1957 Kerouac play unearthed

An unpublished three-act play by Jack Kerouac, based on his drunken Beat adventures, has been discovered recently and will be excerpted next month in Best Life magazine.

“The part we’re excerpting will show Kerouac and Neal Cassady at a racetrack, and they’re partying and gambling,” Best Life editor in chief Stephen Perrine said Monday. “But they’re also talking about reincarnation and other obsessions. It’s more an exploration of their inner lives.”

The entire play, “Beat Generation,” will be published this fall by Thunder’s Mouth Press.

Kerouac wrote the play -- which draws on his life and those of other Beat writers -- in 1957, the same year his classic novel “On the Road” was released. He failed to generate interest in it and set it aside. He died in 1969.