Wake Up

A Life of the Buddha

In the mid-1950s, Jack Kerouac, a lifelong Catholic, became fascinated withBuddhism, an interest that had a profound impact on his ideas of spirituality andlater found expression in books such as Mexico City Blues and The Dharma Bums.Originally written in 1955 and now published for the first time in book form, WakeUp is Kerouac’s retelling of the life of Prince Siddartha Gotama, who as a youngman abandoned his wealthy family and comfortable home for a lifelong searchfor Enlightenment. Distilled from a wide variety of canonical scriptures, Wake Upserves as both a penetrating account of the Buddha’s life and a concise primer onthe principal teachings of Buddhism.
Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1922, the youngest of three children in a Franco-American family. He attended local Catholic and public schools and won a scholarship to Columbia University in New York City, where he first met Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs. His first novel, The Town and the City, appeared in 1950, but it was On the Road, published in 1957 and memorializing his adventures with Neal Cassady, that epitomized to the world what became known as the “Beat generation” and made Kerouac one of the most best-known writers of his time. Publication of many other books followed, among them The Dharma Bums, The Subterraneans, and Big Sur. Kerouac considered all of his autobiographical fiction to be part of “one vast book,” The Duluoz Legend. He died in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1969, at the age of forty-seven. View titles by Jack Kerouac

About

In the mid-1950s, Jack Kerouac, a lifelong Catholic, became fascinated withBuddhism, an interest that had a profound impact on his ideas of spirituality andlater found expression in books such as Mexico City Blues and The Dharma Bums.Originally written in 1955 and now published for the first time in book form, WakeUp is Kerouac’s retelling of the life of Prince Siddartha Gotama, who as a youngman abandoned his wealthy family and comfortable home for a lifelong searchfor Enlightenment. Distilled from a wide variety of canonical scriptures, Wake Upserves as both a penetrating account of the Buddha’s life and a concise primer onthe principal teachings of Buddhism.

Author

Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1922, the youngest of three children in a Franco-American family. He attended local Catholic and public schools and won a scholarship to Columbia University in New York City, where he first met Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs. His first novel, The Town and the City, appeared in 1950, but it was On the Road, published in 1957 and memorializing his adventures with Neal Cassady, that epitomized to the world what became known as the “Beat generation” and made Kerouac one of the most best-known writers of his time. Publication of many other books followed, among them The Dharma Bums, The Subterraneans, and Big Sur. Kerouac considered all of his autobiographical fiction to be part of “one vast book,” The Duluoz Legend. He died in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1969, at the age of forty-seven. View titles by Jack Kerouac

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