Jack Kerouac is pregnant / stories by Aurelie Sheehan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sheehan, Aurelie, 1963-

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Genre:

Fiction.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Sheehan, Aurelie, 1963- (autograph) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

x, 188 pages ; 22 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Normal, IL : Dalkey Archive Press, 1994.

Summary:

"It takes a long time to see you are a slave", muses one character in Aurelie Sheehan's first collection of stories - lyrical, sometimes bitingly funny chronicles of women breaking out of imposed roles. Here are the dreams of misplaced waitresses, prostitutes and other working girls, the survival techniques of secretaries too smart to take orders. In the title story, a woman yearns to be like Jack Kerouac, but is held back by a litany of rules teaching her to be a submissive girl, a "pansy". The main character in "Look at the Moon" is bored to distraction by her receptionist job but is still half under the influence of a Catholic upbringing when she hooks up with a flamboyant stranger and goes on a life-altering road trip with her. In "The Dove", a wealthy widow who was pressured by her family to marry a rich man spends her life fixated on an affair she had a week before her wedding. Women young and old, rich and poor, make soul-threatening sacrifices to adhere to societal or familial strictures. Love is passionately evoked here, as are the myths and illusions that sustain it. Sheehan uses narrative elements poetically: these kaleidoscopic stories subvert the linear notion of storytelling, creating momentum and effect instead through ellipses, layering and contrast. Jack Kerouac Is Pregnant is the impressive debut of a beguiling, assured writer.

Local Notes:

Gotham Book Mart Collection copy has dustjacket retained.

Gotham Book Mart Collection copy signed by the author.

ISBN:

1564780600 :

OCLC:

30036143