Product Description
All the components of the Jack Kerouac legend are here: the excesses of alcohol and drugs; the soul searching; the characters--Neal Cassady and Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Lucien Carr, John Clellon Holmes and William Burroughs, Jack's mother, Gabrielle, and the other women in Kerouac's life. There is also a record of the travels that became the basis for On the Road and Visions of Cody, the death-shrouded childhood that became Mexico City Blues and Tristessa, and the stupor of fame that weighed on him as he tried to articulate his torments in Big Sur. This edition is newly revised with a new introduction by the author. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Concise, Factual, and non-Hagiographic.
I was looking for a biography of Jack Kerouac and the one thing I wanted to avoid was a fan's love letter. I wanted something as objective as possible which would illuminate the writer as a man rather than a hero, and that is exactly what I found in Tom Clark's text. It's quite concise with its narrative running just over 200 pages. Despite its brevity, the book managed to cover Kerouac's shortened life in a most satisfactory fashion. I also enjoyed the pictures which artfully adorn the chapters. The one thing that really stands out is the way in which he used drugs to self-medicate. He said that alcoholism was a happy disease but it certainly wasn't for him. Depression appeared to be an even more prominent feature of his personality than graphomania. I found the last forty pages of the tale very sad indeed. One longs to grab him by his flannel shirt and inject him with antabuse. All of this is wasted emotion, however. The man who is bent on killing himself can never be deterred from his goal. This is a skillful portrait of a legend as a human being.

He was dedicated . . .
One of the first things that you come to learn about Jack Kerouac, aside from geographics, is how much he loved to write. The man truly was relentless and driven. He carried a typewriter in his suitcase and beingout of work was just an excuse or a good moment to write. I read this bookand it saddened me to no end because Jack inspired and even pushed many tobecome writers, but didn't have the luxury of long life to see his ownfruits. William S. Burroughs accredits Jack for his whole literary career.

Clark describes Kerouac in terms that you may not have ever thought ofhim in. He was a deeply religious person due to his mother, he was kind andgentle and, almost fatherly to his friends. He did love to drink and gethigh, like his contemporaries, but you really feel that he was asmis-guided by his flock as much as he tried to steer them. They truly werehis extended family. This is the only Clark piece that I've read, and itwas well worth the time and money spent.

I gave this book four starsbecause Clark seems to describe Kerouac as two people at all times. Andmaybe the question of that itself should've been examined further. I willrecommend this book to others for sure. This book seems to encapsulate theKerouac very well (for all his faults). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Melts your mind into the beat mind-set....
If you are familiar with everything Jack Kerouac ever wrote, then this set is a great memory jogger. If you are new to his work it is a superb introduction. Or perhaps you've tried to read him but never got into his "flow of consciousness" style. Then, these recordings teach you how to hear him in your mind- as one long, sweet jazz riff. Just close your eyes and let him transport you to better times and better places. Of course, Kerouac's America is still out there, here and there, in forgotten corners, in special places and special people.

Kerouac was the soul of his age. Who else but Jack could go from commenting on Dostoeveky one minute, then switch to the Three Stooges without missing a beat? Or just as easily go from Sanskrit to skat. And it works. That is because a great soul can encompass entire worlds without contradiction....

A Mixed Bag
The Jack Kerouac Collection is a four-tape set from Rhino Records compiling recordings Kerouac made in 1958 and 1959. Here's an overview of what you'll find here:

Tape 1, Poetry For The Beat Generation, a recording of Kerouac reading his poetry accompanied by television personality Steve Allen on piano. This is probably the weakest tape in the set. Altough it contains a couple of Kerouac's better poems ("Charlie Parker" and "The Wheel Of the Quivering Meat Conception"), most of his other work here comes off as self-indulgent and pretentious. Allen's piano is workmanlike but dull.

Rating: **

Tape 2, Blues And Haikus, is a little better. Here, Kerouac's accompanied by Al Cohn on saxophone and piano and Zoot Sims on saxophone. The standout track here is "American Haikus", featuring Kerouac reading short snatches of often striking, imagistic poetry in between Cohn and Sims' riffing saxes. Suprise: "Hard Hearted Old Farmer", on which Kerouac sings (!).
Even Bigger Suprise: He's not too bad (!!). Crazy, man, crazy.

Rating: **1/2

Tape 3, Readings By Jack Kerouac On The Beat Generation, is easily the best one of the bunch. This concentrates more on Jack's prose pieces, which is its saving grace. Standout track: "Fantasy: The Early Years Of Bop", which, with the exception of Lester Bangs' essay on Van Morrison's Astral Weeks (collected in his excellent Psychotic Reactions And Carburetor Dung), is probably the best piece of music writing I've come across.

Rating: ****

Tape 4, The Last Word, consists of outtakes from the Blues And Haikus sessions; a speech entitled "Is There A Beat Generation?' from a Brandeis University lecture of the same name, and brief readings from Visions Of Cody and On The Road from a 1959 television appearance. These range from the embarrassingly bad (the Blues And Haikus outtakes, featuring on obviously drunk Kerouac) to the sublime (the '59 TV show readings), which makes the tape a fitting capper to the set.

Rating: **1/2

In sum - if you're a Kerouac fan, you'll probably want to check this out. If you're new to his work, you're probably better off starting with one of his novels - On The Road is probably his best. ... Read more

Product Description
Here, in what has become a classic of its kind since its publication in 1978, is the fascinating story of Jack Kerouac, "King of the Beats" and American literary legend, recorded through the voices of his friends and lovers. Authors Barry Gifford and Lawrence Lee retraced Kerouac's life at home and on the road and talked with the prophets, musicians, poets, socialites, and working people who knew Jack Kerouac. Some are famous like Allen Ginsberg, Gore Vidal, William Burroughs, Gary Snyder, among others; and some are not like Jack's boyhood buddies, his lovers, and his barroom companions. All, however, have contributed to a remarkably vibrant, riveting portrait of a life. We see Jack at Columbia University and on the scene of Greenwich Village; speeding across the tarmac of America with Neal Cassidy ("Dan Moriarty" in Kerouac's classic novel, On the Road); at home with his possessive mother; in California, drinking wine and talking Buddhism; and finally, in Florida, where his life ends tragically at forty-seven years old. Jack's Book, like Kerouac's novels, makes a unique contribution to our understanding of a man and a generation that shaped the dreams and visions of those who followed. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Essential to understanding Jack
I love oral histories, and I Kerouac's alright.Its neat that the people responsible for this book collected and intereviewed some of Jack's friends from before he became famous.I was also unaware of his firt's marriages annulment and his involvment in hiding a body. There's a lot of great snippets... but there's also a lot of boring windbags blowing in this book too.

Still, its worth every penny.

Beat a path to this book
Chock to bursting with recollections from Kerouac's intimates, this page-turner will be read in two or three sittings. These recollections are interspersed among the authors' own discoveries and conclusions. Not asexhaustive as "Memory Babe," this book is more for the personjust getting into Kerouac's work and life.In the back of this book arelists of what has become of these acquaintances of Kerouac's and what theiraliases were in his books, information which will become dearer to you asyou delve deeper into Jack's Duluoz Legend. All in all, one terrific bookworth anyone's time and money.

An oral intrigue into Kerouac's and the Beats
Gifford and Lee,seemingly well read about the Beats and Keoruac, are second only to Ann Charter's biographical work on Kerouac.The real sense of the'50's, the mentality,the hazards, and the activities of Burrows, Ginsberg,Jack and the boys are given a very thorough and entertaining once over. The scholarly merit isn't here, but the titilation and interesting skinny is. ... Read more

Product Description

Each touris easy to follow. Morgan tells you how long the tours take to walk(most are a couple of hours), how to reach the starting points bysubway and bus, and includes a map of the route region, complete withlabeled highlights, followed by a narrative that's a pleasure to read,evincing poetic talent, historic knowledge, and specific, preciseinstructions. Take the Columbia University tour, forinstance. Starting on the east side of Broadway at 116th Street infront of Columbia's main gates, and lasting two to two and a halfhours, it takes in the scene where the Beat Generation first appearedin the 1940s "like a wild seed in a city garden." Stopping at McMillinTheater (where Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, and Peter Orlovskyperformed a poetry reading on February 5, 1959), Columbia Bookstore(site of a Ginsberg vision that led to his book The VisionaryPoetics of Allen Ginsberg), and Low Library Plaza (site of manyearly beat photos), the tour continues by St. Paul's Chapel, HamiltonHall, Butler Library, and the Phi Gamma Delta Fraternity, passes theroom Ginsberg took in 1948, the 1944 domicile of the Kerouacs and JoanVollmer Adams, and the brick apartment building where the Kerouacslived with Joan Adams, then continues by Riverside Park, the West EndBar, the Yorkshire Residence Club, and an apartment where WilliamS. Burroughs once lived. There are 23 sites in all. Morgan explainseach site's Beat significance, including quotes from poems and novelsthat allude to it. Morgan details nine such walks, taking in TimesSquare, Rockefeller Center, Chelsea, Greenwich Village, Queens,Yonkers, and the Bronx. With a who's who of Beat personalities anddozens of historic photos, The Beat Generation is as much acontribution to the literary world as it is a useful and enlighteningtravel guide. --Stephanie Gold ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Excellent guide
I found the guide to be excellent.I was particularly interested in the information and tours of Greenwich Village.........easy to follow and informative.Too bad many of the buildings have been converted into something else, renovated, or even destroyed.The 50's and 60's must have been quite an exciting time in and around Greenwich Village.

Shoe leather resident tourism
Having moved to New York not long ago, I've been devouring the history and architecture of the city. This book blends the best of both, adding a third party to the mix -- literature. Dividing the city -- mostly Manhattan -- into eight two-hour walking tours, this guidebook offers literary references, beat-gen biographical information, and urban commentary in a useful, insightful style. The book is due an update -- the Gotham Book Mart has moved and several once-vacant lots are no longer undeveloped -- but this book has made for several wonderful walking weekends, and I know I'll retrace my steps in the future.

great stuff for beat locals and tourists alike
of course anyone who lives in new york city can tell you where the white horse and cedar tavern are, but do they all know that where sam goody now stands on sixth avenue and ninth street is the very same place that thecafeteria kerouac wrote about extensively in visions of cody once stood?

this book is filled with a lot of well-known and plenty of not so wellknown places where various members of the beat generation ate, performed,lived, got drunk in, or otherwise played out their lives. the tours arebroken down by area and there are clear directions to help you find whereyou're going (even if the place no longer exists). each tour also beginswith a street map of the area covered and clearly numbered destinations,which was very helpful, although i did wish that the book had also comewith an overview map of all manhattan and destinations so that i could moreeasily combine tours or skip around to places of interest if i didn't wantto follow a complete tour.

each stopping place in the tour book includesa paragraph or two on why the place is important to beat history andwho/what occured there. although the title of the book claims that new yorkwas "jack kerouac's city," the tours really include many of theother important beat figures as well as a few others that were influencedby the beat movement, such as bob dylan.

this is a great way for beataficionados visiting new york to get a taste of the city, and a fun way forlocals to spend an afternoon or two discovering new spots and seeingfamiliar places in a new light.

Better than wandering
It would be next to impossible to find these places on your own.Even more impossible to learn as much about each of the sites as is presented in this guide.Each tour follows a logical route and there are plenty ofstops that you probably never would have thought of--eg.Serpico'sapartment, the former site of Thomas Wolfe's East 8th St. apartment.Usingthis guide is a great way to see the Village, East and West.And theinsight will keep you reading even as you're moving to the next stop.Takeyour time.Spread the tours over a couple of afternoons.And linger for awhile in Washington Square.

A great companion to this book is "TheBeat Generation in New York."I wouldn't recommend carrying thisheavy book around with you, but after you've finished the tours, open thebook to look at the pictures taken at many of the places you've justvisited. ... Read more

Product Description
The Beat Movement, which first rose to attention in 1955, has often been viewed by critics as an urban phenomenon--the product of a postwar youth culture with roots in the cities of New York and San Francisco. This study examines another side of the Beat Movement: its strong desire for a reconnection with nature. Although each took a different path in attaining this goal, the writers considered here--Gary Snyder, Jack Kerouac, Lew Welch, and Michael McClure--sought a new and closer connection to the natural world. These four writers, along with many of their counterparts in the Beat era, provided a crucial spark that helped to ignite the environmental movement of the 1970s and provided the foundation for the development of the current "Deep Ecology" worldview. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

The Greening of the Beats
The author sheds light on a side of the beat culture
which has been ignored by the mass media for far too
long. Many a word has been written about the Beat's
frontal attack upon the sleepy surburban world of
America circa late 1950s, but few have bottered to
examine their spiritual awareness as related to Mother
Earth. They were fresh voices who found spiritual
rebirth through nature and were in the forefront of
those questioning the prevalent doctrine of consummerism.
I would heartily recommend this well written book.

Must read
Wow- what a book.This book sheds new light on a topic I feel has already been covered.Phillips' personal interviews are fantastic.I would love to have Phillips for a professor, wait- I do.Phillips is the man, and so is his book.If you are reading this Dr. Phillips can I have a 4.0?You know who I am!

The Beats Reconsidered--Finally
Finally, a scholar has dug through the pop culture mud of the Beats to bedrock below: They weren't just citified tea-heads as Life magazine in the Fifties (and too many academics since) would have us believe.Thesewriters were deeply tuned into the natural world and drew upon it forinspiration and some of their best writing--even the seemingly most urbanof the lot--Kerouac. Case and point: Kerouac's"greening" in"Dharma Bums."Phillips' discussion of this novel is especiallyastute; and it sent me digging for my old copy.Similarly, Phillips'treatment of the Beats and Buddhism (Snyder in particular) is alsorefreshingly clear and original--not an easy thing to do. Phillips'research, including interviews with McClure, Welch and Snyder, is thoroughand convincing.Moreover, his prose is sharp and unencumbered with trendyjargon. I predict Beat scholars will reconsider certain assumptions uponreading this book--and Beat fans will find this to be a unique andexcellent addition to the ever-growing Beat canon. ... Read more

Product Description
Renowned photographer Fred McDarrah captures the Beats in the midst of their rise to acclaim. His 100 shots of Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, and others partying in cheap downtown Manhattan apartments, socializing at Grove Press book parties, and hunching over their typewriters are joined by writings from a diverse and illuminating raft of sources. Jack Kerouac contributes a list of activities necessary for writing success ("1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy"), Diana Trilling shares her thoughts on her fears of and for husband’s former student, Allen Ginsberg, and Mad magazine sends up the young men and women who took up the beat lifestyle Kerouac and friends made famous. Kerouac and Friends is a fresh and surprising look at the young men and women who would come to define the last major epoch in American literature. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Portrait of an Age
Anyone interested in Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation will be enchanted by "Kerouac and Friends: A Beat Generation Album" by father and son writing team Fred W. McDarrah and Timothy S. McDarrah.As picture editor of the Village Voice for more than forty years, Fred McDarrah was friendly with all the Beats in their heyday and went to all their parties and readings, always with his camera in hand. On intimate terms with many of them, McDarrah didn't consider himself a Beat because he always had a paying job. In subsequent years, he kept in touch with Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, Amiri Baraka, Ted Joans, and others, and in 1984, twenty-five years after Kerouac's "On the Road" was published, numerous friends and his sons Timothy and Patrick convinced him to publish a book with all his old photos.

The pictures alone are worth the price of admission, but to give the book its substance, the McDarrahs have put together a compendium of twenty-eight of the best articles, both pro and con, about the Beat scene, from the original essay by John Clellon Holmes defining "Beat," through articles by Kenneth Rexroth, Seymour Krim, Diana Trilling, Fred McDarrah, and Jack Kerouac in his essay "The Last Word," concluding with Jack McClintock's sad finale, "This Is How the Ride Ends."

Reading these seminal articles about a literary phenomenon that divided American literary critics puts the reader in touch with the controversial vibes of the times.This is the meat of the book, but it wouldn't be nearly so appetizing without the sauce provided by McDarrah's intimate pictures of the participants, youthful and sincere, in their Greenwich Village pads and hangouts, cafes and jazz joints, auditoriums and back alleys.

The book concludes with a twenty-five-page section of brief biographical sketches of everyone identified in the photographs and the writers of the articles and is worth reading in its entirety, from Daisy Aldan, editor, translator and publisher of the poets and painters of the New York School, to Louis Zukofsky, noted New York poet born of Russian immigrant parents.Reading the sketches is like eating a light dessert after a fine meal.For connoisseurs of the Beats, "Kerouac and Friends" is indeed a feast.The book is truly a portrait of an age.
... Read more

Product Description
Chapters: Junior Burke, Nathan Katz, Jack Collom, Thomas B. Coburn, Jack Kerouac School. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 34. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Naropa University is a private American liberal arts university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1974 by Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa, it is named for the eleventh-century Indian Buddhist sage Naropa, an abbot of Nalanda. Naropa describes itself as Buddhist-inspired, ecumenical and nonsectarian rather than Buddhist. Naropa promotes non-traditional activities like meditation to supplement traditional learning approaches. Naropa was accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools in 1988, making it the first Buddhist, or Buddhist-inspired, academic institution to receive United States regional accreditation. It remains one of only a handful of such schools. Besides spirituality, Naropa is noteworthy for having hosted a number of Beat poets under the auspices of its "Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics". The school as seen from Arapahoe Street. The Allen Ginsberg Library on the right.Naropa University was founded by Chögyam Trungpa, an exiled Tibetan tulku who was a Karma Kagyu and Nyingma lineage holder. Trungpa entered the USA in 1970, established the Vajradhatu organization in 1973, and then in 1974, established Naropa Institute under the Nalanda Foundation. Initially, the Nalanda Foundation and Vajradhatu were closely linked, having nearly identical boards of directors. In subsequent years they differentiated into more independent institutions. Trungpa asked poets Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, John Cage and Diane di Prima to found a poetics department at Naropa during the first summer session. Ginsberg and Waldman, who roomed together that first summer, came up with the name for the Jac...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=721046 ... Read more

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The ten essays in this groundbreaking compilation cover a broad range of topics, employing a variety of approaches, including theoretical interpretations and textual and comparative analysis, to investigate such issues as race, class, gender, and sexuality, as well as the novel's historical and literary contexts.What's Your Road, Man? Critical Essays on Jack Kerouac's "On the Road"illustrates the richness of the critical work currently being undertaken on this vital American narrative.

Combining essays from renowned Kerouac experts and emerging scholars,What's Your Road, Man?draws on an enormous amount of research into the literary, social, cultural, biographical, and historical contexts of Kerouac's canonical novel. Since its publication in 1957,On the Roadhas remained in print and has continued to be one of the most widely read twentieth-century American novels.

Several essays enhance understanding of the book by comparing it with alternative versions of the text, like the original 1951 scroll manuscript and some of Kerouac's other novels, and with works by Kerouac's contemporaries such as Sylvia Plath'sThe Bell Jar.Further studies explore ethnicity, identity, and the novel's place in American literature as well as its relevance to twenty-first century readers.

On the Roadhas inspired readers for more than fifty years, and the new research included inWhat's Your Road, Man?introduces fresh perspectives on this classic work of American literature. Editors Hilary Holladay and Robert Holton have successfully woven little-known material with new understandings of familiar topics that will enlighten current and future generations of Kerouac enthusiasts and scholars for years to come.

Product Description
A first collection of stories from this author, all of which explore the theme of women breaking out of imposed roles.Amazon.com Review
A playful, cynical short story collection about peopleattempting to break from imposed roles. The title story describes apregnant woman whose wish is to be "on the road" like the famous poet,but as a self-professed pansy, she instead lives her life like amanual: "How to Go on a Date," "How to Make Love to Your Husband."Other stories include a woman who marries well, but spends her lifeobsessing about the affair she had a week before her wedding and abored receptionist pulled out of her rut and Catholic upbringing by aflamboyant stranger. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Sloppy, disconnected, and dull.
Ah for the days of a linear plot and a novel that is not so self indulgent it blurs the line between fiction and non-fiction by being neither.Such is Jack Kerouac Is Pregnant, an amateur outing that rides soley on its clever title.

Non-linear, poetic, and arresting.
"It takes a long time to see you are a slave," muses one character in Aurelie Sheehan's debut collection, a line that succinctly captures the cumulative effect of her stories. These lyrical, sometimes bitingly funny chronicles of women breaking out of imposed roles feature misplaced waitresses, secretaries, prostitutes, and other working girls. In the title story, a woman yearns to be like Jack Kerouac, but is held back by a litany of rules teaching her to be a submissive girl, a "pansy." The main character in "Look at the Moon" is bored to distraction by her receptionist job but is still half under the influence of a Catholic upbringing when she hooks up with a flamboyant stranger and goes on a life-altering road trip with her. In "The Dove," a wealthy widow who was pressured by her family to marry a rich man spends her life fixated on an affair she had a week before her wedding. Women young and old, rich and poor, make soul-threatening sacrifices to adhere to societal or familial strictures. Love is passionately evoked here, as are the myths and illusions that sustain it. Non-linear, poetic, and arresting, Sheehan's storytelling skills ring with the authority of honesty, compassion, and experience.

Avante-Garde Prose Manifests
I applaude Jack Kerouac is Pregnant for a variety of reasons. The sarcastic, wry wit that gleams through the pages is evident after obvious examination. And the incredible, massive madness that seeps through thecorners of the deliriously delightful assortment of plays. Carry on,Aurelie Sheehan. Be great. ... Read more

Product Description
Renowned "Beat Generation" poet and author Jack Kerouac says of OLD ANGEL MIDNIGHT, "(it) is only the beginning of a lifelong work in multilingual sound . . . of babbling world tongues coming in thru my window at midnight no matter where I live or what I'm doing. . . . And it is the only book I've ever written in which I allow myself the right to say anything I want, absolutely and positively anything, since that's what you hear coming in that window. . . ". ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Brilliance unencumbered by usefulness
Man, this is a hard slog. This is truly a work of spontaneous prose and you quickly realize this as you try to follow any path of sensible thought until you get to the point where you realize `It's not there'. This is not the written sounds of anything that flowed through Kerouac's midnight window, as he has you believe in a letter to a friend. I have never heard anything like that anywhere through any window of my life. This is purely Kerouac's mind at play with words as they pop into his thoughts. There are some beautiful subtle fragments to be found in this work, mixed in with, phew, with umm, all sorts of stuff. It's a potpourri of poetry written upon the meditation of his own mind & quite often very funny. I believe he succeeded in what he set out to do, but that outcome by its nature is not something appealing to most people. Only a hard core Kerouac fan could truly love this book. I read it in one hit. Perhaps the secret is to pick it up & read stanzas at a time, over time. It's very interesting, means nothing, demands concentration & leaves you scratching your head. I liked it but could love it with time. I'd give it five stars for its brilliance & inventiveness but its inaccessibility can only grant it four.

read it outloud
This book is about the time the author just sits in his lonely shack and listens to the sounds around.I guess if you just sit and listen intendly right now to all the sounds coming into your universe you will get themessage jack was trying to put across. The best way to read this book is toread a section at a time out loud to someone. The result is quite magical.The words somehow all become clear and the visions and situations becomereal. This is not an easy book to comprehend in the normal manner of a readbut hey delve in deep and it becomes a cosmic comet in the universe of yourmind. ... Read more

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Product Description
Originally subtitled "An Adventurous Education, 1935-1946," this book is a key volume in Kerouac's lifework, the series of autobiographical novels he referred to as The Legend of Duluoz. A wonderfully unassuming look back at the origins of his career--a prehistory of the Beat era, written from the perspective of the psychedelic '60s. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (14)

The Writer In Decline
Some of the general points made below have been used in other reviews of books and materials by and about Jack Kerouac.

"As I have explained in another entry in this space in a DVD review of the film documentary "The Life And Times Of Allen Ginsberg", recently I have been in a "beat" generation literary frame of mind. I think it helps to set the mood for commenting on Jack Kerouac's lesser work, essentially a fictionalized memoir of his teenage and young adult years, under review here, "Vanity Of Duluoz", that it all started last summer when I happened to be in Lowell, Massachusetts on some personal business. Although I have more than a few old time connections with that now worn out mill town I had not been there for some time. While walking in the downtown area I found myself crossing a small park adjacent to the site of a well-known mill museum and restored textile factory space. Needless to say, at least for any reader with a sense of literary history, at that park I found some very interesting memorial stones inscribed with excerpts from a number of his better known works dedicated to Lowell's `bad boy', the "king of the 1950s beat writers".

And, just as naturally, when one thinks of Kerouac then, "On The Road", his classic modern physical and literary `search' for the meaning of America for his generation which came of age in post-World War II , readily comes to mind. No so well known, however, is the fact that that famous youthful novel was merely part of a much grander project, an essentially autobiographical exposition by Kerouac in many volumes starting from his birth in 1922, to chart and vividly describe his relationship to the events, great and small, of his times. Those volumes bear the general title "The Legend Of Duluoz". That is why we today, in the year of the forty anniversary of Kerouac's death, are under the sign of his last work "Vanity Of Duluoz".

As mentioned above this `novel' reads more like a thinly, very thinly fictionalized memoir , ostensibly directed toward telling his third wife, Stella, the sister of a long dead boyhood admirer from the old neighborhood in Lowell killed in World War II, about this decisive period in his life for his literary development. This period from 1935 to 1946 spans his high school days, partially detailed in another volume in the series "Maggie Cassidy", is filled with acts of athletic prowess, some literary disappointments and a general longing to get out of town and ends just prior to the physical and literary "search" for America of "On The Road". In between we are told about the budding college athletic career gone sour, the breaks, friendly and unfriendly, with his parents, his various ways, civilian and military, of serving in World War II and his stumbling onto a number of characters in wartime New York City who would form the basic of many later novels, and incidentally the core of "the beat generation".

In many ways this is the least satisfactory of the dozen or so novels in the "Visions" compilation in that it is basically (and consciously) written as a direct narrative of events with a certain hard edge of a writer who has essentially lost his moorings (in 1967 just prior to his death), retired from the world and is feeling sorry about it. Sorry enough to basically rehash the past, a past that while not without conflict, represented his golden youth and the beginning of his serious literary ambitions. Almost jarringly, especially for those of us aficionados who have read most of the other Kerouac works, there is little reflection, not much of that be-bop word play that animated so many of the earlier works, and no little philosophical tidbits to think about. The easiest way to show the lose of literary spark is by comparison- take the early hard-bitten, almost boringly presented chapters here that deal with his high school and early college career and compare with the lyric quality of some of the prose in describing those same events in "Maggie Cassidy". Has anyone ever written better about the dramatic tensions of a ...Track meet? Case closed.

Sucks...
This book was just plain terrible. I've seen better writing in an instruction manual. Moreover, the plot was weak.

haven't read it yet
Amazon wants you to review books even if you haven't read them so that all i gots to say

Beat Generation - The Prequel

Kerouac's last real novel, this gives you some idea of where he was coming from in the years before he sat down to write On the Road and the other books that would define the Beat Generation.

As a reader, I came at Kerouac back to front, coming across this as a teenager in the local library when it had just come out in 1969. I was a high school senior, a small town quarterback, a secretly aspiring writer, living in a Massachusetts mill town and struggling with the constraints of the Roman Catholic faith.

At one point in this book, the narrator tells his father he is leaving town because he doesn't want to rot in Lowell and his father tells him "You don't know it, but you're rotting in Lowell right now."

This book, maybe more than anything he wrote except On the Road, has always stayed with me. I never lost sight of where he was coming from with his rebellion.

In my opinion, contrary to some other reviews here, it is not a bad place to start with Jack.

A weak novel from one of the greatest novelists ever
Unfortunately, even the stars in the heavens sometimes fall. This is what happened to Jack Kerouac in his final years, and this book is exhibit A.

Kerouac was never the "life is a thrill a minute joy-fest" guy that he's often mistaken for by young people who read "On The Road" and the others for the first time. (Myself included, many years ago) A rereading of his books later in life reveals how sad and confused a man he really was; his novels are a quest, they are not the answer. There are answers in them, but "hit the road and forget everything you were taught by your parents and your teachers" is not an answer he ever gave or intended to give. Kerouac was a profoundly lonely man, so lonely that he let many of his friends treat him like a dog (remember Dean abandoning him in Mexico in "Road") and not only came back for more but wrote some of the greatest books ever written about them.

But his loneliness and confusion truly came home to roost after he became famous. Fame made him bitter and forced him to drink and isolate himself ever more in order to deal with it. He wrote about this in "Big Sur," unquestionably one of his best books, and his power as a writer never left him...but in "Vanity of Duluoz" we see how far he's slipped from the great Journeyman he was two decades earlier. Particularly in the novel's early passages, he rails against modern society and moans over how much better things were when he was young, and it poisons his writing almost fatally. Of course, he is hardly the only writer to complain about the world; one of his greatest influences, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, practically made a career of it, but Celine made it FUNNY, and that makes all the difference. Nobody wants to hear an old man bitch about these kids today, if that's his only point. Celine used his kvetching as a counterpoint to whatever story he was telling, and the contrast comes on like an explosion of energy. Kerouac, sadly, only tells his story to show how much better times were back then than they are now. Worse, in the first sentence of the book he implies that "Vanity Of Duluoz" isn't even meant for us, his faithful readers: it's for his wife. (And judging from the way she kept so much of his writing out of the public eye for decades after he died, it's clear he was preaching to the choir)

I don't know what effect the novel had on the millions of kids who snapped it up in 1967, thinking they were getting another youth-affirming "On The Road" or "Desolation Angels" (another book I drastically misread as a kid) and discovering instead a man their parents' age, complaining about their long hair and their careless, hedonistic lifestyles and how they have used him as an excuse to become worthless bums. Their reaction couldn't have been too happy. It's too bad: a generation who felt he was their christ figure, the one who went out into the world and showed them the way, now finding their buddha telling them to clean up and get lost. And this book, detailing the years 1935 through the end of the War, should have been one of his most joyful, bombastic works: he leaves his hometown, discovers the wonders of Manhattan, meets his great circle of friends, and begins to discover himself as a man and a writer.

But it wasn't to be. He was simply too mired in depression and alcohol to muster the energy needed to give the subject the treatment it deserved. In a roundabout way he did, of course, tackle this time period in his first novel "The Town And The City," and although it lacks the characteristic Kerouac voice it's still an excellent novel, and highly recommended. But it's not the masterpiece that "Vanity" could have been, and that is all the more a tragedy. This book feels like a filler: he'd written about his childhood and his adulthood, now he needed to write about his young adulthood, so he could fill in the gaps in the Duluoz legend and say he finished it. That's just not a good enough reason to write a book. Even when you are---or were---as great a writer as Jack Kerouac. ... Read more

Product Description
In conformist 1950s America, Jack Kerouac's On the Road was greeted with both delirium and dismay, but in Kerouac's hunt for the big experience and his longing for greatness, he has inspired each successive generation.

Jack Kerouac is now an icon, and this provocative and intimate portrait of one of the twentieth century's most in influential writers, reveals a man full of contradictions, rarely at peace with himself. Barry Miles, friend and official biographer of Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, provides a meticulously researched exploration of the complex man and extranordinary writer whose creative mishmash of joyous incoherence, drug-induced ecstasy, genuine mysticism and constant craving has persuaded so many to take to the road.Amazon.com Review
Barry Miles, noted for Paul McCartney: Many Yearsfrom Now, also wrote biographies of Allen Ginsberg and WilliamBurroughs. This hatchet job on Kerouac lacks what makes his McCartneybook great--total access to his subject--and it won't replace the moreeloquent bios Kerouac and Memory Babe. Butit is enriched by Miles's interviews with those in a position todebunk the legend. Was Kerouac a sweet saint, as his burgeoningcongregation believes? "He cared more for his cat than for his owndaughter," writes Miles, and the rich Kerouac did let his kid become a13-year-old junkie prostitute. Was he a deep Buddhist? Buddhist poetPhilip Whalen says Jack didn't quite get it. Jack couldn't drive,either--it was the idea he liked. Did he write On the Road in aburst of unedited inspiration on a 120-foot roll of paper? No, herevised the text. The last four feet of the scroll were chewed up bythe dog belonging to Lucien Carr (the father of Caleb Carr, author ofThe Alienist),but the dog may have actually accomplished some helpful editing, asdid Malcolm Cowley. The book's best line (about "the ones who are madto live, mad to talk") was composed months later.

Kerouac was often monstrous, even before he became a KKK cross-burningkook locked in a bizarre relationship with his bigoted, alcoholicmother. For what's good about Kerouac, consult more sympatheticscholars. The best of him is in his own books. --Tim Appelo ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

If this is what a Beat was, I'm glad I stayed straight
This book is a very detailed account of Kerouac's relationships and what motivated his writing. When I was 20 years old in 1959 I was nauseated by the conformity of the times and thought seriously of going to New York City to join the beat scene. I have often wondered what good things might have come out of such a venture. Alas, Barry Miles has cured me of the nostalgia for what might have been.

While drinking binges, pseudo-intellectual conversation and affairs with untold numbers of lady beats appealed to me at the time, I hadn't counted on the absolute lack of social mores required of a true beat as lived by the King of the Beats, Jack Kerouac.

There was Jack with so many friends but friend to no one, sometimes brilliantly expressive but mostly incoherent on drugs or booze, lovingly tied to mother but in a self destructive way, owner of a subconscious respect for law and order yet endlessly cavorting with petty criminals, the picture of male virility but willing to lay with anyone possessing genitals of any kind, driven to go public but unable to do so when coherent, easy to start relationships but never lasting in one, and worst of all, a potentially liberating non conforming attitude coupled with right wing beliefs he could never seem to shake.

If Barry Miles' recounting of Jack is in any way accurate and if Kerouac was in any way typical of the beats, then I'm glad I stayed home.

Bad book, or just a bad subject?
The reviews of this book seem to be an interesting assortment from not that great to great.I felt like I had to plod through this book and at times I'm not sure if it is Miles' writing or just the fact that Kerouac really wasn't all that interesting.Miles starts with Kerouac's family background and then traces 'the king' through his youth and early adulthood and on into notoriety and finally death.Somewhere in there Miles wants us to find the answers to Kerouac's alcoholism, his disregard for women and his complete social withdrawal.But at some point in the book, you start to realize that Kerouac really isn't that interesting.Certainly his writing was far more interesting than he.Miles describes Ginsberg's continuous selling of Kerouac's work and even the man to the point where even Ginsberg seems to be trying to convince himself of his greatness.

This is a book about a writer.Many writers live out their lives through their works.Certainly it seems Kerouac was this way.He never quite seems to grow up.This is almost a psycho-biography into what might have made Kerouac tick.

I think Miles did an excellent job of bringing diverse sources together and building a tapestry of Kerouac's life in view of his works.But in the end, Kerouac seems not to be up to the task.

Do yourself a favor and read Kerouac's books.They are far more interesting.

An imperfect book, but important to consider
Perhaps the most important thing to note for anyone who is considering whether to read or buy this book is that it is not a biography.Although the book's structure is based on the chronology of Kerouac's life, the content is more concerned with analysis than it is with a straightforward, objective account.Miles's concern is primarily to present Kerouac and his works in a more complete and sober context than the average person is likely to have gleaned from the most available cultural sources (Kerouac's own books and his image in various media); and in so doing to correct the common perception of Kerouac as pure genius hero.If the reader is looking for a traditional biography, the best one available is probably Paul Maher's 2004 "Kerouac: A Definitive Biography".

As analysis, Miles's book is perceptive and worthwhile.It is incredibly refreshing to see honest criticism of Kerouac and his ideas from a source like Barry Miles, who almost certainly drew his conclusions from a reasonably informed standpoint.Miles appears quite intent on not allowing bias, either negative of positive, to interfere with his assesment of Kerouac.He is well-researched and consistently perceptive, and his discussion of his subject is blunt, well-considered and engaging.Similarly, Miles's criticism of Kerouac's writing, though less complete than his examination of the man himself, is realistic and thoughtful.He assesses each book with a balanced eye toward its literary virtues and vices, as well as its content, and his criticism is insightful and well worth reading.

Although Miles's analysis of Kerouac's life often comes off as exceptionally uncharitable, that doesn't necessarily mean that it is inaccurate.Certainly, though, Miles is overly selective in his presentation, and often he withholds or doesn't take seriously elements of Kerouac's life which might do some little bit to salvage a more positive view of the man. In this, he goes too far, not allowing the reader to consider for himself whether Miles's interpretation is entirely correct.If this were a court case, Miles would be a prosecutor.

Nevertheless, it would be incorrect to call this book a hatchet job, as it is unlikely that "King of the Beats" is the reader's introduction to Kerouac.Rather than seeking to impugn Kerouac and destroy his reputation, Miles comes off more as dispassionately giving a severe word of caution to the reader not to get caught up in the myth of Kerouac as a compassionate and inspired genius, a holy fool, or a mystic.Ultimately, he presents a realistic perspective on a man whose legacy has often been in danger of ascending spotless to heaven.Miles's assessment of Kerouac often seems overwhelmingly negative, but this seems to come less from spite than from having a hard case to make, what with the ludicrously positive received opinion.In the end, Miles accurately presents Kerouac: naive, adolescent, passionate, confused, talented, and deeply, tragically troubled.This book is well worth reading for anyone who is making a serious study of Kerouac's life and works.

Unexpectedly compelling
With Kerouac an industry these days, it is hard to imagine anything new being offered, particularly from a biographer who never (on the strength of this text) even met him.

Well stick with it. As a review on the back on my copy puts it "this is an excellent portrait of a ghastly man."

Barry Miles does not understate Kerouac's influence. He takes him seriously as a writer and stylist, despite the patchiness of his output. His importance, says Miles, lay in his popularising the break with American post-war conformity (On the Road) and his prophesizing a Zen-infused "world full of rucksack wanderers" (The Dharma Bums), which underpinned the more thoughtful end of hippiedom.

No doubt such things would have happened without Kerouac, or any of the beats, but this odd mother-lovin' alcoholic redneck from the small-town north-east undoubtedly flavoured the 60s and 70s and inspired countless thousands of wanderers and artists.

Barry Miles's contribution is to sort through the myth, delivering a freshness to a now largely stale story of genius, self-obsession, and fatal loathing. The accounts of the cold-water flats of 1940s New York are especially vivid, where the beat ethos - much rougher than its hippie godchild - was formed.

With so much sentimentalising of the Kerouac story, this is one for readers who've been moved by the man but want more than the literary postcard.

Too much judgement
I thought this book was a very readable overview of Jack Kerouac's life. It helped me gain some kind of overview which I had found elusive reading Gerald Nicosia's more detailed book. However what marred the book for me was Miles's intrusive and over-bearing judgements. Surely it's better to present the facts and let them speak for themselves? In chapter 8 (just over half way through the book) he launches into a tirade ....'How can a man deny his own child?... Where was Kerouac when he should have been reading his daughter bedtime stories, sharing with her his love for words?...' and so on. Unfortunately once he's in this mode he doesn't let up. I appreciate the sentiment and it's difficult not to judge Kerouac harshly over this - but I felt Miles should have made more of an effort to understand his subject. I almost felt I leant more about Barry Miles than Kerouac in this section of the book and it's commendable that Miles feels so strongly about family loyalties but is that really the issue here? ... Read more

Product Description
"A visual record of the life and times of one of America's greatest writers. Featuring a foreword by Carolyn Cassady, Kerouac's lover, wife of Neal Cassady, and one of the key figures in his life, this authoritative biography presents perhaps the most judicious look at this tragic genius ever published."--BOOK JACKET. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Nice pictures
This book features a great collection of photographs
documenting Kerouac and his circle of acquitances
spanning an impressive length of time. I would have liked
the author to have spent a little bit more time
exploring Kerouac's spiritual side, as oppossed to the media
orientated recitation of random incidents, but I
understand for it is the latter which pushes book exposure
and sales. Still, it was a book which I would encourage
others to read.

For Completists Only
The only good writing in this book is Carolyn Cassady's introduction. Most of these photos have appeared before. The editing is odd in that there are dozens of good photos of Kerouac that are only 1x1" and several fullpage photos of city scenes with no Kerouac content whatsovever. The text islame. For those who want to complete their Kerouac reference librarys nomatter the quality of the product.

Illustrated, but not Illuminated
This book offers more unique photos of Kerouac and associates than any other Kerouac book, including "Angel-Headed Hipster."But the same problems with most Kerouac biographies are present in this one aswell.The biographer, David Sandison, seems more intrigued by Kerouac'simage rather than his substance.Of course, this is why he painstakinglygathered the photos and presented them here.As usual, Kerouac's truemotivations and inner demons are given only passing references, in favor ofthe more cinematic qualities of his life, eg. the women, the booze, and thefast cars.This book is not for the critical Kerouac reader seekingliterary insight.It is, instead, for those enamored with the KerouacLegend.

If you truly want to get personal with Kerouac, pick up anythingwith Ann Charters' name on it.She has proven, by far, to be the world'smost authoritative and compelling Kerouac scholar.

Well worth the money
Most of the photos used in this illustration were never shown before in any other bio of Jack. One can tell that this was a labor of love.

Jack Kerouac
While I am a gret fan of Kerouac, this book confirms my overall sentiments, those being that while a tremendous talent and personality, much like JFK, Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, and others, he wasn't nearly as goodas we now make him out to be. I know this sounds horrible, but from a veryobjective point of view, the best thing that happen to Princess Di from astrictly PR perspective is that she died a premature and tragic death. Thisevent increased her stock and shaped with kindness how she is beingremembered. Back to the book, it is a worthwhile read and I enjoyed the100+ photos I had not seen previously.Overall, I'd say the book was wellwritten and worth the readers time. ... Read more

Product Description
On a blind date in Greenwich Village set up by Allen Ginsberg, Joyce Johnson (then Joyce Glassman) met Jack Kerouac in January 1957, nine months before he became famous overnight with the publication of On the Road. She was an adventurous, independent-minded twenty-one-year-old; Kerouac was already running on empty at thirty-five. This unique book, containing the many letters the two of them wrote to each other, reveals a surprisingly tender side of Kerouac. It also shares the vivid and unusual perspective of what it meant to be young, Beat, and a woman in the Cold War fifties. Reflecting on those tumultuous years, Johnson seamlessly interweaves letters and commentary, bringing to life her love affair with one of American letters' most fascinating and enigmatic figures.Amazon.com Review
They met in early 1957, eight months before the publication of On the Road made Jack Kerouac the most famous young writer in America. Some of the bitterest, saddest letters Kerouac wrote to his 21-year-old lover, Joyce Glassman, reveal the personal cost of the hysterical media attention that followed. Yet their early correspondence shows a side of Kerouac not always evident in his fiction: tender, spiritual, and supportive of Glassman's efforts to write her first novel. Now known as Joyce Johnson, she supplements the text of their epistles with commentary whose sensitive, rueful tone will be familiar to readers of her memoir, Minor Characters. The loving but independent air she assumed in her letters, Johnson notes, came from painful rewriting to eliminate all hints of hurt or need; as he wandered in and out of her life, Kerouac kept reminding her he didn't want to be tied down, even as he urged her to come visit whatever city he'd alighted in. Spiced with marvelously evocative period slang like dig and swing, and references to friends such as Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady, this poignant epistolary record of a 22-month love affair also brings to life an exciting moment in American cultural history, when the Beat writers gave "powerful, irresistible voices to subversive longings." --Wendy Smith ... Read more

Customer Reviews (15)

Great Supplementary Reading to Minor Characters
It really gets interesting (for anyone who has already read Minor Characters) at the point when the letters are most present: starting more or less in Part III (about a quarter way in) commensurate with the publication of On the Road. From there the correspondence tells the bulk of the story. (For those who haven't read Minor Characters, the whole thing could be interesting.) A recapitulation of Minor Characters but with letters that were not cleared for use in that book. In this respect, it is a bit like the extras on a DVD. Great content none the less. But as far as telling her story of her romance with Kerouac, Minor Characters does it in a more literary fashion. Minor Characters was more the voice of Joyce Johnson, and interesting for that reason. She tells the story very well. Hence, I sought out more with this book. In Door Wide Open there are a few more details with respect to her story and considering other people too (in both her and Kerouac's circle), but it's related by her in a more cursory way - this being a bit more like reportage (documentary) in that regard. Still some aspects are slightly more nuanced. The correspondence is definitely worth the price of admission. Her letters are interesting also to read in the context of her age (22/23), to see the development of her own writing voice, the influence of Kerouac, and the arc of an emotional ambivalence more reciprocal than might be immediately obvious. Although she represents and refers to Kerouac's ambivalence more (and in context of its affect upon her), her own ambivalence is also evident to reader, even if not apparent to herself, if only in her reticence and hesitancy and ultimate passivity, all teetering on the fulcrum of her own complicated desire/s. Insightful. There is a peculiar sense in which Ginsberg is positioned as well: If only he had been there. I wonder.

Love Is Blind
Joyce Johnson's "Door Wide Open" is a magnificent memoir of the Beat Generation. It focuses on her romance with Jack Kerouac and is a companion piece to her "Minor Characters". Johnson also wrote several other books, including "Missing Men", "Midnight in the Zen Cafe", and, back in 1960, her first novel, "Come and Join the Dance." I'd read "Characters" and most of the major work of the Beats, but it was not until an accidental meeting, through Amazon, that I came to exchange correspondence with a college professor who was writing her P.h.D. thesis. Its subject was Joyce Johnson. She was desperately seeking a copy of "Dance" and the only one I could find for her was going for $300.00. That dynamic MFA is now Dr. Cynthia Bartels. Anyway, that's another story.
Literary tastes change as one gets older. Although I have exhausted the Jack Kerouac canon, and lost most of my interest in him and the other beats, I don't deny Kerouac's genius. How he treated his women, however, is another matter. With the possible exception of the late Carolyn Cassady ("Heartbeat" and "Off The Road") Johnson presents a great deal of insight into Kerouac's character. While must of this has been delved into at length in numerous biographies, and Johnson is incorrect on a few minor points, there is nothing like reading the words of a lover to describe a particular person and time. Think of Anais Nin and Henry Miller, or Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre.
I really didn't care for the cavalier way Kerouac treated Johnson, with his egotistical persona and failure to ever cut the cord with his overbearing mother Memere. By the time "On the Road" finally was published in 1957, after drafts which spanned more than 10 years (and preceded "The Scroll") Kerouac had written most of his major ouevre and was very close to being burned out. Twelve years later he would be dead from complications due to alcoholism.
So ultimately, I don't really see how Johnson put up with Kerouac. After one of his absences, she telegrammed him, "Door Wide Open." I'm reminded of the title of the last Kubrick film, "Eyes Wide Shut."
Love is blind.

Joyce Johnson is ruining my life.
And so is Jack Kerouac.He is also ruining my life.

I love Joyce Johnson.She is so amazingly insightful and humble and has this ability to tell a story without being competitive or passive aggressive.

These letters made me smile, frustrated me and made me cover my eyes in embarrassment.A great read!

Do what you want, Jerce...
That's something Jack told Joyce once and I think it sums about a great deal about his personal outlook on life. He wrote to Joyce in 1958: "Your salvation is within yourself, in your own essence of mind, it is not to be gotten grasping at external people like me" Overall, this book gave me pure enjoyment.It's filled with inspiration and advice written between two people one generation apart connected by their souls travelling similar paths. Joyce's social life is tied to the Beats; who are of course all over the globe living freely. She is the steadfast port-of-call in NYC holding all the pieces together. As Jack is travelling on his adventures throughout Tangiers, San Francisco, Mexico, and Orlando she keeps him up-to-date on news and gossip. As a fellow female, Joyce is someone I can relate to and enjoy spending time with. She is not your typical "girly" girl! She has talent, opinions and a strong grip on her feelings. Whenever she wrote how much she cared for Jack in her letters to him, I always ached inside because I could imagine what a trying situation this all was; loving such a roaming spirit as Kerouac. Still she was young at the time and it was an experience of a lifetime sharing her thoughts and feelings with a man who opened up to her in all honesty. Of course, there was no guidelines for the kind of relationship she had with JeanLouis. He would come and go in and out of her life, but they had a strong relationship through letters. Through her letters Joyce proves to be just as tough and free spirited as the men in her group ("...dexamyl pill has taken effect...and I better start on the novel now), but as a woman she longed for a committment and stability. An interesing combination. Ginsberg was a genius setting these two up that night in 1957. I'm just getting into the Kerouac world and I loved learning more about his personality (its ever-moving organic quality) and personal life. It adds more meat to his novels. I loved reading his thoughts on composing Dharma Bums and his literary advice to Joyce was priceless: Never Revise!!!
In the end Jack did what he wanted with their relationship and I think it was for the best. After all "unrequited love is a bore".
Joyce is a lovely writer and I'm gonna read Minor Characters as soon as possible! Onto more Kerouac...

Groan...
I'm not sure why everyone else has rated this book so highly--I've found it to be quite banal, and sometimes down-right painful to read.Johnson comes across as a bland, naive and gullable girl who tries to play up to Kerouac in order to win his dubious affection.Her letters are written in a most childish and lame manner, and I can't believe that she was published a few years later.I hate to say such a thing, but it's true.Needless to say, their affair--calling it a love affir is streaching it a tad--eventually ends, and now forty years later she's decided to publish their exchange of letters in order to assure her fifteen minutes of fame.The fact that this book does provide a little insight into Kerouac keeps it from being two stars. ... Read more

Product Description
One of the most widely read and influential American writers of the 20th century, Jack Kerouac is often misunderstood. The Long Slow Death of Jack Kerouac examines the confessions of a 20th-century St. Augustine and traces the progress of a great pilgrim through the decline of modern civilization. Christy focuses on the last ten years of Kerouac's life, from the influential New York Times rave review of On the Road until his death in 1969, a period in Kerouac's life that until now has been dismissed by most biographers as nothing more than a drunken decline. Christy asserts that Kerouac was a madman and mystic whose last days were wilder and more fascinating than any of the adventures he wrote about. As Christy reveals, in the last decade of his life Jack Kerouac was racing to obtain his goal of being "safe in heaven dead." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Too Brief, but there are High Points
This book tackles the subject of Jack Kerouac. After reading this text, I found myself asking "Is that it?" These are literally the shortest chapters I have ever seen, with several of them spanning only 2 or 3 pages. Compared with the other biographies I've read, this one is too brief and, in a place or two, seems to draw primarily from heresay.

What I liked about this book was that it gave Kerouac a dimension of humanity. Too many biographies dissect their subjects with a mortician's instinct, and succeed in removing those people any trace of humanity they possessed in life - who they loved, hated, and what their failings were. For hard-core Kerouac fans, this book should be read, but only in addition to other Kerouac biographies to fill the holes in this one.

The best book on Kerouac!!!
Forget all the [junk] that most biographers scribble in their dark corners about perhaps the greatest writer of the 20th century (except for perhaps Blaise Cendrars) -- read this book and take a glimpse into Kerouac. Christy has given a great snapshot of the man that was Kerouac. Anyone who slags this book hasn't read it, let it roll around between their ears and finally digest the whole shooting match.

This is a great book!

Worse Than It Looks
Christy's book was obviously written for someone doing a Kerouac paper in their high school English class.This is the type of biography you wish had never been published.The fact that it is in print seems to validate what Christy has written.There is so little presentation of known fact--more hearsay and legend than anything else.For instance, Christy claims Kerouac's last words were, "It must have been the tuna fish."I'm shocked neither Charters nor Nicosia were able to dig up this information--but Christy was?Who will be the next self-proclaimed "Beat Researcher" to cash in on the Kerouac revival?This book is on par with "The Kerouac We Knew."Yet another shoddy attempt at exploiting Kerouac's celebrity.

Kerouac's Soul Revealed
Christy offers an insightful and different look at Kerouac and his works than most biographies. He discusses what was important to Kerouac, such as religion, a topic often given only minimal treatment, and the literaryacceptance he wanted but instead received infamy which pushed him along tothe grave.Unfortunately, this excellent information is not reallyintegrated into the biography but comes in the last few chapters. (Almostall biographical information about Kerouac's later years is also inNicosia's Memory Babe.)For those dozen or so pages the book is well worthit!

The Long Slow Death of Jack Kerouac
This book would better be titled: A Short, Superficial, Almost Completely Unannotated Biography of Jack Kerouac and How Cool I Am by Jim Christy. To read this is to read about Jack Kerouac by the only man who claims toREALLY understand him. He gives no reason for you to believe this excepthis own allegations that it's true. He makes his own mistakes also (thesong Beatnik Fly was recorded by "Johnny and the Hurricanes" not"Jay and the Hurricanes" for instance ). The ones that I saw wereadmittedly small but it led me to believe that there could be many moresince most of his information is based on his own experiences and not evenone remotely reliable source can be supplied. Lastly, he feels that he mustdefame other biographers,saying that Ann Charters book is "theworst" and that Nicosia,s Memory Babe should be read "undereyebrows raised high as they"ll go" If that is true then NOTHINGin this book should be believed. The notes on the back of the jacket prettymuch say it:"Kerouac thought of himself as a serious religious writerand never failed to stress this fact to anyone who would listen. Mostdidn't. Jim Christy did." And you had better believe old Jim but Isure don't know why. ... Read more

Product Description
A deluxe edition of Kerouac’s masterpiece on the 50th anniversary of its first publication

First published in 1958, a year after On the Road had put the Beat generation on the map, The Dharma Bums stands as one of Jack Kerouac’s most powerful, influential, and bestselling novels. The story focuses on two untrammeled young Americans—mountaineer, poet, and Zen Buddhist Japhy Ryder and Ray Smith, a zestful, innocent writer—whose quest for Truth leads them on a heroic odyssey, from marathon parties and poetry jam sessions in San Francisco’s Bohemia to solitude and mountain climbing in the High Sierras to Ray’s sixty-day vigil by himself atop Desolation Peak in Washington State. Primary to this evocative and soulful novel is an honest, exuberant search for an affirmative way of life in the midst of the atomic age. In many ways, The Dharma Bums also presaged the environmental, back-to-the-land, and American Buddhist movements of the 1960s and beyond. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Kerouac's Best
Kerouac may be best known for On The Road, but this is by far my favorite of his books. Looking back, it has probably been the most influential book on my life. The story is just sohonest and original and beautiful, it confirmed my desire to be a writer when I read it as a sophomore in high school. But not just a writer. It made me want to live my life without shackles, free like Kerouac's character Japhy (Gary Snyder), climbing mountains and writing poetry. It captures the Boho 50's era like no other, especially in the Bay Area. Finally, it inspired me to learn more about Buddhism and eventually spend a year in a Buddhist monastery. I've never met someone who has read The Dharma Bums and hasn't loved it.It's one of the best books of the 20th century.

By Jaimal Yogis, author of Saltwater Buddha

kerouacwelovejack
The best, most fun, most I want to be like Kerouac of the(admittedly) few Kerouacs I have read. This one, three times. Women deserve better in Kerouac, but hey, it's the fifties. Poor Jack fell apart in the sixties. Anyway, Bums has all the famous people thinly disguised. Gary Snyder, who is so smart he still lives and is a real Buddhist, not a fake like most of us. Ginsberg is there, Alvah Goldbook for God's sake, having sex with women. It is another road trip, back and forth across what was fast becoming the wasteland we know with pockets of natural beauty wonderfully described. You get a fairly linear narrative but the jazzy rythms intrude, the man was a frustrated musician. Maybe he should have taken more psychedelics and left the booze alone. Booze is too much of a sacrament in Bums, we know there are better things to use as sacraments. Of course, most Buddhists avoid alcohol, except some crazy Zen masters who did as they pleased, no rules please. What Jack describes in the book is still his vision of what he hoped for, but knew would not happen. It probably killed him, but the book, in a very nice yet inexpensive edition is a trip to read, and perchance to dream...

The book that sent off Easy Riders?
This commemorative edition does not add much to the new Penguin Classic with cover art by "Jason" except a two-page letter by Henry Miller to the publisher. While representative of the New York-transplant-to-hip Northern California milieu that he shared with the Beats, readers may opt for the paperback instead. While a handsome hardcover, the paper appears no more or less durable than the paperback. A lesson in impermanence that the book's contents may well repeat?

Just before "On the Road" brought him the success he craved, Kerouac wrote this account of the "Zen Lunatics" and Gary Snyder's prediction of a "rucksack revolution." This is my first Beat book; in middle age I admit lingering distrust of their sometimes condescending attitude towards the rest of us.

That being said, this novelization may make the young feel vigorous and the mature wistful. Hearing "Japhy Ryder" gush about bulgar and yabyum, green tea and trail mix, baked bread and paisley shawls, Goodwill and hi-fi jazz before the massive commodification of counterculture filters the innocence of these early free spirits from Eisenhower's decade into a muted sepia. It's instructive, as Ann Douglas notes in her introduction, that "Ray" as Kerouac strives towards a greater sympathy than Snyder-as-Japhy expresses with the "straights" who must, after all, fund the hikes and the naps of the Beats. There's a sense of slumming, by these two students wanting to imitate a "bhikku," a dharma bum. Japhy in real life's Reed-Indiana-Berkeley, Ray's author a scholarship-dropout from Columbia, allied with other privileged folks from the Ivy League and NYC bohemia. I don't know why, but there's an aura of play-acting and noblesse-oblige irritating me about their admirable but somehow smug quest. Blame it on Berkeley?

Ray appears, to his eternal credit, aware at least of the contradiction between a Zen lunatic lording his insight over the unenlightened crew-cut and bee-hived masses and his own self struggling, who down on his luck has to go back to North Carolina to live off his kinfolk. Some of the best moments in this book come when Ray tells of his tramps by train and hitchhiking.

Apropos, this book was written in ten days and nights at his mother's place in Florida. As his fictional self, Ray ponders the contradiction between the San Francisco party scene of dissolute intellectuals and his family, unable to comprehend Ray's notions and his lazy habits. "And I thought of Japhy as I stood there in the cold yard looking at {his mother as she does the dishes]: 'Why is he so mad about white tiled sinks and "kitchen machinery" he calls it? People have good hearts whether or not they live like Dharma Bums. Compassion is the heart of Buddhism." (100)

Yet, the Beats' stance against conformity did inspire generations towards more righteous behavior, along with a lot of excess on that road to wisdom. It's noteworthy that the narrator opens by admitting that while he was once more devout before he met Ryder, now he's "a little tired and cynical." (2) Ray seems already to have studied the dharma largely on his own and passed through the initial, somewhat superior stage, and now feels it's a lot of "lip service." Still, meeting Japhy, Ray perks up.

The centerpiece of the narrative, the climb of the Matterhorn, makes one compare that Sierra peak to the manufactured scale mold towering in smaller form above the then-new Disneyland further south in California. The impression of a still largely rural state, even around the Bay Area, leaves a sense of loss for those who live in the state now. The Beats and then hippies, no less than Cold War defense industries, transformed California into a busier, tawdrier, and uglier place, with dreamers and schemers lured by the rhapsodies in Kerouac and Snyder and their mates.

Unable to stay in the South with his family, inarticulate in sharing with them his understanding of Buddhist dharma, Ray goes back after bumming it along the Mexican border just as he left, back west to work as a Cascadia fire-warden at Desolation Peak's lookout. There, as the story ends, he finds his expected peace. "I made raspberry Jello the color of rubies in the setting sun." (183) The interim return to California, full of parties in Marin, as with the previous woozy bashes in San Francisco, does drag the momentum down for long stretches of this short book. The contrasts between boho decadence and natural purity may be intentional, but the wobbly, hungover funk does hobble the pace. The comparisons between energy and dissipation do, on the other hand, underscore the lesson of impermanence, even of happy times, and the necessity for self-discipline.

Japhy reminds Ray of the change coming when more people join their refusal to conform. "East'll meet West anyway. Think what a great world revolution will take place when East meets West finally, and it'll be guys like us that can start the thing. Think of millions of guys all over the world with rucksacks on their backs tramping around the back country and hitchhiking and bringing the word down to everybody." (155)

Kerouac here's still young enough-- even if nearly a decade past Snyder-- to hope. "Something will come of it in the Milky Way of eternity stretching in front of all our phantom misunderstandings, friends. I felt like telling Japhy everything I thought but I knew it didn't matter and moreover he knew it anyway and silence is the golden mountain." (53) This typical passage captures the tone of the novel-as-memoir. Based as Douglas notes on smart predecessors like Thomas Wolfe, Melville, Dostoyevsky, Joyce, and Céline, Kerouac sought an admirable purity in his style. It may be difficult for us half-a-century later, jaded, to hear its freshness, but its sincerity lingers in moments such as when he tells us of the moon on water as they descended the mountain on a dark night. "Everything up there had smelled of ice and snow and heartless spine rock. Here there was the smell of sun-heated wood, sunny dust resting in the moonlight, lake mud, flowers, straw, all those good things of the earth." (68-69) This may not be the more manic Kerouac that made him famous, but it may give today's uneasy riders a more lasting lesson in the legacy he left us.

(P.S. Also see Keroauc's "Wake Up! A Life of the Buddha," reviewed by me; written 1955, published 2008.)

A Commemorative Dharma Bums
The year 2007 marked the 50th anniversary of the publication of Jack Kerouac's most famous novel, "On the Road."The event received a great deal of attention with the publication of the original scroll edition of the text, a 50th anniversary commemorative edition, a compilation of five "Road Novels" by the prestigious Library of America, and several excellent books and articles about Kerouac.

The interest in Kerouac (1922-- 1969) continues.This year, 2008, has seen the publication of Kerouac's highly personal tribute to the Buddha written in 1955, "Wake up! A Life of the Buddha" together with an early novel,"The Hippos were boiled in their Tanks", written with William Burroughs. With the 50th anniversary of "The Dharma Bums" Kerouac's most popular novel after "On the Road", this new commemorative hardback edition of the text has been issued with a short letter written in 1958 by novelist Henry Miller to the publisher in praise of Kerouac's book and a previously published essay introducing the novel by Ann Douglas. The book is attractive and, here on Amazon, reasonably priced. Many paperback editions of this work are available and the Library of America's collection, which includes "The Dharma Bums" may by the best choice of all. Nevertheless, this volume is a good choice for those readers who love this book or for the lover of Kerouac on your holiday list.The remainder of this review consists of my review on Amazon, with modifications, of an earlier edition of "The Dharma Bums".


Following the success of "On the Road", Kerouac's publishers initially rejected his manuscripts such as "The Subterraneans" and "Tristessa." But his publisher asked him to write an accessible, popular novel continuing with the themes of "On the Road." Kerouac responded with "The Dharma Bums" which was published late in 1958. "The Dharma Bums" is more conventionally written that most of Kerouac's other books, with short, generally clear sentences and a story line that is optimistic on the whole. With the exception of "On the Road", "The Dharma Bums" remains Kerouac's most widely read work. I had the opportunity to reread "The Dharma Bums" and came away from the book deeply moved.

As are all of Kerouac's novels, "The Dharma Bums" is autobiographical. It is based upon Kerouac's life between 1956--1957 -- before "On the Road" appeared and made Kerouac famous. The book focuses upon the relationship between Kerouac, who in the book is called Ray Smith and his friend, the poet Gary Snyder, called Japhy Ryder, ten years Kerouac's junior. Kerouac died in 1969, while Snyder is still alive and a highly regarded poet. Allen Ginsberg (Alvah Goldbrook) and Neal Cassady (Cody Pomeray), among others, also are characters in the book. Most of the book is set in San Francisco and its environs, but there are scenes of Kerouac's restless and extensive travelling by hitchiking, walking, jumping freight trains, and taking buses, as he visits Mexico, and his mother's home in Rocky Mount, North Carolina during the course of the book.

The strength of "The Dharma Bums" lies in its scenes of spiritual seriousness and meditation. During the period described in the book, Kerouac had become greatly interested in Buddhism. He describes himself as a "bhikku" -- a Buddhist monk -- and had been celibate for a year when the book begins. It is easy to underestimate Kerouac's understanding of Buddhism. As with many authors, he was wiser in his writing that he was in his life. There is a sense of the sadness and changeable character of existence and of the value of compassion for all beings that comes through eloquently in "The Dharma Bums." Smith and Ryder have many discussions about Buddhism -- at various levels of seriousness -- during the course of the novel. Ryder tends to use Buddhism to be critical of and alienated from American society and its excessive materialism and devotion to frivolity such as television. Smith has the broader vision and sees compassion and understanding as a necessary part of the lives of everyone. Smith tends to be more meditative and quiet in his Buddhist practice -- he spends a great deal of time in the book sitting and "doing nothing" while Ryder is generally active and on the go, hiking, chopping wood, studying, or womanizing. At the end of the book, he leaves for an extended trip to Japan. (He and Kerouac would never see each other again.)

"The Dharma Bums" offers a picture of a portion of American Buddhism during the 1950s. It also offers a portrayal of what has been called the "rucksack revolution" as Smith and Ryder take to the outdoors.in In a lengthy and famous section of the book, they climb the "Matterhorn" in California's Sierra Mountains. In the final chapters of the book, Kerouac spends eight isolated weeks on Desolation Peak in the Cascades as a fire watchman. In an ending reminiscent of the ending of "On the Road", Kerouac writes:

"Now comes the sadness of coming back to cities and I'e grown two months older and there's all that humanity of bars and burlesque shows and gritty love, all upsidedown in the void, God bless them, but Japhy you and me forever we know, 'O ever youthful, O ever weeping'. Down on the lake rosy reflection of celestial vapor appeared, and I said 'God, I love you" and looked up to the sky and really meant it. 'I have fallen in love with you God. Take care of us all, one way or the other."

For all his love of Buddhism, Kerouac remained a theist. He came back from his experience on Desolation Peak, he tells the reader, yearning for human company.

Sexuality plays an important role in "The Dharma Bums", against the backdrop of what is described as the repressed 1950's, as young girls are drawn to Ryder and he willingly shares them with an initially reluctant Smith. The book includes scenes of wild parties tinged, for Smith, with sadness, in which people of both sexes dance naked, get physically involved, and drink heavily. Near the end of the book, Ryder offers Smith a prophetic warning the alcoholism which would shortly thereafter ruin Kerouac's life.

"The Dharma Bums" is a fundamentally American book and it is full of love for the places of America, for the opportunity it offers for spiritual exploration, and for its people. Kerouac's compassion was hard earned. In his introduction to a later book, "The Lonesome Traveller" he aptly described his books as involving the "preachment of universal kindness, which hysterial critics have failed to notice beneath frenetic activity of my true-story novels about the 'beat' generation. -- Am actually not 'beat' but strange solitary crazy Catholic mystic." I found a feeling of spirituality, of love of life in the face of vicissitudes, and of America in "The Dharma Bums." The work was indeed a popularization. But Kerouac's vision may ultimately have been broad.

Robin Friedman

paperback quality for hardcover price
My review is not focused on the content of The Dharma Bums as much as the production of the book itself. Let it be known this is one of my favorite books of all time and I consider it Kerouac's best. My issue is with the publisher, Penguin, who has simply revamped its "Penguin Classic" edition with Ann Douglas's intro to make a Hardcover.Yes, Douglas's intro is excellent, but the only difference with this new Hardcover 50th Anniversary Edition is that is has 2 or 3 pages of a letter in which Henry Miller writes about The Dharma Bums.For me who is a bibliofile.I don't want a cheap quality cardboard book. I used to work for an Univ. Press and know about production options. Penquin basically chose the cheapest.Every single copy in 3 bookstores were banged up.You might say this isn't the publisher's fault, but it is because they didn't make a quality product that could stand even being stacked on a shelf, imagine opening it and reading it. People who want a 50th Anniversary edition want something special because it has a special meaning to them, if not buy the paperback.So I guess that's what I suggest. The Penguin Classic edition has new artwork, quality paper and the same intro, without the high price. I wish Penguin would follow Knopf's example and do beautiful books like those in their Everyman's Library Series. ... Read more