A collection of previously unpublished writing culled from the Kerouac archive

Jack Kerouac's archive is vast. Throughout his life he was constantly writing, and he meticulously saved and

catalogued his material. The result is that beyond the work published in his lifetime there has been a rich

stream of posthumous writing that is far from tapped, adding depth to his lifework--the Duluoz Legend--and

our understanding of Kerouac the man. Far from being the adrenalized thrill-seeker that he depicted in On the

Road's Dean Moriarty, Jack himself was deeply spiritual, shy, and reclusive. He sought adventures for the sake

of experience, needing them to fuel his writing, which according to him was his sole reason for living. Few

people sacrificed more for their art.

This collection of previously unpublished writing culled from the Kerouac archive, and as a companion to

Paul Maher Jr.'s Becoming Kerouac, spans Jack's adult life, from a journal written at age seventeen to

autobiographical reflections a few years before his death. Self-Portrait is a blend of fictional and nonfictional

pieces, a few abandoned starts but most complete in themselves and all of them chosen for the revelations

they contain. In The Moon and Sixpence, Somerset Maugham wrote, "A man's work reveals him... No one can

produce the most casual work without disclosing the innermost secrets of his soul." There are more than two

dozen Kerouac biographies, but Self-Portrait reveals the artist in his own words, from his early ambition to

the deep self-examination of his "Self-Ultimacy" period, his three-year struggle to write On the Road, musings

about himself and America in the half-dozen years before the novel was published and then in the aftermath

amid his public withdrawal, suffering from alcoholism and hounded by fame. Through it all there are tortuous

feelings about his family--love, guilt, duty, and betrayal. As fans of Kerouac have come to learn, reading his

work is a visceral probe.