Jack Kerouac, The Railroad Earth

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 1957

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Non-Fiction
- Memoir

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

“The Railroad Earth” is a long, often flowing memoir recounting the narrator’s memories of his experiences as a “student brakeman” on the Southern Pacific Railroad in California. Its structure is episodic: its fifteen sections are loosely linked together by being set in the month of “October” (it was originally called “October in the Railroad Earth”) and by focusing on the narrator’s early career on the railroad.

The sections shunt backwards and forwards through Jack’s memory, arranged around the hub of two October Sundays spent at work. Sections 4, 5 and 6 deal with one of these Sundays and sections 12, 13 and 14 with the other — the two days linked by the fact that on the first Sunday Jack narrowly misses the train to which he has been assigned, whilst on the

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.

554 words

Citation: Ellis, R. J.. "The Railroad Earth". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 April 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=21641, accessed 24 April 2024.]

Save this article