Jack Kerouac, Vanity of Duluoz

R. J. Ellis (University of Birmingham)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1968

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

Vanity of Duluoz

traces the development of Jack Duluoz, and takes the form of a written address – a letter, as it were – to his wife. It tells of how Jackie Duluoz, a bright, enthusiastic boy and brilliant football player, wins a sports scholarship and, as a consequence, moves out of his French-Canadian culture into an alien world, where “most” of the students “are very rich” (31). The football team does include other sports scholarship boys, but, since Duluoz harbors writing ambitions, he feels he fits in nowhere. At Columbia College these problems persist. The resulting tensions are neatly skewered by the way Duluoz’s failure to hold a place on the team is related to his lack of commitment to football, as he becomes attracted to an adolescently romantic bohemian writer’s…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

669 words

Citation: Ellis, R. J.. "Vanity of Duluoz". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 April 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=8591, accessed 19 April 2024.]

Save this article