is an experimental piece of writing by Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) composed between 1952 and 1960, a time period corresponding to the most productive years of his career. Written as “a private dream diary with no intention of publication” (Charters, 1999, 327), it
consists of a series of short sequences of variable length (anywhere between one line and three pages), which record Kerouac’s own dreams in written form. Each sequence sketches the narrative of one specific dream – an elastic dream-sequence containing vivid imagery, rich action and sharp sensations written in present tense. These dream-sequences are freely associated with no tangible relation from one to the other; they build a corpus of dream recollections which, as Kerouac put it, “continue the same…
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Citation: Harma, Tanguy. "Book of Dreams". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 29 November 2018 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=6272, accessed 16 April 2024.]
