Jack Kerouac, libraries, and chess

The other day we connected Jack Kerouac with the Library of Congress. Below are Jack's own words relevant to libraries from one of his novels. I'll let you guess which novel (post it in a comment -- first correct answer gets Beat Brownie Points). In this passage, Jack is describing items in his home when the family lived over the Textile Lunch.

Then, kitchen table, the light from the north window, gloom views of grief-stricken birch on hills beyond the white raw roofs--my chess set and book. The book from the library; Scotch Gambit, Queen's Gambit, scholarly treatises on the combination of openings, the glistening chess pieces palpable to dramatize defeats-- It was how I'd become interested in old classical-looking library books, tomes, chess critiques some of them falling apart and from the darkest shelf in the Lowell Public Library, found there by me in my overshoes at closing time--

What's that? You didn't know Kerouac was a chess fan? Click here for a November 30, 1957 letter from Jack to Allen Ginsberg discussing how he let Neal Cassady win at chess because he (Jack) was a bodhisattva. In June 1955 Jack wrote the following poem about chess (Source: posted by Dave Moore on the Jack Kerouac Facebook group January 29, 2015):

EXAMPLE OF MY BLUES (Watching Washington Sq. Chess Crowds) 

The Chessplayers Wont End
Still they sit
Millions of hats
In underwater foliage
Over marble games
The Greeks of Chess
Plot the Pop
Of Mate
King Queen
-- I know their game,
Their elephant with the pillar
With the pearl in it,
Their gory bishops
And vital pawns --
Their devout frontline
Sacrificial pawn shops
Their stately King
Who is so tall
Their Virgin Queens
Pree ing to Knave
The Night Knot
-- Their Bhagavad Gitas
Of Ignorance,
Krishna's advice,
Comma,
The game begins --
But hidden Buddha
Nowhere to be seen
But everywhere .....
Like the sky
Already waits.

So there you have it: Jack Kerouac, libraries, and chess....