Duluoz Legend

The Duluoz Legend is the name given by the American novelist and poet Jack Kerouac to the novels that constituted the major body of his work. Describing The Duluoz Legend, Kerouac wrote that that:

My work comprises one vast book like Proust's Remembrance of Things Past except that my remembrances are written on the run instead of afterwards in a sick bed. Because of the objections of my early publishers I was not allowed to use the same personae names in each work. On The Road, The Subterraneans, The Dharma Bums, Doctor Sax, Maggie Cassidy, Tristessa, Desolation Angels, and the other are just chapters in the whole work which I call The Duluoz Legend. In my old age I intend to collect all my work and reinsert my pantheon of uniform names, leave the long shelf full of books there, and die happy. The whole thing forms one enormous comedy, seen through they eyes of poor Ti Jean (me), otherwise known as Jack Duluoz, the world of raging action and folly and also of gentle sweetness seen through the keyhole of his eye.^[1]

List of works

The novels included in The Duluoz Legend include the following, in the order of time covered:

Note: There are two books that are sometimes included in the Legend of Duluoz, and sometimes not.

• Lonesome Traveler – This is not a novel, but is a collection of essays and sketches made by Kerouac.
• Book of Dreams – This is also not a novel, but a dream-journal from dreams recorded between 1952 and 1960

Notes

1. ^ Jack Kerouac,Visions of Cody (London and New York: Penguin Books Ltd., 1993). This passage occurs before the main text of the book and does not have a page number.