Jack Kerouac (and his work) C/D

Dud dud dud

I can't say I've read anything of his for 30 years now. But he introduced the world to the amphetamine-fueled typewriter and popularized the bongos as an accompaniment for beat poets. These may not be sufficient accomplishments to ensure his immortality, but they are worth a passing nod, surely.

kerouac is a bit like warhol

e.g. the people who realized they could put their ideas out there based on how he got away with it have done more and better things than he himself did

I kinda like Dharma Bums & Book of Haikus, but nothing else really did it for me. Neg outweighing pos = dud.

anyone seen that 'scroll' version of 'on the road'?

i have seen it at stores and flipped through it.

it seems dumb.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0CEED61130F93AA2575BC0A9619C8B63

somewhere in between classic and dud, getting more towards dud.
i mean, "on the road", fine as it is, is not really a must-read,and as someone said above,some others afterwards,wrote better, on the same subject.

Could've rested on the laurels of "Big Sur" alone. I've read every word of his work, but really, that one, total soul crusher.
Fuck an "On the Road"
Also seek "Desolation Angels" and if you're feeling domestic and smitten, "Subterraneans".
Intrvws near the end where he has a "Genius at Work" sign above his desk and discusess attempting to get his mind back in orbit are just brutal.
The man worked hard. Didn't always pan out.

My main hatred stems from the fact he's an asshole a mysoginist. Maybe I'm exaggerating but that whole Beat scene seemed so unfriendly towards women. And, heck, maybe I was just too old and oldfashioned when I read it: I was in my late twenties and the whole on the road thing seemed so silly to me. (Same goes for Catcher in the Rye, I was too old when I read it so was never enamoured by the book.)

in terms of beat icons, i like ginsberg way way way way way more

Writing is not usually thought of as excessively physical, which is why some writers feel the need to compensate by racing bulls or whatever

lol

http://www.onfrozenblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/kneejerk.jpg

in terms of beat icons burroughs drinks hte shit out of all of them

whose knee is jerking at what xpost

"on the road", fine as it is, is not really a must-read

Uhm.

Can I also add that Howl is an overrated piece of crap? KTHXBYE

i_disagree.gif

kerouac is a bit like warhol

-- El Tomboto, Friday, 5 October 2007 03:06 (6 hours ago) Link

e.g. the people who realized they could put their ideas out there based on how he got away with it have done more and better things than he himself did

examples?

It's been a pretty long time since I read any Kerouac, but I read just about the whole lot in my teens. I'm in no mad rush to reread any of them, but if I did, I think it would be Dharma Bums and Big Sur that I'd go back to, I thought those were incredible books at the time. Actually, I think I might go back at some stage to find some of the passages about music, I wonder how well those stand up now.

I haven't read big sur yet but if you like anything about the beat generation than Desolation Angels kicks ass. It has Ginsberg, Burroughs, Cassady, and Corso (Raphael - probably my favorite even though he's wack). His books are definitely interesting (unless you are not in the mood, in that case put it down for a few days). Desolation Angels doesnt spend too much time on one character, which is good, you get to see the whole gang. Even the people in the gang who arent famous or are just theives and druggies. You learn about everyones outlook on life. And the book references things from On The Road or Dharma Bums or Big Sur. And you get the whole back story to this photogpah:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americannovel/timeline/images/beatgeneration.jpg

Basically, Kerouac is someone I can relate to. And his stuff is interesting because it talks about life in general. From a philosophical standpoint, his books are necessary. From the average Joe standpoint, the books are just good to read because there is so much to relate to, and no one writes it as pure or beautiful as jack.

Of course, the people who complain about the beats being over-rated, where do you live? How many people do you know that actually read and talk about this stuff. The generation is over 50 years old. There's way more hippies than beats. Jack even dislikes several fellow beatnicks and up and coming beatnicks in Desolation Angels. He doesn't even like to perform his poetry or go to poetry readings. He is very much an average Joe except he can wrote fluently and beautifully. His ideas/views are largely new and original to this day. Tons of original content and things you probably never thought about before. If you can understand just half of his references than you know just how intellectual and original his thoughts are. He's not one to rehash things he or others have already thought of. He's always one step further with his ideas/descriptions/sentiments/???.

Anyways I'M DONE RANTING

it's weird that people group this with catcher in the rye. regardless of how you feel about it, it's clearly a very carefully written book. salinger is very savvy about letting you figure out everything the protagonist isn't telling you.

whereas on the road was a fun read when i was 16, even one that i remember fondly, but i've got absolutely no desire to ever go back to it, anymore than i want to repeat that trip to omaha i took when i was 10. kerouac is absolutely awful at portraying characters; who knows whether dean moriarty is even supposed to be likable or not? the only thing i remember being well-drawn at all in that book was the chapter about his affair with the mexican girl.

the only real profound thing in kerouac is that rather touching sense of emptiness and loneliness you get even in on the road. there's a scene in another book where he hands neal cassady a copy of that book, and it's such an awkward and sad moment. it's almost enough to make me want to wholeheartedly defend him, because it comes across so well and it's nothing you get in anyone who imitated him. put it this way: while ginsberg and burroughs embodied their public selves so well that it's nearly impossible (for me at least) to feel any kinship with them, there's a pathetic vulnerability and openness about kerouac that's harder to dismiss.

big sur is sad.

Only good thing about Kerouac: that anecdote in Palm Sunday where he's coming to visit Kurt Vonnegut, whose son looks like the clichéd Kerouac fan, and Kerouac gets all super pissed at the very scene.

Please stop rating the guy if you have only read one or two of his books. Especially if you picked On The Road or the books through the first half of his career.

Neal Cassady (aka. Dean and Cody) isn't a guy I would want to hang out with much after reading Kerouac's descriptions. But I do believe Kerouac is great at portraying characters in his unique way. Kerouac might have some old as dirt messages he conveys but he is very original at conveying them. Also, he can be very subtle with certain issues. I like that.

I don't know what I like about his writing the most. It just works with me.

Kerouac seems completely out of fashion at the moment and I understand why everyone is put off but I think he's worth a sympathetic read. I agree with JD upthread that Kerouac had a more reckless honesty than his peers, not just unafraid to look at every aspect of himself but unable to avoid pouring himself out, to make himself as transparent as possible and to hold no secrets. There's a real generosity to him, the way he praises and gets excited, (babbling about bop and writing all those Neal Cassady 'Absolutely!'s) and its attractive and infectious, but the emptiness he feels when he things fail is so complete and brutal and lonely ("Accept loss forever"), its powerful. Maybe my favourite thing about his writing is his vision, the way he whips himself up and comes out with all his images, the way he charges everything with huge Kerouac significance. Most of his reputation is a colossal wave of bullshit though, but it shouldn't matter.

i love Big Sur, but he isn't someone i re-read

he wasn't as good a writer as hemingway, jack london, or thomas wolfe, but he WAS cool looking. which meant a lot to me when i was 13 or 14. i always wanted writers to be bad-ass and cool. even if they were just drunk momma's boys in real life. come to think of it, jack london was a better writer AND probably cooler looking.

i mean, now that i'm older, i realize that ricky friggin' nelson was cooler than most of the beats. but a gang of hepcats high on jazz and tea will always appeal to people somewhere. i had DIG EVERYTHING written in big letters on my notebook when i was a kid. i caught a lot of shit for that. i didn't care though. i was way too cool to care. and way too busy digging everything. except homework. homework was for squares.

a pathetic vulnerability and openness about kerouac
that's what I like(liked?) about Kerouac. was fairly obsessive about it as a young tyke (16-20?), now more sentimental + see K mostly as gateway to more interesting things in life and books

unfuckwithably C for his recordings, tho S: "Goofing at the Table" and "Ain't We Got Fun"

jack london was a better writer AND probably cooler looking.

FWIW my son is reading "call of the wild" now in 6th grade, guess that makes it a classic.

Visions of Gerard - worth a read?

So y'all got me to pick up Big Sur. Good read so far. I like how he mentions that its the little things he'll remember on his death bed. Not that he wrote a best selling book.

I also like how he documents his madness in this one. Once again I feel like I relate to him.

I'm also in the middle of Big Sur. My favorite line is in the beginning when he describes this one huge mountain as having moody terraces.

He has this to say about Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf:

Long nights simply thinking about the usefulness of that little wire scourer, those little yellow copper things more interesting than the stupid and senseless "Steppenwolf" novel in the shack which I read with a shrug, this old fart reflecting the 'conformity' of today and all the while he thought he was a big Nietzsche, old imitator of Dostoevsky 50 years too late (he feels tormented in a 'personal hell' he calls it because he doesn't like what other people like!)---Better at noon to watch the orange and black Princeton colors on the wings of a butterfly----

I read all the books of his I could get hold of a long time ago, after picking up 'On the Road' at the school bookshop (I think it sneaked in because it was branded a 'Penguin Modern Classic') at the age of 15.

I'd heard of it because a few years earlier I'd seen an interview with David Bowie where he listed it as an influence.

'Visions of Cody' and 'The Town and The City' were the only ones I never made it through, I think.

so how is the Neal Cassady movie
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0808392/
accurate portrayal?

"He is trapped by an alter ego he and his best friend(Kerouac) created over a decade ago." -reviewer

But that's what I wanna see! On the road years. Mad man Cassady

"i talk to John Cassady online. (neals son)
They are fighting for certian rights on this film and some things were way off. Carolyn says "do not watch it"
But they are all pissed and etc.
They say that not once was Neal played rght on film. What the film makers keep making is 'Dean Morriety' and not Neal. The Cassady family is sick of that.
anyway...so "

found my answer

oh boy: On The Road is set for 2009
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0337692/
If the Cassady family gets upset that he is always portrayed as Dean Morriety, than this is the quintessential Dean film.

Overrated. Read before 30 or don't bother.

it's weird that people group this with catcher in the rye

I wasn't grouping it with... well, I was grouping it with Catcher but only because these are both classics that I don't like/cldn't relate to.
But then 1 I have always been a bit rebellious when it comes to the canon (esp the classics that teens/20sths relate to) and 2 I'm a chick so I guess I just can't relate to that shit anyway?

Still convinced that the Beats were mysoginistic. There. I said it. At the very least unfriendly towards women.

i don't think anyone would argue with you about kerouac et al being a bunch of, uh, very average men of their time re: women (see also: mailer; see also: men in the 40s, 50s and 60s) but how was ginsberg a misogynist?

at least he writes a good book, isn't that what this thread is about?

So, I was in the bookstore and saw Kerouac's book he wrote with Burroughs (and the hippos were boiled in their tanks).
I have always been interested in it since I heard about it, being a big Kerouac fan and finding Burroughs work intriguing.
I was just curious if this was worth picking up (since ya know, money is tight..) or if it is not worth the read?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttDIcTQpLyQ

I couldn't finish On the Road, and I haven't read anything else by Kerouac, but I want to see that movie version of The Subterraneans BECAUSE apparently the filmmakers shoehorned in a happy ending.

I don't really care too much about being excited or hanging on a mystery when I read a book. I like being transported to a world depicted with uncanny precision and highly original metaphorical descriptions/ideas. Reading Kerouac puts me in a lucid dream state.

I sort of think it's sad or funny that people can't finish Kerouac books but not everybody is as prone to zoning out or having an awkwardly, far-fetched imagination that is always on

if anybody should have trouble reading Keouac you would think it would be the person with ADD but in actuality my ADD might be part of the reason why I can read so much Kerouac

Enjoyed the film - mainly out of interest to see how On the Road has been adapted for film. It does manage to include a lot of the main elements of the novel.

It's main problem is that it's not a particularly gripping film - and inevitably raises the question about just what was so interesting about the Beats.

It's main problem is that it's not a particularly gripping film

faithful then </smarm>

actually i should reread this book but every time i think about it i just get mad at everyone in it for having such cheap gasoline

I've got a spoken word compi popping up various tracks on my walkman. So bits of him reading accompanied by Steve wassisface and other bits with other jazz accompaniment. Tend to enjoy it.

Not actually read him in ages though, but tend to be in the middle of several books at he same time anyway

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hjPZpaXNsw

off of "jack kerouac steve allen: poetry for the beat generation" which is great start to finish

not sure if i agree with this or not but it is interesting - pointing out kerouac's head trauma (football concussion in his teens, teen car crash, bad beating he endured in 1958) as the source of his alcoholic decline

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sportingscene/2013/09/football-brain-trauma-and-the-fall-of-jack-kerouac.html

thought this was interesting:

Les Éditions du Boréal, a Montreal-based publishing house, obtained rights from Kerouac's estate to publish a collection of works titled La vie est d’hommage (it was released in April 2016). It includes 16 previously unpublished works, in French, including a novella, Sur le chemin, La nuit est ma femme, and large sections of Maggie Cassidy originally written in French. Both Sur le chemin and La nuit est ma femme have also been translated to English by Jean-Christophe Cloutier, in collaboration with Kerouac, and were published in 2016 by the Library of America in The Unknown Kerouac.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaBnIzY3R00

man kerouac is so rough in that video

was only about a year before he died I think

It’s Friday afternoon in the universe