest to the level of intention and care that went into Kerouac’s writing projects.

©2014 John Sampas, the Estate of Stella Kerouac. (P)2014 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
Coming of Age Fiction Literary Fiction Literary History & Criticism United States
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

What listeners say about The Haunted Life

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    11
  • 4 Stars
    6
  • 3 Stars
    2
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    8
  • 4 Stars
    3
  • 3 Stars
    2
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    6
  • 4 Stars
    4
  • 3 Stars
    3
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Liev Schreiber should read more

The book is better than I thought it would be. Liev Schreiber should read more.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Early Kerouac - Lowell, Ma. - shows brilliance

Disclaimer: "The Haunted Life" is the first work by Jack Kerouac that I've ever read - much less reviewed.

Commentary:

Galloway is Lowell, Ma.

A simple, yet rich & complex story about "growing up (and out)" from Lowell, Ma - right before WW II. The characters each represent different life and political philosophies. The father represents the very Conservative voices of the time (Novel written in 1944 - but published in 2014) represented by the view of Father Charles Coughlin. In the Father's introductory monologue - many of the ideas mentioned resonate today with those who are politically Conservative - and through the appropriatea Conservative news outlets.

Other characters represent wanderlust - getting out of Lowell, Ma. and ...."seeing the world as a romantic artist and adventurer with the U.S. Army.

The title comes from the idea that two of Kerouac's friends were killed in WWII - and that their loss - has "haunted" Kerouac.

A theme is also how WW II has transformed nearly everyone and everything - and this transformation was just becoming visible.

This is an "early Kerouac" work - it seems to indicate that his (Kerouac's) concerns to be expressed during his "beat era" - had their beginnings during the Great Depression and WW II.

Great writing - dealing with the "tensions of the day" - a harbinger of the greater writing yet to come.

Carl Gallozzi

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

An honest man is a failure by most measures.

This book seems more like a montage of images that mirror the times we are experiencing now in 2022, maybe all times, struggling to define what it means to be an American, at least the imperious ones.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!