{"product_id":"2940169935608","title":"The Haunted Life: And Other Writings","description":"\u003cp\u003eJack Kerouac wrote \u003ci\u003eThe Haunted Life\u003c\/i\u003e in 1944 when he was 22 years old and attending Columbia University. Originally intended as a three-part novel, only this first 20,000-word section was ever finished. Upon its completion, Kerouac promptly lost his only hand-written final draft in a New York taxi cab, remaining unknown to the public until its appearance at Christies about ten years ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eKerouac's family has now decided to share this manuscript with the world.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhile the entirety of the novel remained unfinished, the surviving manuscript successfully works alone as a novella with a satisfying, if open-ended, conclusion. It features a scaled-down version of the Martin family and is set in Lowell, Massachusetts, as was Kerouac's first novel \u003ci\u003eThe Town and The City\u003c\/i\u003e. Kerouac had planned on writing a cycle of novels tentatively titled \u003ci\u003eAn American Passed Here\u003c\/i\u003e, which was to be set primarily in the fictional town of Galloway (based on Lowell). That cycle was to contain \u003ci\u003eThe Haunted Life\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Sea is My Brother\u003c\/i\u003e, tracing the story of the Martin family throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Eventually Kerouac's plans for his Martin cycle materialized into his first novel, \u003ci\u003eThe Town and the City\u003c\/i\u003e, shortly before he moved on to compose his iconic \u003ci\u003eOn the Road\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTodd Tietchen, the editor of the project and the Jack Kerouac\/Beat Scholar in residence at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, has assembled a number of archival documents to thicken out the context of this lost novella, documents that attest to the level of intention and care that went into Kerouac's writing projects.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Brilliance Audio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47123269452016,"sku":"2940169935608","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940169935608_p0.jpg?v=1763697444","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940169935608","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}