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Giamo traces Jack Kerouac's search for spiritual salvation.... The author argues that Kerouac's goal in all his fiction was enlightenment, blended with a transcendence that can allow a balancing of the physical and the spiritual.... [T]his book is filled with provocative ideas and sincere appreciation for the King of the Beats. It can be read with profit by anyone who wishes to get beyond the media hype of the Beat Generation in order to grapple with one of the United States' most significant contemporary writers.-Choice Ben Giamo digs deep and produces gold, the most intelligent and sensitive analysis of Kerouac's oeuvre ever mined.-John Sampas, executor, the estate of Jack Kerouac Ben Giamo stresses the real cornerstone of Kerouac's work.... It is a joy to read a book about Kerouac and his writings that doesn't sensationalize him, doesn't address him as a celebrity. Instead Giamo brings to the fore the aspects that would have attracted Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Allen Ginsberg and others, that Kerouac saw the dally pursult of life as holy.-Beat Scene Kerouac, the Word and the Way... offers insights into Kerouac's life and writing. [It] is a detailed and comprehensive description of what Giamo calls 'the various spiritual quests undertaken by Kerouac-as revealed by his novelistic writings.-Ann Charters, author of Kerouac: A Biography

Ben Giamo is an associate professor and chairman of the Department of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame. His previous books are The Homeless of Ironweed: Blossoms on the Crag, Beyond Homelessness: Frames of Reference (with Jeffrey Grunberg), and On the Bowery: Confronting Homelessness in American Society.