Books

First edition, sole printing, number 613 of 750 copies signed by the author, here retaining the original acetate jacket. This 128-page excerpt of Visions of Cody spawned from Kerouac's revisions to On the Road (1957) and presents a character study of that novel's hero, Dean Moriarty, renamed here Cody Pomeray due to copyright restrictions, though still based on Neal Cassady. A further 55 copies were produced out of series. No further editions or printings were issued separately until the complete edition of 1973, although sections were printed in various magazines, such as Playboy, The Beats, Transatlantic Review, and a few others. Reviewing the final version of the text, one New York Times critic observed, "you will find some of Kerouac's very best writing in this book. It is funny, it is serious. It is eloquent. To read 'On the Road' but not 'Visions of Cody' is to take a nice sightseeing tour but to forgo the spectacular rapids of Jack Kerouac's wildest writing" (Latham). Charters A9. Aaron Latham, "Visions of Cody", New York Times, 28 Jan. 1973. Octavo. Original purple cloth-backed white boards designed by Kerouac, spine lettered and decorated in silver, front cover lettered in red and purple, orange endpapers. With publisher's clear acetate dust jacket. Line drawings by the author. Faint and topical lingering scent of cigarette smoke, toning to binding's upper edges, otherwise a clean, sharp copy in fine acetate jacket.

Visions of Cody is an experimental novel by Jack Kerouac which was written in 1951 and 1952, and first published in 1972. The novel is an examination of the life of Neal Cassady (renamed Cody Pomeray in Kerouac's works), a key character in the Beat Generation, a movement that Kerouac himself started. The book's style is a stream of consciousness narrative, often unstructured, which reflects Kerouac's attempt to describe his philosophy about Neal and the period.