Jack Kerouac.
 
Andre Deutsch: 1973. Octavo. Advanced Review Copy. Book and unclipped jacket are both near fine. 
 
“I am writing this book because we're all going to die . . . In the loneliness of my own life, my father dead, my brother dead, my mother faraway, my sister and my wife far away, nothing here but my own tragic hands that once were guarded by a world, a sweet attention, that now are left to guide and disappear their own way into the common dark of all our deaths, sleeping in me raw bed, alone and stupid: with just this one pride and consolation: my broke heart in the general despair and opened up inwards to the Lord, I made a supplication in this dream.”