Maggie Cassidy

2019 Reprint of 1959 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition not reproduced with Optical Recognition software. Set in the close-knit working-class French-Canadian community of Lowell Massachusetts Maggie Cassidy is a semi-autobiographical account of Kerouacs adolescence. The story is recounted through the teenage mind of the authors alter ego Jack Duluoz a high school athletics and American football star. Maggie Cassidy is a meditation on being in love and youthful innocence. A memoir of the fantasy-filled memories of adolescent years spent male bonding with his corner boys recollecting on his mothers expectations and time spent with his father it is above all an account of his first love high-school sweetheart Maggie Cassidy. The romantic relationship is adeptly portrayed as a pure passionate exuberant love narrated with deep and profound insights. Towards the end of the book Jack moves to a school in New York on a sports scholarship leaving Maggie behind in Lowell. The culmination of the story comes three years later when Jack now a man visits her there. With the passage of time and the resulting altered motives and desires the innocence has been lost and the resulting liaison is unfulfilled. Perhaps the ending is illustrative of the nature of Kerouacs own adulthood relationships. Guy Portmans Blog.Though one of the authors less well known books Maggie Cassidy is a captivating work that utilizes long sentences and a fluid narrative style - the hallmark of the experimental spontaneous writing form pioneered by Kerouac the reluctant leader of The Beat Generation.