Jack Kerouac Books

A great collection of Kerouac's buddhist (and some catholic) writings. This is not an academic book on Buddhism. Those new to Kerouac should start with "On the Road", "Lonesome Traveler", "Dharma Bums" or the brief "Tristessa".

He did not realize these notebooks would be published, so this is Kerouac at his very core. I have been an avid, hungry devotee of Kerouac's work not since reading On the Road, but since getting my hands of a copy of THIS BOOK. Some of the Dharma is the most inspirational book I own - dare I say even more inspiring than my Bible - his random poems about everything ranging from vulgar liquids all conjoined in your earthly body, to the serious issue of the Boddhisatva... Every writer, reader, English teacher, English learner should all read at least parts of this book at some point in their lives.

What is so unusual and valuable about this book is that it represents a prolonged experiment in inventing fresh ways to express metaphysical ideas in English prose and poetry. Most philosophers are poor prose stylists and most prose stylists steer clear of weighty metaphysics. But in this book we find a passionate, inventive prose stylist deeply engaged with pondering such topics as the One and the Many, substance and the composite nature of objects, time and space, the relation of thought and perception to reality, the nature of desire and happiness, mortality and immortality. He approaches these topics through a starting point in Buddhism but going wherever his mind takes him. The book contains many gems of expression as Kerouac pours his ponderings into his strange, striking prose. To criticize this book because Kerouac's scholarship is weak is to miss its point.

Wow! I am soooo glad that this book was finally published- and that it was executed so well! This is more than perhaps the all time best example of personal spiritual exploration by a major writer- it is a storage battery of spiritual energy. I've never seen a work this dense with meaning- both in terms of what is in the lines, between the lines, and in mystic juxtaposition between the two. It is a shame that probably not one American in thousand will "get" it- and even fewer outside the culture.

It is obvious to me that Jack understood the Dharma. He also had the concept of Tao intuitively nailed. I just can't understand why he said that he wasn't a Mahayana Buddhist- a person with his great heart and soul was hardly "cold enlightened." It also hit me for the first time that "beat" means "extinguished" in the sense of approaching Nirvana.

I had thought that I had read everything that Kerouac had published (except for that first straight-jacket of a Wolfe-clone novel) but this is perhaps the best of all. Think of it as _The Scripture of the Golden Eternity_ raised to the third power. Every time I pick this book up I find something new. It is no doubt going to occupy me for years and years to come.

Glad to see kind folk jump in to defend a true literary master. One who is more commonly dismissed by the American scholastic establishment than overrated by it. Point blank-do a worldwide deity count and start at the beginning of human existence. Now divide that number by the ones who had a full grown beard, then by the ones who were left handed, and then by the ones who were lactose intolerant, and then ... ... with whatever flag, or president, or hockey player you just know is going to take the home team all the way this year. People, anyone that tells you that Christ & Buddha couldn’t have been similar better be one old son of a gun. If they read their Socrates they would know that the only thing we know about Christ is what got through the King James filter and ditto for Buddha and the innumerable self-serving(yuppie in the U.S.) translations of his teachings. Kerouac is great and should be cherished because of his amazing grasp on such material. It is this obvious understanding he has that makes him more guilty than most of us. Kerouac’s hypocrisy(or any other fault or sin) is more defined to the reader simply because the man understands where God stops & man starts within the confines of these doctrines. But I guess something like that would be too hard to understand if you think that general American academic establishment ...like T.S. Eliot is end of all literature.

Surely the most tender of Kerouac's many books, this reads more like an extended meditation than a novel as such, and draws the reader into its elegaic world of bittersweet memories & lost joys. Written at the height of Kerouac's immersion in Buddhism, it fuses both his Buddhist studies & his own Catholic upbringing to create a personal faith of both suffering & a sort of resigned wonder, contemplating the ephemeral, cloud-like events of Time from the perspective of a pained & puzzled Eternity. While a lovely memorial to his brother, it's just as much a revealing portrait of his own sensitive soul, battered by the needless cruelties of life, yet still astonished by its beauties. An essential book, not just for the Beat canon, but for all who ponder the contradictory nature of life on Earth. Most highly recommended!

I haven't read ALL of this book yet, but what I have read has proved to be, so far, one of the most beautiful, melancholy stories my eyes have ever graced. I have been moved to tears, and after diving into Kerouacs huge library, I would be the first to say that On The Road has definite rivals within his legacy......This is an essential, don't believe the hype about it being "for completists only". This book should be made standard fare among literature courses along with all his books, screw it!! mabye that's taking it to far, but still, this book is grade A and the other reviews can tell ya all about it.

This is a little off 'Beat' gem (for Kerouac) of the author's canon. It is the most Catholic of his books, and perhaps the closest to his origins as a writer. It is a narrative poem, filled with Kerouac's eidetic imagery, much of it of a Catholic, French Canadian character, and crumpled language. It is intensely personal, yet never falls into pathos over the tale of the death of his brother from illness. There are lovely passages of innocence and anger, love and grief. One wonders if such a tragic event, when the author was age 4, was formative to his later history of wandering, restlessness, neurosis and alcoholism. It's a book that regular Kerouac readers might find a bit eccentric, sentimental. It doesn't have the frenzy of 'On the Road', or the bitter ends of 'Big Sur', but it is among his finest, most truthful and most hopeful works.

Kerouac is often hit or miss. This book is a double bull. Its sad, beautiful... The affect that his older brother's young death had on Jack is moving. If you've been discouraged by Kerouac in the past, or if you think he's overated (I tend to agree) try this book out.

I first discovered Jack Kerouac when a friend of mine was going on and on about this book "On the Road" that he had read, only this past November. I picked up the book and read it, I was floored, and I've read eight more of his novels since that time.

'Visions of Gerard' is a touching story of Jack's older brother Gerard who dies a sad death at 9 years old but seems to live a more beautiful life than most of us can claim to have in twice as much time in my case, and of course, in others seven or eight times.

Gerard's optimism, appreciation of everything, and just pure kindness in the book makes it for a beautiful, touching novel that everyone should read. There's no excuse not to, it's very short, but it pulls you in so quickly! It's hard not to be sad, but it's hard not to be happy, a beautiful book.

Matt Dillon was an excellent choice for this project. I never tire of this book and I have to say Matt reads this as flawlessly as if he were telling his own story from memory.
His performance is subtle as well as steller. Kerouac's absence from hollywood has made him a sort of conversation pitch, because if you don't know Jack you probably don't read very much.

I dislike the prose Beats; I *hate* Burroughs, while I only dislike Kerouac, but nonetheless I agree with John Updike's very funny parody of the genre called "On The Sidewalk" (from his 1965 book Assorted Prose), in which the narrator is a faux-rebellious child who takes off burning through the afternoon on his tricycle, but is too scared to cross the street alone.

But Matt Dillon's performance of this audiobook version is really excellent. He does absorbing but not overdone voices for the different characters, reads the rest of the time with a suitable world-weary tone, and (my favorite aspect of his performance) picks up on the fact that Kerouac sometimes goes on a tear of short, Hemingway-esque sentences, which Dillon reads as if they were liturgy or poetry, with a steady, incantatory beat.

There seems to be a trend of recruiting name actors to do high-profile audiobooks; Maggie Gyllenhall's The Bell Jar is even better.

On the Road is my very first audio book ever. I've tried audio books in the past, but they always seemed to be narrated by some suave fella with a buttery English accent, and I would inevitably end up face-down on my bed, snoring away within 5-7 minutes of beginning. When I began to commute for a total of 80 minutes a day (round trip), I quickly tired of listening to the same music time and again. Although I have an 8gb iPod nano, you can only cram so much music on the thing. After I gave up finding a decent radio station, I was left with one simple option. Give audio books another try.

On the Road seemed an obvious choice for two reasons. 1) I was turning to audio books because I was "on the road" so much (har har) 2) I haven't been able to read it. That is, its rambling style tends to put me to sleep almost as quickly as a British man reading at me. Yet, I've always wanted to complete it despite my doomed attempts, and the recent publication of Kerouac's original scroll sort of bewitched me. I was completely ignorant of the great Kerouac myth before I decided to listen to this book. I had no idea the length of time that Kerouac and his cronies spent traveling the country. I hadn't the foggiest idea that he wrote the book on one long, uninterrupted scroll of paper (120 feet). Or that Kerouac composed the novel in a three-week rush of writing fueled by endless cups of coffee and--though Kerouac adamantly denied it--probably Benzedrine.

But enough of the back story...let's get to the book! I listened to an unabridged audio version narrated by Matt Dillon, and for that aspect alone, I expected to have problems with it. Matt Dillon is generally considered, by me, a boil on the butt of humanity. His teeth bother me, his face bothers me, his voice bothers me. But, somehow, he was able to make On the Road come alive. Given, he has his readerly flaws--his syllables sometimes smashing in on one another, his characters' voices eventually crapping out and evening into something that sounds very much like "every other character." However, he has some rough wildness to his voice that did justice to Kerouac's musical, rambling, stream-of-consciousness classic.

This is one of those books, like Wuthering Heights, that offers few likable characters. They're ruffians and deadbeats and swindlers, but they're also thinkers and adventurers. I suppose the story, as I knew it would, plays into my romantic fantasies of dropping everything and just taking off. I would love to travel the country with no particular place to be for seven years. Drink with friends, intellectualize, philosophize and write, write, write. Alas, Kerouac lived, in many ways, in a dramatically different America than the one we live in today. A man could hitchhike from coast to coast, sleep around and drive his car into a muddy ditch in middle America without worrying too much about being arrested or getting knifed to death and hacked into little pieces.

I read somewhere that Kerouac's novel is a "love letter to America," and I think that's a fair assessment. He became intimately acquainted with corners of this country that most people will never see, and never care to see. His manic scribblings are interspersed with poetic, literary digressions that boggle the mind. The whole thing is one big jazz solo twittering, banging and hooting all night long.

Now, all these praises don't actually mean that I liked the book that much. That's news, eh? This is one of those tomes that I appreciate even if it bored me at times. I appreciate Kerouac's intentions far more than his prose, and when all is said and done, I really like the mythical proportions that this story and its author have grown into.

I think most of the reading is excellent, just some short parts are less inspired, and maybe- but this is very personal - only the very first pages are not read in the mood I feel them in my soul. But the more you listen, the more you are caught in the reading and you realize the great work of actor Dillon has made and in a very spontaneous way.
Dillon's voice is full of colours and tones, the reading is rich in changes of speed, subtle shifting in mood. He succeeds in carving the characters from within in such a deep and honest way that they keep on living haunting you also when the reading is over. All the dialogues are performed in an outstanding way.
If English readers disagree, let me add that I am Italian and I had bought On the road long time ago but in English it was difficult for me and I didn't like the Italian translation. Though not English, I had felt the jazz wave of the writing and loved it. I felt a lot went lost in translation as if you cannot read Cesare Pavese in Italian, I guess.
So On the road had remained there on the shelf together with other not-yet-read books that are like friends I keep loving simply because I trust them.
What a surprise then when a lot of years later, while living in a country with a mysterious language, where English appears the only chance to subtitle reality and fiction, I found out that a reading of the whole book was available and the narrator was Matt Dillon, who has the perfect voice to embody On the road.
So thanks to Matt Dillon for driving me till the end of this journey of Kerouac's word in such an intense way, performing this jazz session of Kerouac right with the voice I had always imagined these lines would sound.
I don't know of any movie of On the Road. This is the kind of book that may frighten a director. However, listening to this reading I imagined it would be challenging with a director as Gus Van Sant or maybe Coppola or Scorsese, having Matt Dillon performing Sal or Dean, or even both, the last idea only if an enough visionary director/writer can somehow tell through the movie art how much Dean is part of Sal himself.

Matt Dillon's presentation was superb -- he brought the characters to life. Especially, Dean, with his slow, distant, unique way of talking ... it was like Dean was really there.

I would very much recommend this audio CD to anyone who likes On the Road. Very, very well done.

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!

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...

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.

Jack Kerouac warned Joyce Johnson, nee Glassman, on the first night they spent together, back in 1957, "I don't like blondes." In spite of their inauspicious beginning, Kerouac kept returning to Glassman over a period of two years, during which time he restlessly wandered the US and Mexico. They met on a blind date set up by poet Allen Ginsberg, almost a year before Kerouac's name became a household word with the publication of "On The Road." She was an intelligent, talented, independent twenty-one year-old, and he was thirty-five, "pop-culture's guy's guy," "The King of the Beats," on the brink of enormous success.

This collection of letters, poems and postcards, between Kerouac and Ms. Glassman, written over a two-year period, are interspersed with Glassman's elegant, focused writing, as she poignantly comments on their relationship and the times. Glassman-Johnson wrote in her Beat Generation memoir, "Minor Characters," "If time were like a passage of music, you could keep going back to it till you got it right." This sense of sadness and longing permeates the book. She gives an insightful view of what it was like to be a "liberated woman" and an aspiring author back in the late 1950s. Her crowd may have been Beat Generation icons, but a double standard was still the norm. Glassman's struggle to be a writer of consequence, and her battle against the mores of the day, "illustrate the disparity between the myth and reality of the Beat experience." She really shows what it was like to be young, female and Beat during the Eisenhower years.

Kerouac's correspondence, filled with his spontaneous prose and 50s slang, gives the reader an amazing portrait of his struggle with fame and the attacks by his critics against his subsequent works. Throughout his travels, he tried, in a limited way, to balance this important relationship with a woman who truly understood him more than most people ever would. He did show a capacity for tenderness, as he formed a bond with Glassman, who shared his passion for writing. Yet Glassman wanted a more lasting relationship, which eventually caused their break-up. "You're nothing but a big bag of wind," she informed Kerouac before she left him. Eventually they did form a friendship. Most of the text is dominated by their romantic relationship. However, there are wonderful glimpses of the "beatnik scene," Greenwich Village in the 50s, Allen Ginsberg, the Orlovskys, Elise Cowan, and Neal Cassidy.

This is as much the story of Joyce Glassman Johnson's growth as a woman and writer, as it is about Jack Kerouac and the Beat generation. "Door Wide Open" is an extraordinarily sensitive portrayal of a man, a woman, a relationship and a time that strongly influenced, (and still does), the arts, literature and culture in the US - a wonderful book!
JANA

Beautiful and elegant. Any woman who's ever been in love with a difficult man will appreciate Joyce Johnson's bittersweet romance.

This semi-autobiographical work covering the life and times of Jack Kerouac before he went "On the Road" comes full circle. It begins in the small town of Galloway, Massachusettes, wends its way to the city of New York, then finally returns to Galloway. Peter Martin has a large, nurturing, and close knit family. As happens in many families, as the children grow older and become young adults, they begin to drift apart from the family unit. Peter, who achieves fame as a college football star, later tires of college and small town life, and falls captive to the lure of New York City, where he meets several bohemian types, two of whom are readily identifiable as Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs. Francis, one of Peter's brothers, gets accepted into Harvard and falls in with a bookish, intellectual sort of man. One of the Martin sisters, Liz, decides to run off with a musician who specializes in be-bop. Added to this equation are family financial woes, a father with a gambling problem, and the start of the second world war, in which a couple of the brothers enlist in the armed services to fight the war against fascism in Europe.

I have to admit that I was occasionally put off by Kerouac's tendency to over sentimentalize the events in the life of the Martin family, but what Kerouac has by and large created is a warm and loving portrait of the complex nature of family relationships. The book shows, perhaps surprisingly, that people most often have the most heatedly passionate arguments with those family members whom they most love. What especially stood out for me in this book was Peter's Galloway friendship with Alexander Panos, a particularly sensitive and emotional young Greek-American who wrote poetry. There was also a strange and very funny scene in a New York subway where Martin's Jewish-American friend utilizes a unique method to "spy" on another rider, perhaps foreshadowing the Jack Kerouac that came after _The Town and the City_.

This is Jack Kerouac's first novel, written when he was in his early twenties. "On the Road" brought him fame, but I think this is one is his best. The characters are all real and complex, particualrly one of the brothers of the large Martin family named Francis, who feels society is the enemy. The book is set in a fictional town which is based upon Kerouac's hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts. The novel delves into the life of each member of the Martin family. It spans several years, from pre-WWII to post WWII. The last part of the book has the most "beat" feeling because it describes characters who are based upon real friends of Kerouac's, such as Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassidy. This is a memorable family saga that has great philosophy and meaning in it. Don't miss it!

At the risk of making Kerouac roll over a couple of times in his grave, I would describe his first novel as endearing. There is a certain simplicity, a certain hesitancy in this work that is lacking from his other novels and makes The Town and the City a bit unique from the rest of his output. It is by no accident that the novel begins in the present tense as the author takes the reader on a guided tour of sorts in and around the town of Galloway: "The town is Galloway. The Merrimac River, broad and placid, flows down to it from the New Hampshire hills ..." Each of the members of the Martin family is introduced in this same immediate way: "Francis Martin is always moping and sulking. Francis is tall and skinny ...", etc. The result of this approach is that Kerouac, not unlike in a play, has essentially given stage directions for the novel, putting flesh to characters and setting the location of the drama which is to come. And what follows is quite extraordinary for a first novel.

Perhaps because Kerouac found it easier to write autobiography from a more objective point of view, he divided himself into what is essentially three different characters: Peter (the character who most resembles the novelist), Joe (the older brother who strikes up a friendship with a Neal Cassady-like character), and Francis (the surviving twin of the saintly Julian who is a scholar, aloof and a loner). As is indicated by the title, the novel is divided into two major parts: the portion that takes place in Galloway (a very thinly veiled version of Lowell, Massachusetts) and later in New York City. The "town" portion of the novel is written with deliberativeness, paying particular attention to detail, and is (as every other reader has remarked) very similar to the style of Thomas Wolfe in Look Homeward Angel. The "city" portion, although still indebted to Wolfe, begins to show hints of the Kerouac style which is to come, with a few touches of the stream of conscousness style that would ultimately best describe his writings.

Towards the end of the book it appears that Kerouac was wrestling with himself as the need to finish The Town and the City began to conflict with the artistic changes that were occuring within the author. While he was completing the final editing of The Town and the City, he was already making notes for the work that would come next, On the Road. The final chapter of Kerouac's first novel describes Peter hitchhiking, "traveling the continent westward". It was clear that, to Kerouac, lifestyle and art had become a little bit of the same thing.

When, as a young man, Jack Kerouac penned this saga of the Martin family (thinly veiled reprentations of Kerouac's own family and friends), he could have scarcely imagined the cult that would arise surrounding his name, image and spirit. But fifty years later, here we are reading his initial entry to his legend. Obviously patterned after the hero of his early years, Thomas Wolfe, the book is very much character driven. In fact, that element of The Town and the City is probably the most obvious thread connecting this work to his later, revolutionary works i.e. "Tristessa", "Dr. Sax" and, of course, "On The Road". It is clear from the beginning that Kerouac was more interested in attitudes, behaviors, loves and losses (pardon the cliche) than telling a particular type of "story". That willingness to focus on every day people in their every day lives is what makes Kerouac so unique (aside from his later radical approaches to "style") and so American. Read the previous sentence and, if one is unfamilar with Kerouac, a person might think, "Gee, doesn't that sound dull." But the ability to take the seemingly mundane and infuse it with extraordinary attention to detail, enthusiam and a willingness to see the wonder in just being alive is, in my opinion, Kerouac's most pronounced claim to genius (read excerpts from his journals in the recently released "Windblown World" describing his cross-continent bus rides, for example). As far as The Town and the City goes, it stands on it's own (and proves beyond doubt that Kerouac's later path down the Spontaneous Prose road was hugely courageous as he could have easily settled into a respected literary career writing in a more conventional manner), but if one has a specific interest in Kerouac, as opposed to just wanting to read a good book, this work is fascinating as a precursor to the wonder that was to come. It's interesting to note that many of Kerouac's "On The Road" exploits were occurring while this book was being written. It's all there in The Town and the City, just below the surface, and about to change the world.

This book gets my vote for The Great American Novel edging out F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise.

With passionate prose and a realistic events (traits common to first novels in my opinion) Kerouac lays out three main sections that are immediately familiar to an American reader and provides a window into the social development of the United States in a critical period in our history.

The first section is a portrait of growing up and the American family. In the second section the nation goes off to World War II and the protagonist comes of age shedding his innocence. The third section deals with the pyschological aftermath a war has on a society in a more uniquely Kerouac prose of jazz, drugs and the struggle of a "lost generation" to find happiness.

I just can't remember reading any other novel where on every page I couldn't help but thinking this IS the American experience. Moby Dick, The Grapes of Wrath, Gatsby, Catcher in the Rye, Catch-22, Huck Finn...these are all a slice of American life, but Kerouac gives us the whole apple pie with The Town and the City.

There has always been much of the child in Kerouac. Whether creating a baseball game from a deck of cards in Desolation Angels, or just displaying a child-like fascination and exuberance at the prospect for a hiking trip in the Dharma Bums, he comes across as a naive man-child, the reluctant herald of a new social and literary order. After publication of On the Road, he became fascinated with the idea of a Balzacian type of literary work that would encompass the life of the writer, but would be autobiographical only in a peripheral way. It would be a sprawling collection of novels, vignettes and poems with a re-occurring cast of characters that would allow the reader to view the author in a series of vaguely related situations. This grand epic was to be know as the Duluoz Legend. True, his first novel, The Town and the City, dealt with much of the same material contained in Dr. Sax, but that book was written before Kerouac found his true voice, the one that was displayed in On the Road. So, armed with a new style he was to revisit his youth once more and add to the legend.

What makes this novel distinct from The Town and the City, other than its style, is Kerouac's emphasis on the fantasy world of his youthful protagonist. Ti Jean does what most other adolescent boys do: play sports, hang out with his friends, discover masturbation, and lose himself in the fantasy world of comics, radio and movies. Chief among these are the Street and Smith westerns and the mysterious hero of the weekly radio program, The Shadow - "who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men." Ti Jean, has his own phantom fighter of evil: Dr. Sax, who hangs out down by the banks of the Merrimack, has a greenish complextion, wears a slouch hat in which he stores his secret weapons and potions, and is seen "flowing in the back darks with his wild and hincty cape." Unbeknown to Ti Jean's family and friends trouble has come to Lowell, Mass. In the abondoned mansion on top of Snake Hill the apocalyptic battle between good and evil is to be fought between Dr. Sax and the satanic Serpent, slowly worming its way up from Hell. Although Lowell is saved from the destructive forces of the Serpent, Dr. Sax plays little part in this salvation - he is exposed as quite the inept evil fighter - but by a giant bird that picks up the Serpent and carries it away. All that the ineffectual Dr. Sax can say is, "I'll be damned ... The Universe disposes of its own evil."

I know that I am comparing kumquats to oranges here, but in this novel Kerouac did for Lowell what Joyce did for Dublin. With almost almanac-like precision he describes that mill city of the mid and late 1930s (even providing a sketch map of his Pawtucketville neighborhood) so that armed with a copy of the novel, the present-day reader can follow in Kerouac's footsteps. The Lowell that is described in the novel is essentially an immigrant community, one principally occupied by French Canadians who came south to work in the mills. This community is described with love and attention to detail and Kerouac captures the rhythm of the speech and the social interactions so important to that community. Another high point of the novel is the vivid description of the great flood of 1936, when much of the city was unundated, forcing hundreds to flee their homes.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Jack Kerouac's (1922-- 1969) "On the Road." The Library of America, among others publishers, has marked the occasion with the publication of a new volume including five Kerouac "Road Novels". I wanted to reread other works by Kerouac besides the "road novels" that are in danger of being overlooked, and I turned to "Dr. Sax". Kerouac wrote "Dr. Sax" in 1952 while living with William Burroughs in Mexico City. It was a difficult time for both writers. Kerouac had already written "On the Road" but could not get it published. Burroughs had just accidentally killed his lover, Joan Vollmer, during a drunken game of "William Tell". "Dr. Sax" proved even more difficult to publish than "On the Road" and did not appear in print until 1959.

"Dr. Sax" differs from "On the Road" and the other books in the LOA collection in that it is set in Lowell, Massachusetts, the town where Kerouac grew up. Lowell is a small mill town on the banks of the Merrimack River. During Kerouac's boyhood, it was home to a substantial French-Canadian immigrant population, to a community of Greek Americans and to several other diverse ethnic groups. Kerouac's parents were both immigrants from French Canada. They spoke a dialect of French in their home and Kerouac did not learn English until he was about seven years old. A fascinating part of "Dr. Sax" is the French dialogue among Kerouac and his family -- with Kerouac immediately providing an English rendition in addition to the French.

The book is written from the perspective of an adult -- Kerouac in 1952 in Mexico City -- looking back and reflecting upon his childhood and early adolescence from the standpoint of his ongoing difficult life as a writer struggling for publication and combating his own inner demons of drugs and alcohol. It opens with a dream, and Kerouac tells the reader that "memory and dream are intermixed in this mad universe." The book features a strange character the young Kerouac invented named Dr. Sax, a sinister figure in a cape and slouch hat. Dr. Sax is accompanied by other bizzare characters including Count Cordu the Vampire, the Great Snake, the Wizard, and others who live in a large weed-grown abandoned house on a snake-infested hill just outside of Lowell. Kerouac conceived the idea of Dr. Sax from various comic books that were popular when he was a child.

"Dr. Sax" is memorable largely for the picture it draws of Kerouac's childhood and of Lowell. (Kerouac is named Jack Duluoz or "Ti Jean" in the book.) It gives good portraits of Kerouac's mother and father and of the family's many moves among the poorer neighborhoods of the town and of Kerouac's older sister and ill-fated brother Gerard who died when he was ten. Kerouac, Ti Jean is portrayed as a sensitive, imaginative and athletic child. The book offers portraints of Kerouac playing baseball and marbles, going to church, engaging in pranks and fights with his childhood friends and enemies, watching movies and reading books, experiencing the first flush of sexuality and learning to masturbate, and learning of death, in the person of Gerard and several others. The book also shows a great deal of Lowell and its environs, especially of a large flood that destroyed much of the city's downtown in 1936.

The story of young Ti Jean and of Lowell is punctuated by comic-book like tales of Dr. Sax. Dr. Sax also appears as a shadowy figure commenting upon and observing the life of young Kerouac and his family and friends. There is something sinister about Sax throughout most of the book. He is partly drawn from William Burroughs, as he is shown travelling through South and Central America for various "powders". In the lengthy final chapter of the book, Ti Jean accompanies Dr. Sax in a bizzare chapter in which Sax purports to ward off the forces of evil that threaten Lowell. The story gets a sharp wizard-of-Oz-like twist at the end.

With the comic characters and the surprise ending, there is a great deal of mad humor in Dr. Sax, but the tone still is predominantly one of melancholy and reflection. In one particularly good scene, Kerouac's dying uncle prophetically tells him: "my child poor Ti Jean, do you know my dear that you are destined to be a man of big sadness and talent-- it'll never to live or die, you'll suffer like others -- more" The Dr. Sax figure, similarly, seems to show the price Kerouac paid for becoming a writer. The book suggests -- with its subtitle "Faust Part Three" that Kerouac's writing was part of a Faustian bargain with Dr. Sax in which Kerouac paid for his literary imagination with a sad and tormented life.

Dr. Sax was Kerouac's favorite among his own novels, and many readers would among his work regard it as his best or second-best after "On the Road." (Other works have their own partisans as well.) This book will interest readers who want to see a lesser-known side of Kerouac. The book is written in a variety of styles. It is erratic and not easy reading. Those who are interested in Kerouac's portrayals of his life in Lowell might also enjoy "Maggie Cassidy" and Kerouac's first and underappreciated book, "The Town and the City".

Robin Friedman

This book gets you past the historical significance of his work and gives you direct contact with his deeper nature. You don't have to have any interest in "The Beat Generation" to enjoy this book or to appreciate its immense spiritual value.

Who is Doctor Sax? At first glance, he appears as a shadowy, even frightening figure from pulp comics. He dons a cape and a slouch hat; he changes colors depending on the time of day. Is he a demonic figure, lurking in the darkness intent on catastrophic destruction or is he simply a regular guy in an atypical superhero type costume?

_Doctor Sax_ is basically a series of interconnected tales of the bizarre, as seen primarily through the eyes of its young protagonist, Jean Duluoz. Lowell, Mass. in the 1930s is the backdrop, and the realistic part of the novel includes Jean's interactions with his parents and his boyhood friends. Jean and his buddies engage in all the compulsory games of childhood, including baseball and shooting marbles. The book also contains a large section concerning the flooding of the Merrimac River during a spring thaw. As seen from some of the boys' point of view, the anticipated floods provide sheer excitement, while their adult counterparts react with fear and horror.

The fantasy part of the book, concerning haunted castles, demons, huge coiling snakes and an ultra-colossal sized bird, contains some of the best and most imaginative science fiction/fantasy writing ever. _Doctor Sax_ is not just merely a very superior pulp tale of good vs. evil, it is also a work of genius and wit. Mr. Kerouac, having written in an entirely different genre for him, has clearly outdone himself.

These are stories from Kerouac's childhood. The writing resembles that of the later Henry Roth. Among other things, each man wrote of boys swimming in the river and the magic highlighted style gives the reader the sense of swimming, too, a not alltogether positive experience in the built-up industrial areas described. Kerouac's writing is vigorous and interesting. Dr. Sax is a mythic, half real, half unreal character, something, someone, looming up, derelict. Dicky Hampshire wrote on a fence that Jack is a big punk, and so on and so forth. The community described is comprised of many French-Canadians and French terms and phrases are used. As to the swimming in the Merrimac River, it was polluted in those days prior to World War II in the area near Lowell. Kerouac writes of a silent Boott Mills, horse racing, marble playing, and ghosts. There is bowling at the social club. Movies and funnies get the attention of the children, boys, friends of Ti-Jean. Family names mentioned include Duluoz. Dr. Sax in a shroud stands on the shore. The castle is a heap of stones. The Shadow Magazine is of significance in the book. Flooding in the area sometime in the thirties is described. The boys go to Paul's porch in a rowboat.

I remember when I first stumbled across this book in the early 90's- it was like Christmas came twice that year. You see, I had thought that I had read absolutely everything published by Kerouac, prose and poem. I didn't know this existed, Wow! It is like one long, magnificent blues or jazz riff of the written word. It is a true blues composition because it has genuine soul. The more I think about it, it just might be the best thing that he ever did.
I know this is going to sound outrageous, but the only comparable book of American poetry I can even think of comparing this to would be Whitman's _Leaves of Grass_. Whitman and Kerouac both sang of the same grass roots, mystical, America. And it's still out there, if you shake your mind free of the preconceptions and the [junk]....

It took me a while to get beyond the Beat myth and see these poems for what they are--some of the most joyful, goofy and affecting writings of the last century. Jack wrote all 242 choruses--one per notebook page--over six weeks in 1955. His improvised word-jazz was at its peak; the poems are fresh and spontaneous but rarely sloppy (try it yourself if you don't believe me). The Buddhist leanings are a little simple-minded, but simplicity is part of the point. In layout and verbal inventiveness Jack's more experimental than most poets writing today. He combines a love for made-up words and language as pure sound with a lyrical directness that you find more often in pop songs than modern poetry. Hearing Jack read some of these on the Steve Allen record made me realize how rare a thing his poems achieved: sentiment, experiment, tenderness, peace. A moving companion to On the Road.

a mix of cultures... musical styles.. not to say of alcohol, morphine, etc... Jack fell sick on his trip to Mexico city, and he's looking for healing, salvation- i believe he found it, with all the shots of morphine he received at the hospital , with the mexican pulque and tequilla , and other substances .. regardless it is a masterpiece of poetry. play some "bird" in the background and enjoy!

"And I am only an Apache -- Smoking Ashy -- In Old Cabashy -- By the Lamp!"

Good men who live have karma of a dove. It is 242 choruses, 242 poems. As is everything written by Kerouac, it is autobiographical. How can Mexico have a positive association in Beat history when William Burroughs killed his wife there in a William Tell experiment? Anything by Kerouac was edited and promoted by Allen Ginsberg and for that reason alone a book of poems with Mexico in the title is of interest.

Thinking of comfortable thoughts is what modern society has branded loafing is a line in one of the poems. Zen provides much of the impetus for the collection of poems. Kerouac's work manages to create an atmosphere of tropical vegetation and light. The work is free-form and jazz-like.

Automatic writing? Well, maybe not automatic writing precisely. Certainly the word-play and the fluidity remind the reader of Gertrude Stein. (Mention Gertrude Stein and here we are at chorus 31.)

I like the prose better, but I like the idea of the book and the arrangement. The Beats stood for blessedness and freedom. MEXICO CITY BLUES is an appropriate manifestation of Beat ideology. Fifty first Chorus says America is a permisible dream, a Whitmanesque expression.

This is a celebration of other people. I count Gregory Corso, William Carlos Williams, Oscar Wilde, Alexander Pope, Benjamin Franklin, William Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, the aforesaid Gertrude Stein, Charley Parker, Nin and Ma, Pa or Leo Alcide Kerouac, brother Gerard, Thurber, Baudelaire, Jolson, Miles, Sarah Vaughn, Chagall, Whitman, Melville, Mark Twain, Einstein, Plato, Moses, Aristotle, Joe Louis, Spinoza, James Huneker, Alfred Knopf, H.L. Mencken, David, Picasso, Jesus, Proust, Freud, Glenn Miller, Allen Ginsberg, St. Francis, Siddhartha, Virgin Mary.

I have been a Kerouac fan for a long time, but it was a couple of years after reading most his novels that I was able to get into his poetry. "Pomes all sizes", for example, sat unread on my bookshelf for some time. "Mexico City Blues" is what really turned me on to his poetry and made me able to appreciate it. I was able to go back and read his other petry with new eyes. This book is fantastic. Read it out loud to yrself, the man had a natural knack for rhythm. Great book.

Everyone knows of Kerouac's famous road trips, hitchhiking or riding the rails. And Lowell, Mass. is famous as his hometown. But few think of Kerouac's time spent in Florida, which was actually where he found fame on the publishing of On the Road and where he wrote, among others, the stellar Dharma Bums.

Kealing depicts Kerouac's life in Florida in a starkly honest way, sprinkling interviews with neighbors and friends along with the story of the last 10 years of Kerouac's life. You get a sense of Kerouac's mad love of nature and his family as well as the depression that drove him to drink himself to death. It's a very moving account of the life of an often-misunderstood literary genius.

Although the book has major shortcomings--foremost a real stretch to actually form a book and not a lengthy article--Kerouac's time in Florida is finally revealed. A sad tortuous hell of an existence in the state--just what the reader expects.

Bob Kealing's Kerouac In Florida is a major contribution to not only the cultural heritage of central Florida but to Kerouac's biography as well. Though he spent years in Florida, these periods of Kerouac's life have been lucky to get a paragraph in most biographies. After years of research, Kealing has finally told the story of Kerouac's lost years. The book is rich with personal recollections from people who knew Kerouac in Florida and information on current efforts to establish and preserve Kerouac's place in the history of central Florida. A must-read for anyone interested in Kerouac the author and Kerouac the man.

Bob Kealing's "Jack Kerouac in Florida: Where the Road Ends" is an oasis of fresh water for those who thirst for the radiance of the beat generation. Kealing's investigation not only tackles controversial issues surrounding Kerouac's life but also uncovers fresh chronicles and knowledge. Furthermore, Kealing's work provides real life personalities to a number of Kerouac's long time friends and family. Most of whom, Kerouac wrote about in "On The Road" and other beat novels. I also found Kealing's narrative of Kerouac's adventures in Florida captivating. Simply but, it's an adventurous biography about the original adventurer.

I highly recommend 'Kerouac in Florida: Where the Road
Ends'. This book brings to light details of a critical time in
Jack Kerouac's writing career and personal life. The reader
comes along on Bob Kealing's expertly researched and
documented investigation into Kerouac's Florida
connections, and his life in the Sunshine state. Kerouac
himself never wrote extensively of these times in Florida
as he did of many other parts of his 'Legend of Dulouz',
his own life story. We see Kerouac on the verge of fame,
and then see him as he comes out of the other end of the
tunnel after the publication of 'On the Road'. We see his
struggle to come to terms with his public persona, his
struggles with his own family and the sad end of the road.
This book is a great read, each chapter revealing more
and more detail of the artist who has gathered so much
attention, positive and negative, over the last 50 years.

Drawing on well documented interviews with neighbors,
friends, drinking buddies and aquaintances of Kerouac, as
well as Kerouac's own writings and letters, 'Kerouac in
Florida' paints a portrait of the 'King of the Beat
Generation' that has not been seen before. By visiting
where he lived in Florida we get a sense of how he lived.
First hand accounts of people who knew him on a day to
day basis provide some of the most telling details of
Kerouac's lifestyle and comportment. It is not what you
may think.

Bob Kealing's work on this book was also instrumental in
establishing the house where Kerouac banged out his
follow up to 'On the Road', 'The Dharma Bums', as a
historically significant landmark. This house in the College
Park section of Orlando, Florida is now home to The
Kerouac Project, a house where writers in residenence are
provided the opportunity to create.

This book includes never before published photographs of
Jack Kerouac that show the man at work in his Florida tin
roofed back porch apartment, creating in his own unique
manner. I could not put this book down.

To raise a bit of contention about the ridiculous Publisher's Weekly review written by disgruntled and snotty Ron Hogan of www.beatrice.com fame, my biography of Kerouac does not attempt "serious literary analysis" because it never claims to be, at any point, a critical biography. It is a cultural biography exploring Kerouac's life, his world, and those events which serve as the creative underpinnings of his "Duluoz Legend" (in particular, the importance of Lowell, Massachusetts in his writing and his Franco American social mores and Roman Catholic upbringing). Toward that end, I feel i have achieved what I had set out to do. Also, I relied on Kerouac's journals, letters, and notebooks for the bulk of my research thus, the "methodological" process of my research that Hogan feels to be problematic was aptly chosen. Since, I have faith in Kerouac's veracity in documenting his life and times in his personal notebooks, I felt that they were dependable enough to use for a consistent narrative. Lastly, Hogan's contention that I rejected Vidal's story (note, William S. Burroughs called Vidal an "inveterate liar") and fully accepted Kerouac's claim of the numerous women he had successfully bedded just shows how clueless he is about this subject matter. A humorous anecdote toward this point is that Hogan gave an overwhelmingly positive review for Kerouac's Windblown World which documents numerous successful scores by Kerouac in wooing women into their bedroom. Note: I had no choice to add stars with my statement, so it might as well be five.

I loved this book, couldn't put it down. Jack Kerouac's life was fascinating. Paul Maher came through with an extremely readable book, even though he had to insightfully digest a mountain of documentation to write it.

***First of all, please note that I strongly disagree with the Publishers Weekly review posted above. I think it's way off-base.***

I bought this book because I wanted to know who the REAL Jack Kerouac was. Once I got through "On the Road," that challenging, maddening, yet beautiful 1957 autobiographical novel, I wanted to get a close-up on the soul and the life events of the book's author. "Kerouac: The Definitive Biography" fit the bill.

This is a very good, level-headed, thoughtful, careful, judicious, lowlights-and-highlights, warts-and-all study. Indeed, it is not a perfect book. I wish it had been twice as long, and twice as rich in details, testimonies, and anecdotes. (That would have been a 1,000-page book, which certainly would have been nixed by any publisher.) But this biography is certainly fair-minded and thorough.

The real problem--although it's not the fault of the biographer--is that Kerouac's life was so achingly heart-breaking. It is automatic, but entirely reasonable, to quake at the fact that Jack Kerouac inspired thousands and thousands of young Americans to want to be just like him, when in fact he was an angry, lonely, alcoholic loser.

Paul Maher's book is a lucid, fair-minded, well-worded monument to all that shined and all that fizzled in Jack Kerouac's far-too-short life. I recommend this book highly as "one-stop shopping" about Kerouac's life. This biography is an effective, admiring-but-not-fawning portrait of a great American artist who lived short and suffered long.

This is a new biography about 500 pages long covering virtually all of the life of Jack Kerouac. It is written by a long time Kerouac "fan and student", a local Lowell, Mass. High-school teacher Paul Maher. Basically it is a sold and well written book. I do have a couple of very minor problems about the biography concerning the level of detail. I think for many it is almost too much detail about the non-creative side of his life, and it might have been better to have a bit less detail about his marriages and more details on his books and how they evolved and fit in with his life - but that is just my personal preference and many will like what the author has done. That is why I am giving it 4 stars not 5.

The book starts of with the Keouac family in New Hampshire around 1720 and a good part of the book explores his family and childhood, especially his Lowell years. The author has included a nice collection of black and white photographs taken of Kerouac during the different stages of his life including some family photos. Pictures of his family in Lowell with his older brother and younger sister make Jack appear almost normal. Later we see him in a bar scene and other scenes wearing for example a rustic plaid shirt and pictures with his wives.

The book appears to very complete and covers his parents and their problems, his creative and free spirit growing up, his scholarship to Columbia, navy career, three marriages and his famous friends or associates including Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady, the latter being his traveling companion in his famous novel On the Road. This was the famous "beat" movement - as most people are well aware. There are quite a few Ginsberg and Cassady references sprinkled through the book, and there are a lot of details on his marriages.

Jack led an intensive life, often clashing with authorities, traveled widely, and moved a lot then died young at the age of 47 from a failing liver caused by too much drink. He left his mark in the literary world as a remarkable writer with a unique style. The book covers a lot of ground, both good and bad mainly on his personal life and especially his Lowell Massachusetts connection. The book is divided into many short chapters, each covering a short segment of his life, such as trips to Mexico, Denver, etc. and how he was changed by success - he did not like it. Having read some other biographies where I could compare at least two different authors of two different books, it is clear that any biography is dependent upon the author and his bias. Not being a Kerouac expert it is beyond my ability to and most readers to make those distinctions in the present case, but it seems accurate and relatively neutral in tone. It gives the good and some bad, and is not just a fawning positive fan book.

Solid job, lots of detail for Kerouac lovers, 4 stars, possibly 5.

Paul Maher's "Kerouac: The Definitive Biography" is by far the most comprehensive and detailed account of Kerouac's life ever written. Unlike previous biographers, Maher has chosen wherever possible to rely for his work on Kerouac's own journals and letters. As such, this biography takes a necessarily different slant to other accounts. Whatever the perils of this approach (Kerouac, like all of us, had a propensity to mythologise his life in his private writings as much as in his novels), this book uncovers a wealth of new information that was previously unavailable.

Maher makes no claims to being a literary critic, so this biography is not the place to look for in-depth analysis of Kerouac's novels. (For that, Tim Hunt's "Kerouac's Crooked Road" is unmatched on "On the Road" and "Visions of Cody", and Gerald Nicosia's "Memory Babe" is great for a `big picture' analysis of the relationships between the life and the work). However, if you are looking to understand the forces that shaped Kerouac, his French-Canadian origins, small town upbringing and Catholicism, there is simply no better place to start.

Because of the unprecedented access Maher has had to the Kerouac archives, this biography uncovers a personal Kerouac that we have not seen before, and much detail on the final years of his life that previous biographers have not revealed. I read "Kerouac: The Definitive Biography" in conjunction with "Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954" and found it entirely consistent. Indeed, I wished that Douglas Brinkley had chosen to include more in the edited journals. As long as Kerouac's life continues to attract as much attention as his work, biographies will continue to be written. But it will be a long time before one as comprehensive as this is published.

P.S. The small matter of the editing inconsistencies in the footnotes is to be addressed in the next printing. This is a minor distraction to an otherwise excellent work, and the only reason I didn't give it five stars. Thoroughly recommended

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.

No, this isn't just for fanatics! If you want a history of good ol' Jack, then yes, it is just for fanatics. However, if you just want an exciting adventure, it's for anyone. This book has got something for everybody, seriously. It has crime, "romance", adventure on the high seas, everything and more.... and then there's always sport (now there's an obscure M. Python reference! Good thing it fits(:) Anyway, this book is a clasic, no matter what stuffy old lit scholars say. One of my favourite quotes comes from this one: "Insofar as nobody loves my dashes anyway, I'll use regular punctuation for the new illiterate generation." What's my favourite Jack quote? "Holy suffering cows!", that's what (:

Kerouac was obviously influenced by Thomas Wolfe a great deal. And this influence had a great impact on Kerouac's style and method. Even so, he found his own path and own way of telling a story. Kerouac's stories largely mimic conflict within his own life, and therefore, reading a story by Kerouac is to read a story of Kerouac. I feel this is what has appealed to me most...that I'm not receiving a story about a fantasy world, but a autobiography about a real person with real struggles. Written in the style of On the Road and Dharma Bums, the Vanity of Duluoz is a must read...

For all intents and purposes this is Kerouac's last real novel. With great fondness and honesty, he goes over a lot of the same themes and events as in his earlier works, but now he's tired, not feeling the need to prove anything and just barely holding on to hopes that things ever get better. This is a sincere, lovely, heartbreaking and haunting book of reflections at the end of a pained but adventurous life.

All of Jack Kerouac's writings don't really fit into the category of novels. They are more in the form of the sentimental memories of Proust or a man looking back on his life as if he were already dead. The Vanity of Duluoz is no exception to this style. Of course, Kerouac takes the title for his work from the Bible verse in which it is said "all is vanity". Written just two years before his death, most of the book seems a Cliff's Notes to his entire body of work.

The book is subtitled "An Adventerous Education 1935-1945" and basically covers ground already seen in other works. Except in this one, he is writing a book for his wife, as if to fill in the story of his life to someone. The driving force behind this work is football and war. It follows Kerouac from early high school football games into college and then into the merchant marines and to the formative years of the beat movement.

Even though one of Kerouac's biographers, Barry Miles, said this book was written in his "fat Elvis period", I found the book quite good. Not among the best of his work, but he still had the spark of writing even in the midst of alcoholism.

Especially good are his experiences in entering Columbia University and the politics that got involved with his playing time. I didn't know that Jack pretty much decided to write because the coach of his team refused to let him start. So, basically, Kerouac just said "I have better things to do than take this. I'm gonna become a writer".

Something not really touched on in other novels but included in this one is Jack's service in the armed forces and the merchant marines. He wasn't afraid to serve in the military during World War II, he just couldn't take being ordered around. Back then, merchant ships crossing the Atlantic were in just as much danger from German u-boats as any battleship.

When the book starting to lose its power was when Jack met the other Beats, who really in the end were a bunch of losers. Kerouac was like Cool Hand Luke. His friends fed off him and on him, draining his energy and sapping his ideas. Kerouac makes up names that are so thinly artificial for his friends that you feel like you're reading a Dickens novel. When he concentrates on himself, he is a genius. When he writes about others, he becomes weak. He should have kept the radar squarely on himself.

This book is pretty good. Average for Kerouac. It is a paradox. It is a novel written about his a joyous youth by a man who sees himself in bitter old age.