The libertarian spirit of the 'beatniks' breaks into the hyper-controlled 21st century

In 1956, Jack Kerouac applied for a position as a forest fire ranger on a Washington State hill known as Desolation Peak.

By then, he had published a novel —

— and had gotten his second,

This editor felt that he should make some changes to the novel.

It was too long and convoluted.

By this time, Kerouac had already begun to bang on his typewriter syncopated to a

letting flow a crazed, dreamy and mystical inner monologue that turned James Joyce's formal experimentation into something real and exciting, full of life.

And he kept doing it while he waited for those changes, up there on Desolation Peak.

The result of that time was his book

, which barely spent a short time in Spanish bookstores in the early 70s. Now it has just been reissued, at a time when the

generation is back.

movement

, led by Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and which also included John Clellon Holmes, Neal and Carolyn Cassady and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, as well as a handful of brilliant poets, including Hettie Jones, Gary Snyder and Diane Di Prima, it was understood as a countercultural movement.

Until then, in the late 1950s, the lives of men and women in the United States could not consist of anything other than growing up, finding a job, getting married, having children, waiting for death.

The

, ancestors of the

and of the release of the late 60s and 70s, they were the first to become aware of its importance —the creators knew they were promoters of something that was going to change lives— and the last to take its precepts to the last consequences.

“They really lived as they defended that it should be lived.

They were real.

Something that can be claimed in today's world, in which we need applications like

to feel real again”.

The one speaking is Ferran Muñoz, editor of Anagrama, in charge of the reissue of

and other

that Jorge Herralde's label, led by Silvia Sesé, has decided to recover.

Hopefully they can be useful in today's hyper-controlled world.

Hopefully they will once again inspire young people to let themselves go”, says Sesé.

And he also explains that Kerouac, "as the author who is the hallmark of the publisher, needed his own library" (in the Compacts collection, the most affordable, precisely with the intention of reaching new readers), like Vladimir Nabokov or Patricia Highsmith.

To the titles that could be found regularly and that, according to Muñoz, "continue to be sold and reissued year after year", four that have not been found until now have just been added:

,

,

and the aforementioned

.

With a renewed image — illustrations by Eva Mutter — and new translations by Antonio-Prometeo Moya.

Cover of the book 'On the road' (1957) by Jack Kerouac.

"Publishing the

generation is one of the things I feel most proud of," says Jorge Herralde, who read

as soon as he was able to get hold of a copy, and that he had not thought about the fact that "there could be a new generation that needs to get back on the road and flee from the established", but, he says, "it would be desirable and perhaps possible".

He also remembers when he was in City Lights, the epicenter of the movement.

“I got to know Lawrence Ferlinghetti and visited his City Lights bookstore on several occasions.

In it, he recommended an unknown Charles Bukowski, whom we published immediately and continued with his work, which had, and continues to have, great success in Spain, ”he adds.

“Anagrama began to publish Kerouac in 1986, and then William S. Burroughs or Allen Ginsberg, among others”, he also assures.

Before, titles like

Angels of Desolation

itself

They had been published by the late Luis de Caralt in 1971.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, next to the window of the City Lights bookstore, in San Francisco, in 1977.Janet Fries (Getty Images)

That the comeback is taking place now, just one year after the centenary of Jack Kerouac's birth, is no coincidence.

"Now the rights had finally been released," says Herralde.

And not just from Kerouac.

Anagrama is also going to publish

, by Neal Cassady —an epistolary novel by Kerouac's

, in which he is one of the two main characters—, and the biography of his wife, Carolyn,

.

And the first novel by the author of

, the aforementioned and monumental

.

“Everyone associates the

with young people, and the feeling is that on a literary level they have forgotten how they opened paths.

The

found their own style and a way of being in the world.

They expanded the possibilities of writing and consciousness.

Reading them today can be very inspiring”, says Silvia Sesé, who points out that the recovery is linked to different projects such as the Escola Bloom, which through seminars aims to promote “careful reading” of all of them.

And with "careful reading" he refers to a strictly literary reading.

“Today we read less in a historical context, and there is more than one generation of young people who do not know who the

were , or what the aesthetic avant-garde are, or how the crisis of realism came about, or where the

come from .

They have already experienced the new ways of expressing themselves without knowing how they were formed”, says Muñoz.

But young people are not the only ones who can stumble upon something new.

Because “reading the

with an adult perspective also changes what we thought of them”, he explains.

Above all with regard to formal experimentation and the communion with nature that occurs in, for example,

, so close to the

that could almost be considered part of that genre that is booming today.

A Kerouac interviewed in

that is expanded here, and that he does not stop doing.

"Kerouac's early novels are also very different from his later ones," adds the editor.

Whatever the case, the

are back.

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits

Keep reading

I'm already a subscriber