← Back to browse / The Subterraneans
Book

The Subterraneans

Where to read

Availability via OpenLibrary.

Taste threads

What this title is working with

Beat generation portrait Semi fictional romance Literary mosaic Thinly disguised real people City night energy Jazz club peripheral glow

TasteGraph uses signals like these to connect titles across movies, TV, books, and games. Your ratings decide which ones belong in your Taste DNA and how strongly they matter.

How cross-media recommendations work →

Synopsis

The Subterraneans is a 1958 novella by Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac. It is a semi-fictional account of his short romance with an African American woman named Alene Lee (1931-1991) in New York in 1953. In the novel she is renamed "Mardou Fox," and described as a carefree spirit who frequents the jazz clubs and bars of the budding Beat scene of San Francisco. Other well-known personalities and friends from the author's life also appear thinly disguised in the novel. The character Frank Carmody is based on William Burroughs, and Adam Moorad on Allen Ginsberg. Even Gore Vidal appears as successful novelist Arial Lavalina. Kerouac's alter ego is named Leo Percepied, and his long-time friend Neal Cassady is mentioned only in passing as Leroy.

Why you like this

TasteGraph reads what you rate and works out why you like it, then finds matches across movies, TV, books, and games. No account needed.