The Words without Borders blog has a fascinating post on two novellas by Jack Kerouac in his native French, works that were written in the early 1950s and which reflect his interest in Proust, Balzac and the French literary tradition. News of Kerouac’s French works came in a panel at the Americas Society in New York, featuring Québec journalist Gabriel Anctil.
The works are La Nuit est ma femme (The Night is My Mother) — a title which has echoes of Kerouac’s “lost” novel The Sea is My Brother, which Harper’s announced last month it would publish — and, amazingly, Sur le chemin, which translates to — yes — “On the Road.” In the latter work, Neal Cassady appears — but he’s nine years old.
There are no plans yet to publish the two novellas.
