La Chute

Kerouac probably acquired this copy during his only journey to France. Gallimard regularly sent him French editions of his own books, but rarely other works in French unless they had been presented to him directly by French writers.

By the early 1960s, France—and particularly Brittany, the supposed land of his ancestors—had become an obsession. Kerouac finally crossed the Atlantic in 1965, on the chaotic journey later recounted in Satori in Paris. In Paris he visited Gallimard and the Bibliothèque nationale before travelling to Brest in search of the Kerouac family origins. His genealogical quest ultimately proved unsuccessful.

French literature had nevertheless accompanied him since adolescence. At the Lowell public library, Kerouac read Proust, Balzac, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Genet, Cendrars, Camus and Céline—the latter among his favorite writers. French was also the language he had spoken with his mother throughout his life.

After Kerouac’s death in 1969, his books and papers became part of his estate. The two official Kerouac Estate marks on this volume establish its presence in his personal library.

An evocative association between two defining writers of the postwar generation.