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The Sea is My Brother

The Sea is My Brother

The Lost Novel

Summary

Described by Kerouac as being about "man's simple revolt from society as it is, with the inequalities, frustration, and self-inflicted agonies", the 158-page handwritten manuscript was Kerouac's first novel, but was not published during his lifetime. He wrote in his notes for the project that the characters were "the vanishing American, the big free by, the American Indian, the last of the pioneers, the last of the hoboes". The novel follows the fortunes of Wesley Martin, a man who Kerouac said "loved the sea with a strange, lonely love; the sea is his brother and sentences. He goes down."

Jack began this work not long after his first tour as a Merchant Marine on the S.S. Dorchester in the late summer of 1942 during which he kept a journal detailing the gritty daily routine of life at sea. Inspired by the trip, which exemplified Jack's love for adventure and the character traits of his fellow shipmates, the journals were spontaneous sketches of those experiences that were woven into a short novel soon after disembarking from the S.S. Dorchester in October of 1942.

Reviews

  • Anyone interested in the making of the Beat generation will be fascinated by this survival from its beginnings [And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks]
    Jessica Mann, Literary Review

About the author

Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1922. Educated by Jesuit brothers in Lowell, he decided to become a writer at age seventeen and developed his own writing style, which he called 'spontaneous prose'. He used this technique to record the life of the American 'traveler' and the experiences of the Beat Generation, most memorably in On the Road and also in The Subterraneans and The Dharma Bums. His other works include Big Sur, Desolation Angels, Lonesome Traveler, Visions of Gerard, Tristessa, and a book of poetry called Mexico City Blues. Jack Kerouac died in 1969.
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