Kerouac & Presley

by André Pronovost, Fred A. Reed (Translator)

Overview

Kerouac&Presley takes you on the road, guitar slung over your shoulder. Beginning in the Montreal neighbourhood where a teenage girl was brutally murdered in 1975, the International Year of the Woman, to an Abbey in Connecticut where a former starlet and Elvis co-star fled Hollywood to become a nun. This is the story of a wanderer who sets out to rewrite “the blank and flawless page” that is America. Inspired by the history of Quebec and America, Kerouac&Presley is an American prayer in prose and paragraphs.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781773900650
Publisher:	Linda Leith Publishing
Publication date:	02/22/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	689 KB

About the Author

Originally from Laval, Quebec, André Pronovost has a Master's degree in Animal Psychology. In 1978 he hiked the Appalachian Trail from one end to the other. His seventh book, Kerouac&Presley won the 2018 Quebec Arts Council (CALQ) literary prize. He lives in Montreal.

A three-time winner of the Governor General’s Award for translation, and shortlisted for his 2009 translation of Thierry Hentsch’s Le temps aboli (Empire of Desire), Fred A. Reed has translated works by many of Quebec’s leading authors, several in collaboration with novelist David Homel, as well as works by Nikos Kazantzakis and other modern Greek writers. His most recent work, with David Homel, includes Philippe Arsenault’s Zora and Martine Desjardins’ The Green Chamber. Baraka Books will publish his translation, from Modern Greek, of Yannis Tsirbas’ Vic City Express in September. His latest book is Then We Were One: Fragments of Two Lives, an autobiographical essay, published in French by Fides Éditeur.

Read an Excerpt

My father died in 2003, at ninety-two years and eleven months of age. My mother has conserved like a holy relic the sugar bowl he gave her at the Sisters' raffle. She is almost one hundred—and lives alone in the big house, in Bord-de-l'Eau: a white fieldstone farmhouse built by my great grandfather, etc. Her knit sweaters are masterpieces. Her embroideries rival those found in the chateaux of the Loire Valley. No one makes a finer pea soup. She attributes part of her longevity to the fact that she went to school on foot. She asks me to wish you good day.