From the most famous of the Beat writers and the author of
On the Road
and
The Dharma Bums
, Kerouac’s intoxicating love story of two young bohemians, now reissued in the centenary year of his birth
Written over the course of three days and three nights,
The Subterraneans
was generated out of the same kind of ecstatic flash of inspiration that produced another one of Kerouac’s early classics,
. Centering around the tempestuous romance and breakup of Leo Percepied and Mardou Fox—two denizens of the 1950s San Francisco underground—
is a tale of dark alleys and smoky rooms, of artists, visionaries, and adventurers existing outside mainstream America’s field of vision. Loosely based on Kerouac’s own life, and peopled with analogues of real-life friends, including William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, and Neal Cassady,
is a vivid and breathless masterwork of Beat literature.