Vanity of Duluoz: An Adventurous Education, 1935-46 - Jack Kerouac 1968 - Coward-McCann, New York - First Edition ‘All right, wifey, maybe I’m a big pain in the you know what, but after I’ve given you a recitation of the troubles I had to go through to make good in America between 1935 and more or less now, 1967, and although I also know everybody in the world’s had his own troubles you’ll understand that my particular form of anguish came from being too sensitive to all the lunkheads I had to deal with...’

A bright first edition of Kerouac’s final novel published during his lifetime, the autobiographical tale of his alter-ego Jack Duluoz, recounting his experiences at Columbia University on a football scholarship in the 1930s to his coming of age serving in the US navy during WWII. When Duluoz returns to New York after the war, he abandons his former plans, and embarks upon a riot of drugs, sex and writing, as the Beat movement begins.
  Jean-Louis ‘Jack’ Kerouac (1922-1969) was an American novelist and poet, and is considered a literary iconoclast, alongside fellow writers Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs. Recognised for his spontaneous prose, he was one of the pioneers of the Beat Generation.

References: Ross, ‘Beat – and Buddhist’
The New York Times 1958. Penguin, web.

Large octavo (book size 22x15.2cm), pp. [4] 280 [4]. Publisher’s black cloth spine lettered in gilt, grey and white patterned paper cover boards, black endpapers illustrated with photographs. Dust jacket priced ‘$5.50’ to upper corner of front flap.
  Condition: Near fine, gilt to spine dulled, in near fine dust jacket, some rubbing to spine ends and corners.   Ref: 111143   Price: HK$ 3,000