Kerouac, Jack

Average customer rating:

Fun and wide-eyed novel but not grounded in the real world
Over rated
A Hymn of Self-Indulgence
Phony masterpiece
Did I miss something here?

On the Road
Jack Kerouac
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0140042598

Amazon.com

On The Road, the most famous of Jack Kerouac's works, is not only the soul of the Beat movement and literature, but one of the most important novels of the century. Like nearly all of Kerouac's writing, On The Road is thinly fictionalized autobiography, filled with a cast made of Kerouac's real life friends, lovers, and fellow travelers. Narrated by Sal Paradise, one of Kerouac's alter-egos, On the Road is a cross-country bohemian odyssey that not only influenced writing in the years since its 1957 publication but penetrated into the deepest levels of American thought and culture.

Book Description

MAXnotes offer a fresh look at masterpieces of literature, presented in a lively and interesting fashion. Written by literary experts who currently teach the subject, MAXnotes will enhance your understanding and enjoyment of the work. MAXnotes are designed to stimulate independ ent thought about the literary work by raising various issues and thought-provoking ideas and questions. MAXnotes cover the essentials of what one should know about each work, including an overall summary, character lists, an explanation and discussion of the plot, the work's historical context, illustrations to convey the mood of the work, and a biography of the author. Each chapter is individually summarized and analyzed, and has study questions and answers.

Customer Reviews:

Fun and wide-eyed novel but not grounded in the real world.......2007-06-08

Jack at this point in his life seems to be travelling and working for the experience of it. You get an overwhelming child-like sense of freedom from the novel. Like if Jack wasnt travelling around he could just sit around and do whatever he wanted. Obviously what I'm saying is that the kid had monetary backing from somewhere. I dont know his in-depth biography but thats just the sense I got from the novel. Either that or he was young enough that he couldnt conceive of the deep realities of modern life.
This disconnect is seem in his description of the workers in the bar, who he sees as some foreign creature totally dissimilar to him and one that he fears and cant relate to.
Thats probably why the novel related so well to the flower power generation. Their 'freedom' was often supported by their parents money and labor.
Successive generations havent been afforded the kind of world that this generation was born into. So frankly even at a fairly young age Jacks work felt a little childish.
Even at a young age authors like Bukowski, Miller, Hemmingway resonate more with me.
Not to say theres nothing fun here to read, though it did seem a little too bubble-gum to me.

Over rated.......2007-05-30

I was really excited to read this book, it is heralded as ground breaking, but I think it's just a story about shallow people being shallow in the end it didn't really do a lot for me. I'd recommend reading anything else. I kept reading looking for the point and never found it. (I understand that the author was playing with words, trying to capture something sylistically, but I really feel that he failed.

A Hymn of Self-Indulgence.......2007-05-28

This was a very well-written, poetic book about living a self-indulgent, pointless, existentialistic life. I was as impressed with the vividness of the writing as I was unimpressed by the characters and their lifestyles. Kerouac definitely has an unorthodox style, but it works; you get a real and immediate sense of the people, places, and stories.

Broadly, it is about a couple of guys who like to hit the road whenever they can and enjoy life. It is about finding out what IT is about (whatever that is), hearing a lot of good jazz, drinking a lot of booze, `making' a lot of loose women, smoking a lot of `tea', and chaining a lot of abstract thoughts together. You don't worry about broken relationships, children fathered along the way, stolen cars, lying, cheating, abandoning friends, and vague things like honor. You concern yourself instead with maximizing your experiences and pleasures by visiting as many places and mooching off of as many people as possible. Don't worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Hey, it even says that in the Bible!

I can see why Kerouac was an icon of the 60's. I was surprised that the book took place in the 40's. You can see a good bit of the hippie culture evolve from the life style of the characters. I guess you could call them proto-hippies.

One thing I found very interesting and subtle is how many times the word `sad' was used, sometimes in surprising ways. He doesn't usually say what is sad though; you have to figure that out for yourself, and I think I did. Basically, the undertone of the whole story was sad.

You will probably ask me why I even read it. Good question! I read it because it is a classic of the 20th century. I'm even glad I read it, believe it or not. Whether or not I agree with the lifestyles, I really did admire his writing. I was entranced with his layered, sensual, run-on sentences and his poet's eye for every person and place he met. He had a little bit of William Faulkner in him, and that's a compliment as far as I'm concerned.

Go ahead, indulge yourself and read it. It is, after all, about self-indulgence, but it's also a hymn about such.

Phony masterpiece.......2007-05-19

Sometimes when reading literature, you're forced to confront the reality that what was supposed to have been a masterpiece just seemed to you to be a waste of time. "Can the whole of lit criticism be wrong?" you think to yourself, knowing that most likely the fault lies in the reader, not the book.

"On the Road" is a different story. This has to be an instance of decades of tastemakers seeing something where there is nothing. Has there ever been a more banal, irritating, spoiled, feckless character than Sal Paradise? A cast of parasitic losers in love with the sound of their own tepid ruminations (I especially love the all-nighters pulled by Dean and Carlo, in which every thought is captured on tape, though little of what is said resonates with the "wisdom" of a callow teenager), and sustained by ill-gotten gains and wads of easy cash from relatives.

Case in point is Sal's sojourn with a family of Mexican farmhands: he lamely injures himself after one day of work, and this after endless pontificating about the lives of people he thinks he understands. Once he feels he has blessed them sufficiently with his wisdom, he moves on, leaving them to a lifetime of experiencing what he feels he has absorbed in only a handful of days. Subsusting on ice cream and sticks of salami, Sal wanders the country chasing after ecstasy, and finding it, allows himself to be revealed through it as a hollow shell with a story hardly worth telling. Infuriating drivel.

Did I miss something here?.......2007-05-14

I know that this book is considered a classic, but it just didn't do it for me. On a positive note, it is interesting to catch a glimpse of the life of some of the other noted authors of the "beat generation" such as Ginsburg (Carlo Marx) and Burroughs (Bull Lee). But I don't quite get the appeal of Dean Moriarty (Neal Cassady), and Jack Kerouac is so obviously obsessed by him, I think perhaps I may need to read this one again because I think I may have missed something....???....

Average customer rating:

Rambling and jangly
Sweet Innocence Led Us Astray
outdoors but not impressed
spirituality and an idea for cheap snacks
Dharma Bums!

The Dharma Bums
Jack Kerouac
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0140042520

Amazon.com

One of the best and most popular of Kerouac's autobiographical novels, The Dharma Bums is based on experiences the writer had during the mid-1950s while living in California, after he'd become interested in Buddhism's spiritual mode of understanding. One of the book's main characters, Japhy Ryder, is based on the real poet Gary Snyder, who was a close friend and whose interest in Buddhism influenced Kerouac. This book is a must-read for any serious Kerouac fan.

Book Description

Two ebullient young men are engaged in a passionate search for dharma, or truth. Their major adventure is the pursuit of the Zen way, which takes them climbing into the high Sierras to seek the lesson of solitude, a lesson that has a hard time surviving their forays into the pagan groves of San Francisco's Bohemia with its marathon wine-drinking bouts, poetry jam sessions, experiments in "yabyum," and similar nonascetic pastimes.

This autobiographical novel appeared just a year after the author's explosive On the Road put the Beat generation on the literary map and Kerouac on the best-seller lists. The same expansiveness, humor, and contagious zest for life that sparked the earlier novel ignites this one.

Customer Reviews:

Rambling and jangly.......2007-03-02

In "The Dharma Bums", Kerouac has written another great book about the search for truth and meaning throughout the American countryside. The story is narrated by Ray Smith and is effectively Kerouac telling his own story. Smith and his friend Japhy are wanderers (or bums) in search of the True Meaning or Dharma. The trip covers one year of travels in the life of Smith. His frantic narrative style seems to be fueled by his frequent poorboys of cheap red wine as well as his sheer excitement to be in pursuit of the truth. The story starts in Berkeley, California and visits the Californian desert, Mexico, North Carolina, Seattle and finally ends at Desolation peak in the North Cascades of Washington state. All of these places are reached by hopping on trains, hitchhiking or shelling out a few cents for a bus ride. Interspersed within the descriptions of travel and characters are Zen musings such as "It's all different appearances of the same thing" as well as meditation on different ideals and places. Kerouac never lets the story slow down and regardless of how accurate the Buddhist ideals are, the rambling, jangly story is quite a ride.

Sweet Innocence Led Us Astray.......2007-02-13

Kerouac's natural audience was the young. I read him when
I was fourteen and able to see just a tiny part of the world.
What he did for me and for my generation was to suggest
a universe that was different in its ultimate orientation
to what was good.
All of a sudden, the simple, the obvious, the severely plain
and widely available pleasures were valued. Mountains, beaches,
box cars. Not only that, but his heroes were Buddhist-Japanese,
Chinese and Indian and his world-view was from a meditation mat.
We barely noticed his speed-crazed prose or the almost complete
lack of a plot.
Reading Kerouac was like hanging out with a magical friend who
cut away the cords that tied us to conventional American life
in the fifties and sixties. Indeed, you could say that the sixties,
for many of us, began with this book.

The Dharma Bums is fifty years old now. The young are
imprisoned in different ways today and the boxcar
bodhisattvas seem irrelevant. Perhaps they are.I don't
imagine that my daughter and her friends dream of
spending a summer alone in a firetower or reading poetry
in a smoky coffee house.
And yet this was the book that set their parents free,
started a revolution that made their world.

--Lynn Hoffman, author of THE NEW SHORT COURSE IN WINE and
the forthcoming novel bang BANG from Kunati Books.ISBN
9781601640005

outdoors but not impressed.......2007-01-10

jack kerouac came recommended by several presumably legitimate sources however, after reading the dharma bums i may have to think twice the next time these people offer up others. while i myself am an avid hiker and can relate to the sections in this book dealing with such senarios the book as a whole seemed to drag. there were some scenes which had much potential to be captivating such as when a friend's girlfriend committs suicide, but kerouac fails to really emphasize. overall i rate this book 3 stars because of the subject/genre of book that it is but i have read much better authors. not impressed.

spirituality and an idea for cheap snacks.......2006-12-09

I found this a very pleasurable read. Maybe Kerouac's take on buddhism is a bit naive, but still somehow inspiring. Besides, i got from this book the idea of fried cornmeal snacks: cheap, quick and tasty.

Dharma Bums!.......2006-08-02

The second book by Kerouac i bought and subsequently read and much better than the first (On the Road). It seems with every book by Kerouac I read, I get a deeper understanding of his style and life and begin to ultimately enjoy it more. This book seems to be the best "sequel" to On the Road and and after this book, Desolation Angels is a good follow-up. This is one of my favorite books and would reccomend it to anyone getting into Kerouac. The only reason it did not recieve five stars is that I feel there are better books out there by Kerouac.

Average customer rating:

Timid Before God
I wouldn't trade it for the World
the death of sal paradise
Mature and well written
literary molasses

Desolation Angels
Jack Kerouac
Manufacturer: Riverhead Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1573225053

Customer Reviews:

Timid Before God.......2006-03-29

Jack Kerouac's 'Desolation Angels', written about a period of his life roughly 10 years before his death, acts as a nice bridge between 'On The Road' (which was awaiting publication during the course of events described in "Angels") and a subsequent publication, Big Sur, both of which I've read.

During his two month self-imposed exile to work as a fire ranger on Desolation Peak, Jack Kerouac was forced to confront many of his pre-existing or emerging demons. The location for this period of his life is especially apropos for the 'desolation' surrounding Kerouac, much of which was self-created, as he sank further into depression and alcoholism.

The book covers more of his life than just the two months on Desolation Peak, but as Jack re-emerges into society, you get the sense that this 'loner' was only comfortable being 'alone' amongst others...that while he could see, smell, and wander amongst others, and feel tolerably 'isolated'...he could not stand the true isolation he could achieve, to remove himself from society altogether.

Jack wanders from the American Northwest to Florida, to Mexico, to Tangiers, to California with his mother in tow, and eventually back to Florida, when his mother grows further depressed with their cross-country move after only a month.

Many players from Kerouac's former novels appear in this one as well, albeit with different names...the poet 'Gregory Corso,' to whom Kerouac lost 'Mardou Fox' in "Subterraneans" is called 'Raphael Urso' in "Angels"...'Dean Moriarty,' from "On The Road" is 'Cody' in this incarnation.

Kerouac's detachment from the Beat Generation, his status as their reigning 'king', his fame, and his Buddhist beliefs all come into focus during this novel, one of his finest, in my opinion. If you rode shotgun with Kerouac for On The Road, explore his life further, and you will uncover far more about this dark, troubled, but fascinating author.

I wouldn't trade it for the World.......2006-02-09

Kerouac at his best. Like the former reviewer, I agree that it times it can be thorny. However, if you take these "lull" moments for what they really are, you will see that much can be gained from reading them and not taking them as another Kerouac run-on. This novel, which I read third in the sequence of On the Road, Dharma Bums, and then Desolation Angels picks up nicely from the conclusion of Bums, and provides a great trilogy for those getting into Jack. Perfect character descriptions, encounters with his fellow beats, and the absolute wallowing of Kerouac into his Self...this being the best part of the novel, which the other two lacked. 5 Stars. Take your time with it, this is a beautiful piece of work.

the death of sal paradise.......2005-12-25

Somewhere in the 409 pages of this book is buried a truly great work of American literature. It is hard to fault Kerouac for his devotion to spontaneous and unedited writing, for though these may have imposed limitations on what he could accomplish as a writer, they also contributed to what makes his books so fascinating. If Jack had lived in Hemingway's time, he would have submitted Desolation Angels to the publisher and would have been handed back a 300 page masterpiece. The most problematic section is the first one, "Desolation in Solitude." I understand that Keroauc wanted to convey the sheer insanity of his isolation as a lookout, but considering that he already devoted about 30 pages to this in Dharma Bums, he essentially retreads the same mystic nonsense for another 70 pages without giving much new insight into anything. The one interesting bit that comes out of the whole ordeal is the gradual dissatisfaction that Kerouac feels for Buddhism (which, through his interpretation, seems to fall a bit close to nihilism) and his reacceptance of Christianity.

But after this first section, things pick up and Kerouac delivers one painfully sad and and transcendentally beautiful insight after another (one of my favorites: his frustration at receiving a $3 jaywalking ticket on the way to a job, costing him half his day's pay-- but you have to read the way he puts it to understand, of couse). It is worth noting that Desolation Angels really is two different books written almost 5 years apart. The first half he wrote while in Mexico City (during events he describes in the second half, Passing Through), while the second half was written in florida (i think) while he lived with his mother. Thus, Kerouac's interpretation of life radically shifts when you begin the 2nd half. He also suddenly becomes a lot more candid, talking about his life as a writer, his use of drugs, and the homosexuality of his peers in a lot more detail and honesty than he could manage before. It is also important to understand that "Desolation Angels" (part 1) was written BEFORE On the Road was published, while "passing through" (part 2) was written AFTER, which probably explains a lot.

I don't want to go into too much detail about the multitude of spiritual revelations within the book, as its better to hear it out of the mouth of the mystic. Reading the book, one can't help but notice that keroauc, even when past his literate and spiritual peak, was not the embittered and impotent wreck that he's usually considered-- not based on his touching insights in "passing through." He clearly has a lot of faith in humanity, and of the necessity that people act out of love and respect rather than hate and fear. Many critics quickly dismiss Desolation Angels as a "lesser work," but I think that if you're willing the persist through the dense opening section, the rewards are nearly as profound as those of his more famous works.

Mature and well written.......2005-12-14

I read this book while travelling in India. I was amazed and touched. I haven't thought that Kerouac could write any better or even at the level of Onthe Road and The Subterraneans, I was wrong. If you like Keorouac, not to say a fan, buy this book.

literary molasses.......2005-09-12

it oozes oh so slow and when it is on it is on. sometimes i have trouble with kerouac as he makes references to things that leave me scratching my head. every so often in this book i would turn back a few pages to see if i remembered what i read. i think 60% of the time i didn't. like the slow reading however, i know these pages have oozed into my subconscious. these concepts may take a few years to be fully realized.

welcome to the wonderfull world of jack kerouac outside of "on the road". do i love it? i'm not sure, that's why i didn't give "desolation angels" five stars. is he passionate? no doubt. is this book well-written? not even a question.

but this is kerouac to me. it's about patience and reward. this is not a fast read. in fact at times, i'll read four pages and feel exhausted. did i expect a quick read when i bought it? hell no.

bottom line: was it an enjoyable read? some parts yes, some parts no. but this begs the question, is it supposed to be enjoyable? i'd say same answer. definitely thick on the emotion so in that sense, I hold it in high regard. one part of the book i was singing the prose aloud. strange, isn't it?

:o)

Average customer rating:

What Is Hip?
A Nice Surprise
An Answer To Matt
I love this book!
WHEN NEAL CASSADY WAS KING

On the Road (Penguin Classics)
Jack Kerouac
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Dharma Bums

ASIN: 0142437255

Book Description

Jack Kerouac's classic novel of freedom and longing defined what it meant to be "Beat" and has inspired every generation since its initial publication more than forty years ago.

Introduction by Ann Charters

Customer Reviews:

What Is Hip?.......2007-06-14

So I finally sat down and read "the legend," the book that has shaped the minds and lives of millions of artistes and pseudo-intellectuals over the past 50 years. Going into "On the Road," I assumed a book so legendary could only be one of two things: it was either going to be a five-star masterpiece, a life-changing book of indescribable beauty---or it was going to be a disaster, a wreck of over-wrought, pointless ramblings.

I wasn't expecting it to be both at the same time.

How can I describe "On the Road"? Have you ever been to a party where everyone is drinking and getting high, smoking weed and maybe doing a few other illicit drugs, and you're the only sober person? Do you remember how wildly entertaining all the other chemically-altered people are, how funny and silly and strange they are that first hour? And do you remember how, in the second hour or so, they started seeming less and less funny, and indeed even started to get on your nerves a little? And how, after two or three hours, you couldn't help but be thoroughly irritated at how LAME and STUPID everyone is, and GOD why didn't they realize it? That, in a nutshell, is "On the Road."

There's no point to this novel, beatniks be damned. It's just a series of stories about Sal Paradise (aka Jack Kerouac) and his journeys back and forth across the country with assorted friends, primarily his best friend Dean Moriarty (aka Neal Cassady). The characters never develop, they're the same people at the end of the book they are in the beginning, and no "goals" or "achievements" are ever realized (primarily because few are ever set). Indeed, there are a few passages where Kerouac almost seems to be needling the beat generation this novel both named and inspired. There are moments where he hints at how pointless and silly the characters' lives are, but never really delves too far into that thought.

The psychology behind the book is interesting, to me. There's more than a hint of self-loathing in some of the passages, and the way Sal Paradise self-sabotages his personal relationships is kind of sad (particularly his relationship with Teresa in the California farmlands). He is not a suave character, and has a knack for innocently saying exactly the wrong things.

Sal's idolatry of Dean is fascinating, too. Dean is a free-spirit, yes, but he's also basically a scum-bag: a serial philanderer, he stays with women only long enough to knock them up and start cheating on them. In one scene he seems particularly okay with the idea of smashing some guy on the head and stealing his money, and there are several parts in the book that display a latent pedophilia, his fascination with girls as young as nine, ten or eleven and his friends warning him not to touch them. Dean is portrayed both as a well-hung lout who can bed a woman in the time it takes most men to utter a pick-up line, but also as a "deep-thinker" fascinated with the mystical and unexplainable. He comes off, intentionally, as a madman, and his psychosis only seems to deepen as the novel progresses. But Sal's narrator-voice continuously paints him in adoring, nearly religious tones, referring to him as a metaphorical seraphim and even, one time, god.

The book is at its finest when it is dealing with people OTHER than the main characters in Sal's life. Passages dealing with the random people Sal encounters on the roads across America are the most brilliant in the book. These mini-portraits of Americana are terrific writing, aided greatly by Kerouac's skill with metaphors which he unrolls in long, unforced, breathless takes. Kerouac's writing style is quite good, and when he's observing the lives of these strangers the novel is a breezy, easy read. Unfortunately, he's far too enthralled with his friends---sad, directionless friends, one-trick-ponies who never change and whose actions become predictable by their very unpredictability---and by the end of the novel you're left wishing everyone would've just sobered up and gone home.

A Nice Surprise.......2007-01-15

I began reading this book not expecting to like it at all. I had heard about it from friends and the subject didn't appeal to me much: a man traveling around the U.S. with hardly a care, trying to find the meaning of life. I'm one who likes structure and advance planning. However, after reading the first two chapters, I was already completely engrossed in the story.

Jack Kerouac writes quite informally, and makes it feel as if he is telling you about his adventures in person. I liked his style of writing. Kerouac lived in a time that was very different than the present, and I found his way of life extremely interesting. The book made me examine my own life, and made me question what is truly important. On the Road brings readers back to a more simplistic era, where one could travel across the country with $30, and begin and end lives in the time span of a month. I think it provides a valuable perspective on life and what it means to truly live.

An Answer To Matt.......2006-10-17

"On The Road" was a book that was lucky to see the light. It was revised over and over...publishers were looking for a pot boiler. We are lucky we got this version. This book was not written to be a "Vanity Of The Bonfires" or a "Carson McCullers". "Visions Of Cody" should be read first if you are persuing the writing skill merits of "On The Road". I don't think Jack had any other tradition to follow when his thoughts were translated to words. The "idea" was the message here. A message that was cut,chopped and chainsawed to fit a United States in the 1950's. Try "Desolation Angels" or "Dharma Bums" if you missed anything in "On The Road" or buy any Charlie Parker record. Then re-read "On The Road". A theory out there is that "On The Road" was the edited version of one long story that was later broken up and put out under various titles. Who cares if the experiences were not written like Proust. Also you need the audio version of "October In The Railroad Earth". Maybe the hippy skippy writing would make more sense to you or anyone else...after all it wasn't witten to be a best seller...it just became one.

I love this book!.......2006-09-23

This is easily my favorite novel. Kerouac's style is at its pinnacle in this novel, as far as I'm concerned. He still had tinges of his Wolfean style from "Town and the City," but had not yet gone totally over the egde into the wild style of later works. This novel is pure Americana, the story of a man -- he wrote this in the book -- who could bum into town as a hobo on a train, shower and put on a suit and go into the finest places. Dean Moriarty (Neal Cassady) is an American icon. Deni Bleu is my personal favorite character from the book. A must read!

WHEN NEAL CASSADY WAS KING.......2006-08-04

I DO NOT NORMALLY WRITE REVIEWS ABOUT NOVELS OR NON-POLITICAL SUBJECTS BUT I JUST READ SOMETHING ABOUT THE SCROLL JACK KEROUAC USED TO WRITE THE ORIGINAL VERSION OF ON THE ROAD. I FIRST READ ON THE ROAD IN 1971. THAT IS KIND OF LATE FOR A BOOK THAT HAD A MAJOR INFLUENCE ON THE CULTURAL/MUSICAL WING OF THE SIXTIES GENERATION I GREW UP WITH. HOWEVER, THE WHOLE BEAT GENERATION PHENOMENA WAS REALLY ABOUT ONE-HALF A GENERATION BEFORE MY TIME TO HAVE REALLY INFLUENCED ME DEEPLY, BUT IT HAD AN INFLUENCE.

THAT SAID, ON THE ROAD WAS THE BOOK FOR ANYONE EXPLORING THE WAYS TO GET AWAY FROM CONVENTIONAL SOCIETY, PHYSICALLY BUT PROBABLY MORE IMPORTANTLY, MENTALLY AND SPIRITUALLY. NEAL CASSADY (THE REAL LIFE MODEL FOR DEAN MORIATY) REPRESENTED THE NEW MAN MADE POSSIBLE ONCE THE MIGRATION TO THE WEST REACHED THE PACIFIC. AND AUTOMOBILES BECAME CHEAP AND RELIABLE MEANS OF TRANSPORTATION.

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BELIEVE IN FREDERICK JACKSON TURNER'S THESIS ABOUT THE PROBLEMS OF THE END OF THE AMERICAN FRONTIER TO KNOW THAT SOME STRANGE DOINGS WOULD OCCUR ONCE AMERICANS COULD GO NO FURTHER WEST. AND SUCH ENOUGH THERE WERE AND KEROUAC IS HERE TO CHRONICLE IT- WINE, DOPE, WOMEN , SOUND, POETRY, AND THE ROAD. JESUS, IT STILL SOUNDS GOOD.

OF COURSE, IN THE DAYS WHEN I READ ON THE ROAD PEOPLE ACTUALLY HITCHHIKED ACROSS THE COUNTRY. AND THOUGHT NOTHING OF IT. I DID IT MYSELF AT LEAST TWICE. MY EXPERIENCES WERE MUCH LESS LITERARY THAN KEROUAC'S. BUT, HE DIDN'T DO BADLY FOR A FRENCH-CANADIAN WORKING CLASS KID FROM LOWELL, MASS.(VIA COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY). I AM AFRAID TODAY'S YOUTH, THE NATURAL AUDIENCE FOR THIS BOOK, MAY MISS THE POINT OF IT SINCE FROM WHAT I CAN TELL THEY ARE NOT AS FOOTLOOSE AS WE WERE (OR AS WE WANTED TO BE.). AND THEY SURE AS HELL ARE NOT GOING TO DO ANYTHING AS DANGEROUS AS HITCHIKING AWAY FROM THE SORROWS OF WORKING CLASS OR MIDDLE CLASS LIFE. READ THIS BOOK, PLEASE.

Average customer rating:

My 2nd favorite Kerouac novel
Kerouac's most honest novel.
Big Slur
Sad Book
may have some value as an artifact of the era

Big Sur
Jack Kerouac
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0140168125

Customer Reviews:

My 2nd favorite Kerouac novel.......2006-08-05

This is a story of a trip to the "woods" that was taken in hopes of straightening out a hoplessly fouled up life. While it has the complete opposite feel than the optimism of the Dharma Bums, it is like a continuation of the same story, after life has had it's way with the story teller. Although some people feel that Kerouac lost his abilities toward the latter part of his career. I believe this book shows that he did not. While I preferred the Dharma Bums, This would rank as my second favorite Kerouac "novel".

Kerouac's most honest novel........2005-11-16

Kerouac pulled no internal punches with this one. He's there, at his worst in many ways, but the sordid tale is beautifully told. How he makes something so depressing and painful into a work of pure beauty is almost magical. No one had ever done fiction quite like Jack Kerouac, and no one has since been able to duplicate that style, or even ape it effectively.

BIG SUR is one of the top four of the Beat works. For me, it remains one of the most powerful--easily the saddest. And I think we need something of the expression of this kind of sadness.

Big Slur.......2005-06-13

Kerouac's Big Sur, written after his mega-success with On The Road, could be argued as a very dark, depressing read. On the contrary, I found it very revealing about one of my favorite writers, and his frame of mind at the time.

Given the opportunity to seclude himself from his friends, fame, and drinking to excess in the cabin of a friend, Kerouac sinks into a sort of paranoia and anxiety, and finally gives in to his impulse to return to 'civilization'....and then proceeds to invite a group back to the cabin, leading him to realize that his most recent affair was with a girl he didn't actually love.

The most fascinating aspect of this novel, to me, is not the horrific volume of drinking Kerouac does at this stage of his life, but in the fact that though he was put off by his fame, and being dubbed 'the King of the Beats', and at being hounded by ardent fans who wanted to merely be in his presence...he couldn't stand the isolation.

Also of interest to me was the 'honesty' he put into his feelings about the actions of his fans...they say 'imitation is the sincerest form of flattery', but Kerouac seemed to think just the opposite...and all but told his fans/readers to 'get a life' in several passages of the book. Those in his industry, who rely so heavily on fan-support rarely ever are so vocal about their distaste for those same fans, without a severely negative impact on their sales.

An excellent read, though if you are looking for 'uplifting', spiritually awakening wisdom from the 'king of the beats', look elsewhere. This book is a downward spiral into the darker recesses of Kerouac's alcohol-induced delirium.

Sad Book.......2004-08-11

This book is very sad, yet beautiful. It tells the autobiographical story of Jack Kerouac, who is now forty years old, famous for writing On the Road, and has a problem with alcohol.

Jack in this book, feels he is on the brink of madness. He has a hard time accepting the negative forces in life, such as death, and other people's insanity. He is much too sensitive for the world the way it is. He is a man who loves animals, feels a strong tie to his family, and saves insects. He also loves people very much.

This novel almost seems like a horror novel in the parts where Jack describes his mental anguish. He never wanted to be famous, to be the 'king of the beats' and all he wants is some peace of mind, yet he has people following him around all the time. Even the atmosphere at Big Sur becomes oppressive.

The writing is beautiful and poetic, and hauntingly honest. The book ends with a poem echoing the sounds of the sea at Big Sur.

may have some value as an artifact of the era.......2004-06-05

I stumbled onto _On the Road_ in my high school's library in Fresno in the mid-70s. Even at that time, the book struck me as very dated. I enjoyed reading it because I was very curious about all the places Kerouac had visited. Barely sixteen years old, I had seen very little of my own country, let alone the world. Any information I could get about the outside world was of interest to me, and I spent hours and hours studying the maps and population charts in my father's auto atlas.

Years later, I discovered that that obscure book I had read in high school was actually quite a famous one. For years now, I have been meaning to find another copy so that I can read it again and see what my perceptions of the book are now as an adult. Instead, I recently purchased a used copy of _Big Sur_ at a flea market.

I know I'm gonna take a lot of flack for this, but I think Kerouac is hugely over-rated. I suppose his work has value as an artifact of Beatnik life in the 50s and early 60s, but I just can't see it being appreciated as especially great by future generations.

In my opinion, much of the appeal surrounding Kerouac is based on hype. Something about the stream-of-consciousness style of his writing gives a first impression of profundity that just isn't there upon further reflection. His studied shunning of commas and apostrophes, and his love affair with parenthetical asides (many sentences have two or three with no break between them) (kind of like this) (I wonder how he convinced his publisher to let them stay) add to the obfuscation, making me wonder if he had lawyerly ambitions early in life.

Kerouac's own words describe this hype best as this excerpt from the book shows:

"But he's got this young kid he brought back from Reno called Ron Blake who is a goodlooking teenager with blond hair who wants to be a sensational new Chet Baker singer and comes on with that tiresome hipster approach that was natural five or ten and even twenty five years ago but now in 1960 is a pose, in fact I dug him as a con man conning Dave (tho for what, I don't know)." -p 51 in Grafton Books 1986 reprint, paperback

Kerouac's character development seems about on par with Fast Times at Ridgemont High. None of the characters have any real depth. And it's hard to take his relationship with Billie seriously because we don't learn enough about her to decide whether we even like her or not.

Perhaps the most inane part of the book is the two or three pages he spends expounding the Beat theory that all Americans suffer from a nagging guilt whose source they don't realize is the simple fact that they don't wash their behinds with soap and water after they defecate. I find little of any value to be learned from this supposed insight.

The book may have some value for those seeking to gain insight into alcoholism. Then again, his dig at those "ignorant people who don't drink" in the quote below gives me the impression that Kerouac expects everyone to make the effort to understand him and his disease when he hasn't made any effort at all, as far as I can see, to reach outside of himself and understand anyone else:

"It's all caught up with me again, I can hear myself again whining 'Why does God torture me?' - But anybody who's never had delirium tremens even in {their} early stages may not understand that it's not so much a physical pain but a mental anguish indescribable to those ignorant people who dont drink and accuse drinkers of irresponsibility." -p 95

Customer Reviews:

How To Read The Tape Transcripts..........2007-03-25

Yes, at first I thought the tape transcripts were just a lot of useless padding to fill out Jack's book. Boy, was I wrong! Here's how to read them:

1. Get a couple of Charley Parker albums (Bird and Diz will do nicely.)

2. Procure a jug of red wine and a joint.

3. Put on Bird, pour a glass of wine, and just relax with the music for a while.

4. Take a few tokes. Drink more wine. Get a nice mellow buzz.

5. NOW, begin reading the tape transcripts, and voila! You are invited to the party!

You will be sitting there with Cassidy and Kerouac, digging the flow of music and conversation and experiencing a new comprehension of their friends, wives and lovers. The gossip, the stories, the subtle oneupmanship between them is a delicious fly-on-the wall experience. By recreating the set and setting of these long ago conversations, you will experience an intimacy that is uncanny. I've done this a few times and was amazed at the greater understanding I had of these two complicated men. I read and re-read the transcripts with delight and was sorry there wasn't more of them.

This is surely what Kerouac intended. It's like the modern day extras and behind the scenes specials you get on movie DVDs. I mourn their passing more than ever and the fact that there doesn't appear to be anyone out there to take their place.

Ever wonder why Hollywood depictions of the Beats are laughable failures? HERE'S why.

Go now...

From the old Remington Rand direct to you..........2006-09-07

I don't even know what to say about this book other than anyone who pretends to like this nonsense deserves to read it. Truman Capote's quote about Kerouac's writing, "That it's not writing, it's typing," probably sums up the matter better than anything I can say. What disappoints me I suppose is that I really want to like Kerouac - I love the idea of him, though I can't say I care much for his typing.

Spontaneous Autonomy Or Muddled Proustian?.......2004-07-26

Allan Ginsberg wrote in August 1972: "Some of Kerouac's writings of '52, particularly his Visions of Cody, are some of the most brilliant texts written about the psychedelic experience, especially the description of him and Neal Cassidy on Peyote." AND From October 26, 1974, Ginsberg writes of himself, which he learned from Kerouac: What I mean by "polish the mind," in that you actually do get an increasing awareness either through meditative or poetry which is another yoga, of the actual stuff, cita. And then it becomes a matter of being a very faithful secretary. You can't get everything, so you get as much as you can so you have something solid to work with. In other words, you're not doing something arbitrary, romantic, babble, bullsh*t, you're actually dealing with your mind stuff just like a painter's working with an actual landscape. Solid in the sense that it's real, it's objective, it isn't even your subjectivity any more, you're just objectively watching something move. So there's no long any question of egotism or self-expression or personal expression. All those theoretical things are like nonpracticing questions. But if you're actually practicing there's a real thing to work with, which is your thought-forms."

"Chogyam Trungpa's principle of "First thought, best thought." That was kerouac's basic principle for his spontaneous writing, for the same Buddhist reasons of practical inquiry into the operation of the mind. Both Kerouac and Trungpa realized, and teach, a very simple thing, which is that the first way that you flash on a thing is the unselfconscious, naked, real first-mind way, which is totally private and odd, eccentric to you, but is so direct that anybody can understand it."

At first, this book was way too muddled to be of much use for myself, not receiving much out of the book and feeling that I have invested way too much time for the read, but I think that's because I've been reading it as a novel like "On The Road," and this is more poetry or jazz style spontaneous prose. Actually, this book is from flashing mental thoughts that are suddenly inspired within the self. This book is not some preplanned novel and storyline and not at all the robotic, mechanical mindset of the propogandized America and therefore represents a breakthrough in American thinking, thinking for the autonomous self.

I think if this book were given the publisher to publish before "On The Road" they would have agreed here on such being garbled and overly Proustian in attempt of remembrance. However, to the person looking for poetry or verbal prose over a story, and in this we have a jazz type expression of bebop in words and that makes this book a major change from the herd mentality of the masses. Hey, this is the beat rhythmic language, not Melville or Dostoevsky, but Proust and Celine.

Now to be fair, there are some good descriptions and well written feelings through out the book, but not in volume. Now don't get me wrong, I'm a Beat Hipster I would like to think, a Nietzschian, a mystical, philosophical seeker into spiritual, psychedelic and karmic realms, but maybe not the existential, Benzedine type. This book is largely garbled ramblings?? Or is just too poetic for me? I can appreciate the long "bird" Parker-like jazz of the spontaneous sentence styles, the overly descriptive emphasis on observable flashes of insight, but this story has no story line, ok-it's poetry or electic prose. So it's verbal dynamics in avant garde, not a novel then, and I guess I'm failing to fully appreciate it.

When Kerouac gets Celine-ian he works very well, but when he enters his Proustian attempt at daily observations, he becomes cloudy in tangent ramblings of private memories, non-relating to his current observations that are over detailed and nonsensical in the first place. His dope-riddled conversations and past remembrances enter back doorways in winding pathways of the red neon lights.

Now Ginsberg's introduction to the book, that I found both enjoyable and very understandable. Allen Ginsberg in a November 26th 1968 interview, from the book, Spontaneous Mind, page 132, writes on Robert Creeley and Kerouac's style of writing:

"Creeley was talking about how his writing was determined by the typewriter, neurasthenias of his habit; mine is determined by the physical circumstances of writing, i.e., literally that. And I got that actually from Kerouac, who was that simple and straight about it. If he had a short notebook he wrote little ditties and if he had a long . . . a big typewriter page, he wrote big long sentences like Proust."

I think this agrees with Visions of Cody, in consisting of either short "ditties" or "long sentences like Proust," all depending on the writing pad Kerouac was using at the time of writing. To me this makes a whole lot of sense in the arbitrary, elusive and haphazard style of this book.

What appears to me as the Kerouac trademark: a jazz styled prose of spontaneous expression from the "real," non-conditioned, non-image-to-portray self, an existential life of despair in fast paced living with the rush of jazz, drink, sex, travel, under the literary and scholarly ideals of avant garde sophistication, adventure, desires, seeking new discoveries, walking places one never has been before, risk taking and traveling, all so under this empty void of utter lonely existence, devoid of substantial meanings of foundational holds and securities, walking in the desert not knowing when water will appear and if it does, if this water will sustain life or poison it. So there's this emptiness, this sadness of it all in the modern man and woman, both subterranean and beatnik.

Remember-able observances in my mind: Kerouac's staring up at a man in an apartment building watching and writing and suddenly the light goes off! He saw him!; a description of a church that failed all gothic tests into the modern brown brick suburban model of tackiness with the stupidest shrubbery to boot; Cody's (Cassidy's) hobo father walking the train tracks looking for a fix; Cody's pool hustling and challenged football playing from a jump out of the car, left on the side of the road.

Amazing -- Truly Amazing -- Don't Miss It!.......2004-05-25

This book contains everything that Kerouac did best, his long rambling descriptions of the world around him, his fantasy insights into the loneliness of everyone he passed and watched. It in essence captures the beat generation even more artfully than ON THE ROAD, and works as a more philosophical piece. It also stands as a great companion to ON THE ROAD; it is book that really is a necessity to read if you are going to read ON THE ROAD because it gives a more detailed look at Neal Cassady, presents a more in depth vision of his philosophy of America and shows strongly his Whitmanian influences and ideals, while holding a heartbreaking sadness and loneliness for what he sees at the heart of all man kind. It reads like poetry and, though it's not to be rushed through, moves quickly and insightfully through the post war generations reality. Don't miss this beautiful reading experience! Pick up VISIONS OF CODY right away! You won't be sorry! Another novel I recommend, an Amazon quick-pick, is THE LOSERS CLUB by Richard Perez

AN ELEGY FOR A FALLEN AMERICA.......2004-04-11

Kerouac's best book, no doubt about. As Ginsberg says in the intro, it's an elegy for a fallen America that no longer exists, especially today, an America where innocence and kindness and joy has been replaced by paranoia and selfishness, with Kerouac using Cody as a symbol of all that is good and lost in America. For this reason it's probably the most pertinent of Kerouac's books for the modern era. Not only that, but it contains the most personal and heartbreaking prose Kerouac ever wrote, sentences filled with love for his fellow man ("I'm writing this book because we're all going to die") and the pain he saw at what was happening to his country ("America is what laid on Cody's soul the onus and the stigma - that in the form of a big plainclothesman beat the s//t out of him till he talked about something that isn't even important anymore - it's where cody learned that people arent good, they want to be bad - and nobody cares but the heart in the middle of the United States that will reappear when the salesmen all die.") There are sentences like that throughout the book, just absoloutely beautiful heartfelt writing, plus little things such as Kerouac wondering whether a girl in a restaurant would like him, or what his dead father would think of him, small things from his day-to-day life that add up to a tapestry of love and compassion and longing. "I'm a fool, I loved the blue dawns over racetracks and made a bet Ioway was sweet like its name, my heart went out to lonely sounds in the misty springtime night of wild sweet America in her powers, I stood on sandpiles with an open soul... Goodbye, Cody. Adios, you who watched the sun go down, at the rail, by my side, smiling - Adios, King." If writing like that doesn't break your heart, looking at the way the world is run nowadays, then this book probably isn't for you. But if you mourn for a lost America, buy the book and find a soulmate - or a couple.

Book Description

The Dharma Bums was published one year after On the Road made Jack Kerouac a celebrity and a spokesperson for the Beat Generation. Sparked by his contagious zest for life, the novel relates the adventures of an ebullient group of Beatnik seekers in a freewheeling exploration of Buddhism and the search for Truth.

Customer Reviews:

Caringosity killed the Kerouac cat.......2007-02-15

Jack Kerouac is one of those artists, musicians, or writers who I get really into for a while, then don't occupy my time with their works, but always come back to them at some point. I read On the Road around 6-7 years ago and afterward quickly read Big Sur and Visions of Girard. Over the past few years though, I thought maybe I had grown out of him. So when my Dad recently gave me a City Lights gift certificate for Christmas, I made a mental note that I'd like to see if I still liked Jack Kerouac or not. I found a neat copy of The Dharma Bums that I had never seen before, so I grabbed it.

Dharma Bums is my favorite Kerouac book so far. As with On the Road, I found his writing to be very evocative; scenery, places, but especially the people Jack comes across in his adventures really come to life. As with his other works, Kerouac calls refers to himself by another name, and in The Dharma Bums he is known as Ray Snyder. The other protagonist is Zen poet Gary Snyder, or Japhy Ryder as he is known here. Dharma Bums starts off "Ray" and "Japhy" and friends hanging out in the Bay Area, and recounts the now-legendary night Allen Ginsburg first recited "Howl" during the heyday of the "San Francisco Renaissance." He also briefly goes over an odd sort of orgy at Japhy's Berkeley house, where all Ray felt comfortable doing was licking some girl's elbows and arms. I have to admit I had just come home from a happy hour when I read the first 30 pages, so that part is kind of fuzzy in my memory.

Following this, the book recalls their trip up the Matterhorn, a large mountain in California's Sierra Nevada mountain range. This was the highlight of the book for me. I felt like I was right there with Ray, Japhy, and their friend Morley who forgot to bring a sleeping bag for the freezing trek, but insisted on bringing an air mattress for him to sleep on. One thing about Kerouac's book is that you can really tell he loves the company of his friends and people he meets on the road. I can't ever recall reading a bad thing about anyone in any of his books. I think a large part of the reason I like reading his books so much is that I appreciate his sincere joy he finds from people and nature. Others might call it naïveté, but bullocks to them.

Following the Matterhorn expedition, Ray leaves to visit his Mom in North Carolina. He hops trains, takes the bus, and hitchhikes across the country. There's the guy from Ohio he meets near the Mexican border, and the fun they have when they make an excursion across the border. In North Carolina one gets the sense that Ray isn't appreciated by his family that much. He tries to explain Buddhism and they laugh him off. I couldn't help but feel bad for him. His mom seems nice, but she is never really developed that well.
Every day he went into the woods to meditate and cavort with the animals. I think that's probably what I would be doing too.

After his return to CA, he is about to take a summer job as a fire lookout in Washington State's Desolation Peak, on Japhy's recommendation. Likewise, Japhy is about to head to Japan to live at a Buddhist monastery. Being Ray and Japhy however, you know there has to be some serious partying before they leave. They are staying in Corte Madera, and there are wild parties every night, usually involving copious amounts of alcohol and people dancing naked. Japhy and Ray sneak out a few days before Japhy is scheduled to leave, and go on a final trek through Marin County wilderness. Japhy leaves and everyone is sad.

The final part of TDB is Ray making his way up to Washington. The strangers he meets are usually nice, with the exception of the Oregon cowboy who purposely runs over Ray's hat on the road. He briefly covers his time as a fire lookout, but I'm sure Desolation Angels goes into much more detail. That will be the next Kerouac book I read. There are a lot of Buddhist themes, prayers, and sayings throughout the book (hence the title.) While that might turn some readers off, I enjoyed it. Buddhism is something that has interested me for quite some time. It's sad that Jack didn't find what he was looking for. The bottle turned out to be his salvation - and demise.

Average customer rating:

Incoherent rambling
Arrogant and overrated.
Kerouac
Funny Angel
THE BEBOP OF LOVE AND ALL THAT JAZZ

The Subterraneans (Kerouac, Jack)
Jack Kerouac
Manufacturer: Grove Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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Similar Items:

Desolation Angels
Big Sur
The Dharma Bums
Visions of Cody
Lonesome Traveler (Kerouac, Jack)

ASIN: 0802131867

Customer Reviews:

Incoherent rambling.......2006-12-22

Loved Dharma Bums, can't forget On the Road, enraptured with Desolation Angels, and bored to death with the Subterraneans. Only read the first 20 pages, though. Couldn't get farther then that, so maybe it really picks up. Love the first page however. It's really Kerouac at his nonsensical worst.

Arrogant and overrated........2006-04-25

I wouldn't say that the book is wholly without merit, but it left me with an eerie feeling, and a suspicion that it was an advertisement for a certain lifestyle, a cocktail, or god forbid khakis. It's a shameless embrace of impulsive living, embodied in the stylized way this book is written, and which was eventually Kerouac's undoing.

Is he fleecing the lowlifes he socializes with by writing down their stories? Is he glorifying, and capitalizing on, disfunction? It's difficult to answer those questions, but a more meaningful or entertaining book would preclude their asking.

Capote said of Jack Kerouac that he was "typing, not writing." That may have been unfair, but reading the Subterraneans, I felt I knew where he was coming from. That said, I kinda liked the ending. Gosh, I'm a sucker.

Kerouac.......2005-06-27

I liked "The Subterraneans" enough, even though it's not nearly on my list of best works by the author. But I'm hot penning these few sentances for peeps who have read this book. This is for the one's who are interested.
If you haven't read anything by Jack Kerouac before this is NOT the place to start. Though a good book with a good story, "The Subterraneans" is a hard read and not a great introduction to the author. Note I said hard in the previous sentance because this novel was written over three days and three nights and reads that way. Kerouac's prose is right on, as it usually is, but more dense this time, probably because the man was on speed when he penned it.
If you are new to this world of Kerouac then may I recomend to you the always popular "On the Road" or "The Dharma Bums" before this. They both show what Kerouac does best and are two of the best books he ever wrote. Poetry in the form of story.
"Subterraneans" is a good Kerouac book, not the best, not the worst, pretty much residing in the middle of his catalog, hence the three star rating(three to me means good, but there are better books out).
So there you go. You should read "Subterraneans" because again it is a good book. But I think it could, and probably would, turn off newbies to the Kerouac legend(there are always exceptions mind you), and it would be better to start off with one of the aforementioned titles first. Thanks.

Funny Angel.......2005-03-05

My third exposure to Kerouac, though enjoyable and interesting, only rates four stars from me.

Having read Dharma Bums and On The Road prior, Subterraneans, which has a far more limited landscape than the aforementioned, also has a lesser 'growth' for the protagonist, who is a thinly veiled Kerouac.

The story centers on the brief love affair of novelist Leo Percepied with Mardou Fox, an African American beauty, ten years his junior. Taking place during the 1950's; one of the major obstacles in the relationship, from the outset, is the racial difference of the two characters.

But Percepied suffers from other self-imposed obstacles, being unable to fully admit his love of Mardou to himself, until she begins to pull away from him.

Barely over 100 pages in length, this novel, while rich in the same Beat-generation characteristics of his other works, shows far less of a 'voyage' for the protagonist than other novels. While you do gain some insight to the life and person of Jack Kerouac, it is limited.

But don't let that discourage you from giving this book a glance. It is easily digestable, and very enjoyable. Kerouac's Benzadrine-laced prose is, as always, a 'trip'...even in a story that doesn't go very far.

THE BEBOP OF LOVE AND ALL THAT JAZZ.......2004-11-07

THE SUBTERRANEANS is a novel remarkable for a number of distinctions, not the least of which is the report that Grand Beat Master Jack Kerouac wrote it in only three days. The book's analytical depths, structural complexity, and richness of language would make one more inclined to believe it took three years to write. To read this novel is to sink into a mesmerizing whirl of bebop rhythms, uncompromising confession, and the audacity of raw images for which Kerouac and other Beat Writers were so well known. The current hoopla brewing around Ashton Kutcher's on-screen interracial relationship in the forthcoming film GUESS WHO? could make many think this is something new in popular culture. However, Kerouac's main characters in THE SUBTERRANEANS are Leo, an Anglo-American, and his love interest Mardou, an African-Native American. The interracial nature of this relationship (supposedly based on a real-life one that Kerouac had in 1953) is not ignored but neither does it dominate the novel. A question clear from the beginning is not only whether or not Leo and Mardou can successfully navigate their very intensely fragile personalities and sustain a mutually satisfying relationship, but also whether or not they can survive the excessive weights of history and bigotry.

The entire culture of bebop jazz forms an important backdrop for the novel and Kerouac expresses his love for the music in short homages paid to some its giants, including saxophonist Charlie "Bird" Parker. Likewise, a number of Kerouac's Beat pals can be found (as in other works by him) in supporting roles in this novel: Allen Ginsberg as the character of Adam Moorad; William Burroughs as Frank Carmody; and Gregory Corso as Yuri Gligoric. This a true and thoroughly enjoyable American classic from one of our most true and thoroughly enjoyable writers.

by Aberjhani
author of I Made My Boy Out of Poetry
and Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (Facts on File Library of American History)

Average customer rating:

A Savage review is worthless
I would have seen this play
Dig This

Beat Generation
Jack Kerouac
Manufacturer: Thunder's Mouth Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

United States | Drama | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Drama | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 1560257423

Book Description

Beat Generation is a play about tension, about friendship, and about karma—what it is and how you get it. It begins one fine morning with a few friends, honest laborers some of them, some close to being down-and-out, passing around a bottle of wine. It ends with a kind of satori-like reaffirmation of the power of friendship, of doing good through not doing, and the intrinsic worth of the throwaway little exchanges that make up our lives.

Written in 1957, the same year that On the Road was first published, and set in 1953, Beat Generation portrays an authentic and alternate 1950s America. Kerouac's characters are working-class men and women—a step away from vagrants, but not a big step. Their dialogue positively sings, suggesting jazz riffs in their rhythm and content, and Kerouac, like a master composer, arranges it to magical effect. Here is the heart and soul of the beat mentality, the zeitgeist that blossomed over the decades and eventually culminated in the counter-culture of 1960s America. It's a spirit that still lives.

Customer Reviews:

A Savage review is worthless.......2007-02-15

One look at "Doc Savage"'s other reviews will confirm that his opinion is worthless. If he considers "all things Beat" to be "meaningless" one wonders why he keeps (supposedly) reading and reviewing Kerouac titles, giving them one-star reviews...and then proclaiming that anyone who does appreciate Kerouac to be "juvenile". His other reviews include comic books, a Carly Simon cd review in which ignores her music but tells us that she has "great legs because she is 1/4 African" (no, he seriously wrote that)...and, wait for it.....a completely un-funny "jokey" FIVE STAR Kevin Federline review. Talk about completely pointless. The dude needs some hobbies.

I would have seen this play.......2006-07-29

This play reflects a week in Kerouac's life with ol time buddy Neal Cassidy..... existential discussions, race tracks, mysticism, and lots of drinking..... I am surprised this honest, plain hipster talking vignette....didn't get published or produced in its time, especially in NY...its smart...in your face, and stands today as a statement about real people living and dying the american dream albeit beyond the margins of acceptable culture of the time. You know thats it, Kerouac exposed the real working class america...this stuff has been going on forever ever since zealots and criminals formed this country..., The beats brought some of this out of the closet and took it into the open on their own cosmic terms... and caught the rancour and the exploitation of the media in the 50's.......I liked this play, I could see it performed off broadway or in colleges...

Dig This.......2005-10-21

For the record this book is a recently published play written by Kerouac during the era he wrote On The Road. If you have not read Kerouac prior I would not recomend begining with this book, however if you admire his work and The Beat Generation this new addition to the beat canon is an unexpected treat. Being a play it is lacking in Kerouac's beautiful descriptions, but the dialoge is just what we can expect from Kerouac. At times the dialoge resembles the portions of Visions of Cody in which Kerouac transcribes the conversations he records with a tape recorder. All the usual suspects are present, and easily recognizable--Jack, Neal Cassidy, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, etc. The play takes place during one day of drinking, going to the race track, and ending at Neal's house to meet the spiritual guest he has over following a lecture. Throughout the work the characters discuss God and spirituality. Yet another example of the strong ties between the beats and spiritual questioning. The exhuberance and banter of this group of friends is always enjoyable to read. I would recomend this to anyone who is just discovering Kerouac or those of us who have a deep affinity with his body of work. Here is hoping that they unearth more treasures from his unpublished notebooks, and Kerouac can continue to bless us from beyond the grave.

Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954

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Disappointing publication after grandiose promises
Feel like I've known this good friend for years...
Philosophical, lighthearted, fascinating
Deeper Than The Deep Blue SEE
A Must Read for Kerouac fans

Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954
Jack Kerouac , and Douglas G. Brinkley
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0143036068

Book Description

Jack Kerouac is best known through the image he put forth in his autobiographical novels. Yet it is only his private journals, in which he set down the raw material of his life and thinking, that reveal to us the real Kerouac. In Windblown World, distinguished Americanist Douglas Brinkley has gathered a selection of journal entries from the most pivotal period of Kerouac's life, 1947 to 1954. Here is Kerouac as a hungry young writer finishing his first novel while forging crucial friendships with Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Neal Cassady. Truly a self-portrait of the artist as a young man, this unique and indispensable volume is sure to become an integral element of the Beat oeuvre.

Customer Reviews:

Disappointing publication after grandiose promises.......2006-09-09

Kerouac began keeping journals in 1936, and continued for the rest of his life. The journals survive and editor Brinkley, writing in The Atlantic Monthly in 1998, promised us publication of "a multi-volume edition." Now it seems that all we will be getting is this 370-page book, covering only some of the material from the years 1947 to 1950, and with just a few pages from 1954 thrown in as extra.

The parts that have been selected for inclusion are apparently aimed at demonstrating the development of Kerouac's first two major works, The Town & the City, and On the Road. Strange, then, that nothing from Kerouac's 1948-49 journal of work on the latter book is included, although some of it did appear as a taster in the extracts Brinkley selected for publication in The Atlantic Monthly in 1998. That must surely be one of the most relevant journals for those interested in the development of On the Road and its omission here is a mystery. Other journal extracts published in Atlantic, and also in the New Yorker in 1998, are missing from the published book.

In his introduction, it seems to me that Brinkley places far too much emphasis on demolishing the "myth" that On the Road was frantically written in three weeks in April 1951, claiming that Kerouac had begun it much earlier. This may be news to Brinkley, but I'm sure that most Kerouac readers are already aware of that fact. They will have known it since Tim Hunt pointed out that Kerouac began working on the book in 1948, attempting at least five different versions over the next four years. Hunt published this information, with extracts from the earlier attempts, in his PhD thesis in 1975, and in his book, Kerouac's Crooked Road, in 1981.

There's no doubt that Kerouac DID write the version that eventually became the published On the Road in a three-week burst on a scroll of paper in April 1951. However, examination of the scroll reveals that it differs somewhat from the published version, with the insertion of material from his journals being added LATER, at a more leisurely pace, when Kerouac retyped it onto separate pages.

What we have in this volume makes fascinating reading, of course, and offers a little more insight into Kerouac's mind, and his working practices. Brinkley admits to editing the journals heavily in places, and also to mixing together parts from different journals, with no clear indication of the individual sources. The result of this can only be confusion.

This book has been six years in the making. I imagine that all Kerouac scholars and enthusiasts who have been waiting patiently for its appearance will need a copy, and will find the contents valuable. However, I do believe that an important opportunity has been missed to make this the truly outstanding work it could have been.

Feel like I've known this good friend for years..........2006-06-05

which leads me to think...am I Jack Kerouac incarnate???????

Well, when I read some of this incredible book, I am beginning to think so and am certain that Jack Kerouac and I are not very unlike. I love when Jack talks about his love for Dostoevsky, probably my idol novelist after finishing Crime and Punishment late last year. It's great how this book shows well that Jack was a very well read and intellegent philosophically minded man and how all this philosophizing distressed him. You really get the sense of being right there and witnessing the thought of a great mind.

Getting past that, Kerouac, in his journals gives us a view of the young struggling writer, agonizing over his work ethic finishing up his first published novel, The Town and the City. He even counts the words and you see entries near the beginning which start like, "2000 words in" and it really makes you think, was Jack trying to create a romanticized perception of himself for posterity, like Nietzsche? It certainly seems so.

Yet underneath all of that, these journals reveal Kerouac for what he was, a man. We see that when he is cut, he bleeds. I love his philosophical discourses on whatever is on his mind and his reasoning usually concludes with Christ so, of course you can't go wrong following that path.

The historical merit of this work is astounding, especially when it tells of events Kerouac would later fictionalize in On the Road and other novels.

If you've read On the Road, loved it like I have and would like to get a more personal understanding of the mind behind that timeless tale, check this one out. You will be very pleased you did.

I think this book changed me even further than On the Road.

Philosophical, lighthearted, fascinating.......2006-05-12

This is one of the best books I've ever read. To read about Kerouac and his thoughts and his struggles as he tries to make it is thoroughly enjoyable. It's fun to listen as he ponders and have a look inside him as he tries to make a living writing. I couldn't put it down.

Deeper Than The Deep Blue SEE.......2005-07-19

These journal notes were edited with a focus on Kerouac's development as a writer...his gestation of ideas, his struggle with the genius of writing...so into it...so entranced, so obsessed...with his writing. It shows another dimention (demention) to the writer...deeper than TV's pseudo news..., deeper than newspaper critics and biographers have assessed ..Kerouac really bleeds...then drinks the sacrament...transmuting his deepest fears into the golden rolling prose of on the road...His word counts get boring...his lower life prejudices get sanitized in this editing...his belief in redemption crucified...yet we are confronted with a real writer of the spirit, a man beyond our common definitions.... nothing less than a Blake...yes a writer of his times and beyond...every word of on the road was drenched in long term turmoil...words that became light on an ice skater's blades, as she skates thru time...moon light... a holy spot light..

A Must Read for Kerouac fans.......2005-03-27

Turning the pages of this book is like seeing Kerouac's life in motion. Within, the reader finally gets a look at Kerouac's struggles becoming the writer he grew into. A combination of pain, lonliness and detachment molded his views and values, resulting in On the Road, Dharma Bums, etc. It's exciting to see how one of the truely original and great American writers approached life and writing. I would recommend this to any reader.

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