Chapter 9 - Late Kerouac, or the Conflicted “King of the Beatniks”

Summary

This chapter examines Kerouac’s later novels such as Big Sur, Satori in Paris, Desolation Angels, and Vanity of Duluoz, showing how he developed a “late style” that was a response to the way his image and writing were commodified by popular and literary culture. These late novels portray the author-narrator as out of step with a culture that has passed him by, as Kerouac suggests the ways his fame as the so-called “King of the Beatniks” led to both his increasing alcoholism, and to new ways of looking at himself in his writing.