“Wesley walked forward and breathed the salt-seeped wind deep into his lungs. He pounded his chest joyfully and waved the broom around his head, and since no one was around, he hopped around the deck like a gleeful witch with his broom. This was it! That air, that water, the ship’s gentle plunges, the way a universe of pure wind drove off the Westminster’s smoke and absorbed it, the way white-capped waves flashed green, blue and pink in the primordial dawn light, the way the Protean ocean extended its cleansing forces up, down, and in a terrific cyclorama to all directions.”
This is the young Jack Kerouac writing in his first novel, The Sea is My Brother (unpublished until 2011, when Penguin released it), drawing on his own experiences in…
