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:

Book	Written	Time covered
Atop an Underwood: Early Stories and Other Writings	1936–1943	Various
Visions of Gerard	1956	1922–1926
Doctor Sax	1952	1930–1936
The Town and the City	1946–1949	1935–1946
Maggie Cassidy	1953	1938–1939
Vanity of Duluoz	1968	1935–1946
On The Road	1948–1956	1946–1950
Visions of Cody	1951–1952	1946–1952
The Subterraneans	1953	1953
Tristessa	1955–1956	1955–1956
The Dharma Bums	1957	1955–1956
Desolation Angels (novel)	1956–1957
Big Sur (novel)	1961	1960
Satori in Paris	1965	1965

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.