Never before published, Jack Kerouac’s The Sea is my Brother has recently been released on Penguin Books. The handwritten manuscript for the book was originally penned by Kerouac in 1942 following his short trip at sea as a Merchant Marine on the S.S. Dorchester, a whole fifteen years before achieving literary fame with On the Road.
The story trails Wesley Norton on a voyage out of America. A novella of Old Man and the Sea aspirations, the 158 page story was described as being about the trials of “a man’s simple revolt from society as it is”.
Released on hardback through Penguin classics, The Sea is my Brother sends the reader back to the thoughts that were swimming around in Jack Kerouac’s head as a young man, pulling out some of the early influences and inspiration behind what would become the beats movement.
With key themes including Kerouac’s intrinsic romanticism of the travelling man, freedom, equality and escape, The Sea is my Brother looks set to be the original prelude to one third of the grand old men of the beats generation.
