Jack Kerouac, Old Angel Midnight

R. J. Ellis (University of Birmingham)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1959

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Poetry (any)

Resources

Old Angel Midnight is perhaps best described as a species of prose poem, written over a number of years. It consists of sixty-seven relatively short, often semi-autonomous sections (some sections are very short, some clearly interrelate). Overall, though, the work is unified by its over-arching commitment to literary and linguistic experimentation. In a letter to John Clellon Holmes Kerouac called it “automatic writing”, but it is much less what Yeats or the surrealists had in mind than writing without any attempt to “censor or alter his expression”. In Old Angel Midnight Kerouac pays close attention to language shapes and – above all – sounds. Many sections are stimulated by listening and responding to …

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594 words

Citation: Ellis, R. J.. "Old Angel Midnight". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 April 2007 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=21640, accessed 23 November 2024.]

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