Orpheus Emerged

A LOST CLASSIC

“Rebellion, self-destructive behavior, alcoholism—all the Kerouac hallmarks are in evidence...”
—Publishers Weekly

“A striking success.”
—Philadelphia Inquirer

“There will never be a moment like this one,” says poet and fellow Beat writer Robert Creeley, in his introduction to this literary event: the first full-length work to be published since Kerouac’s death in 1969.

Discovered by his estate, ORPHEUS EMERGED chronicles the passions, conflicts and dreams of a group of bohemians searching for truth while studying at a university. Kerouac wrote the story shortly after meeting Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Lucien Carr, and others in and around Columbia University who would form the core of the Beats. ORPHEUS EMERGED is a unique portrait of an artist as a young man and shows a writer in the process of finding the voice that would eventually express the spirit of a generation.

Jack Kerouac, the renowned American author, was born in the mill town of Lowell, Massachusetts in 1922. His parents, Leo and Gabrielle Kerouac, were of French-Canadian heritage, and Jack did not learn to speak English until he began school at age six. In 1939, when Jack was 17, he left Lowell to attend Horace Mann School, then Columbia College in New York in 1940, under a football scholarship.