The Subterraneans

By: Jack Kerouac

Narrated by: Andrew Eiden

From the most famous of the Beat writers and the author of On the Road and The Dharma Bums, Kerouac’s intoxicating love story of two young bohemians

Written over the course of three days and three nights, The Subterraneans was generated out of the same kind of ecstatic flash of inspiration that produced another one of Kerouac’s early classics, On the Road.

Centering around the tempestuous romance and breakup of Leo Percepied and Mardou Fox—two denizens of the 1950s San Francisco underground—this is a tale of dark alleys and smoky rooms, of artists, visionaries, and adventurers existing outside mainstream America’s field of vision.

Loosely based on Kerouac’s own life and peopled with analogues of real-life friends, including William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, and Neal Cassady, The Subterraneans is a vivid and breathless masterwork of Beat literature.

©1958 Jack Kerouac (P)2025 Blackstone Publishing

Keeping up

Jack Kerouac's pros are filled with more poetry than his actual poetry. You do have to be in the mood for his writing, as it comes at you nonstop and can be exhausting. The Subterraneans is a good read and while I think of Jack as a man's man and expect a masculine voice, Andrew Eiden, with a more boyish voice keeps up and does deliver!

Kerouac never gets old.

My favorite 20th century love story. This is my first time listening to it. Great production.