''Maggie Cassidy'' is a novel by the American writer

Jack Kerouac Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (; March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Of French-Canadian ...

, first published in 1959. It is a largely

autobiographical An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life, providing a personal narrative that reflects on the author's experiences, memories, and insights. This genre allows individuals to share thei ...

work about Kerouac's early life in

Lowell, Massachusetts Lowell () is a city in Massachusetts, United States. Alongside Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cambridge, it is one of two traditional county seat, seats of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, Middlesex County. With an estimated population of 115,554 in ...

, from 1938 to 1939, and chronicles his real-life relationship with his teenage sweetheart Mary Carney. It is unique for Kerouac for its

high school A secondary school, high school, or senior school, is an institution that provides secondary education. Some secondary schools provide both ''lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper secondary education'' (ages 14 to 18), i.e., ...

setting and teenage characters. He wrote the novel in 1953 but it was not published until 1959, after the success of ''

On the Road ''On the Road'' is a 1957 novel by American writer Jack Kerouac, based on the travels of Kerouac and his friends across the United States. It is considered a defining work of the postwar Beat and Counterculture generations, with its protagoni ...

'' (1957). The original manuscript published by Avon Books in 1959 was almost immediately pulled from the shelves due to objections over profanity in one particular passage. The passage was rewritten and the book redistributed even though Kerouac reportedly objected to the changes. The original manuscript remained unpublished until 2015 when Devault-Graves Digital Editions restored the full uncut original manuscript for its print edition.

Plot

Part of what Kerouac considered the 'Duluoz Legend', ''Maggie Cassidy'' tells the tale of Jack Duluoz and his romantic involvement with

Irish-American Irish Americans () are Irish ethnics who live within in the United States, whether immigrants from Ireland or Americans with full or partial Irish ancestry. Irish immigration to the United States From the 17th century to the mid-19th c ...

Maggie Cassidy. Duluoz is a high school athletics and football star who meets Maggie Cassidy and begins a devoted, inconstant, tender adolescent love affair.

Character key

Kerouac often based his fictional characters on friends and family.Sandison, David. ''Jack Kerouac: An Illustrated Biography.'' Chicago: Chicago Review Press. 1999

Trivia

* One of the scenes in the novel is strongly reminiscent of a scene in ''

The Sorrows of Young Werther ''The Sorrows of Young Werther'' (; ), or simply ''Werther'', is a 1774 epistolary novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, which appeared as a revised edition in 1787. It was one of the main novels in the ''Sturm und Drang'' ...

''. In Kerouac’s novel, a blizzard rages outside during a party organized for the seventeenth birthday of Jack Duluoz. The party is the start of the estrangement of Jack and Maggie. The first time Werther meets his Lotte is during a ball in the country whilst a storm (foreshadowing Werther’s demise) is passing outside. Kerouac is known to have read

Goethe Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German polymath who is widely regarded as the most influential writer in the German language. His work has had a wide-ranging influence on Western literature, literary, Polit ...

. * The fictitious name of Kerouac’s girlfriend echoes the name of Neal Cassady. Who, under the fictitious name of Dean Moriarty, would be the centre of Kerouac’s attention in ''

''. Kerouac meant the two books to be part of the same life. Together with books such as '' The Subterraneans'' and ''

The Dharma Bums ''The Dharma Bums'' is a 1958 novel by Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac. The basis for the novel's semi-fictional accounts are events occurring years after the events of ''On the Road''. The main characters are the narrator Ray Smith, based o ...

'' they make up the Duluoz legend which Kerouac compared to Proust’s ''

In Search of Lost Time ''In Search of Lost Time'' (), first translated into English as ''Remembrance of Things Past'', and sometimes referred to in French as ''La Recherche'' (''The Search''), is a novel in seven volumes by French author Marcel Proust. This early twen ...

''. “ ..xcept that my remembrances are written on the run instead of afterwards in a sick bed.”

References

External links

''New York Times'' book review
1959 American novels Novels by Jack Kerouac Beat novels Fiction set in 1938 Fiction set in 1939 Novels set in Massachusetts Lowell, Massachusetts {{1950s-novel-stub