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Title: Big Sur by Jack Kerouac, Aram Saroyan ISBN: 0-14-016812-5 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: June, 1992 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.61 (41 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: "Big Sur" is tragic, personal, and from the heart
Comment: After reading "On the Road," I became extremely interested in
the work of Kerouac. The technique used in "Big Sur" should be
noted for its honesty and spontaneous prose that goes on and
on. He rarely uses periods, and his "sentences" are poetic
and deeply moving. It is about his retreat to the cabin of
Lorenzo Monsanto (pseudonym for Lawrence Ferlinghetti).
Monsanto encourages Jack, who has a serious drinking problem,
to live alone in his cabin for several weeks, thereby hoping
that Jack will stop or reduce his drinking. After several
days, he feels improved, as if all of his natural surroundings
and animals like Alf the Sacred Burro are animated and full
of a special spiritual force. The return to San Francisco is
the start of his problems, and the line "Why does God torture
me?" that is used later in the book is so sincere and
painful that I really felt sorry for him. In the middle
section of the book, he meets many of his friends, including
Cody Pomeray (Neal Cassady). However, by the final part of
the book, he is truly "tortured" in a sense and believes
everyone and everything is part of a huge conspiracy to
destroy him. The poem "Sea," at the end of the book, is an
example of his attempts to write the sounds of the Pacific
Ocean at Big Sur on paper.
The book, which was written in a very short period of
time, was a literary experience which I might never see
again. It made me think and realize the pain Kerouac had to
go through. It was an extraordinary piece of art.
Rating: 5
Summary: This may be the best of all Kerouac books.
Comment: It has been about seven years since I have read this book, but it remains my favorite book by my favorite author of novels. The reason I give this review is because I am about to embark on a critical analysis of it for class. I hope that I come out of this sea of emotion with my breath still even!
Out of all of his books this one portrays the crux of Kerouac's life dilemma. If one wants to read unbridled travel narrative, then s/he should go to "On the Road". If one wants to capture all the splendor of the youthful Beat mysticism at its prime, then "Dharma Bums" is likely the best bet. For sheer emotiveness, however, "Big Sur" is possibly without parallel in American literature.
There is one scene that overflows with passion and entreaty to the cosmos. He is involved in a tortuous love affair as he attempts to get off of alcohol. All of this yearning and pathos piles into his psyche and all his mind can do is scream. I don't know about all of the rest of us, but this is a way that I have felt in my life. I am glad there is a novelist like Kerouac who succeeded in publicizing the essential anguish of the American tradition.
If anyone wants to correspond with me on the matter of this book and others by him, please do so. Fresh and contemporary voices will add immeasurable breadth and meaning to my research project. Good day!
Rating: 4
Summary: Kerouac's Divine-Comedy in Reverse: the 'Crack-Up'
Comment: Kerouac's grittiest and most stubborn work:
In a 20th century American tradition, along the lines of Bukowski and Fitzgerald, this is Kerouac's most painfully autobiographical book, documenting not just the later stages of his substance abuse, but chronicling an even more deleterious demon that took his soul: fame.
This novel acts as a dreadful counterpoint to 'The Dharma Bums', a novel of contemplation and release, and its overlooked sub-theme of Kerouac's recognition of his own 'wine-stained teeth'. 'Big Sur' twists the Buddhas of old into vast valleys of craggy and vicious DTs inside his heart. As such, this novel describes more than just alcohol, or more than the icon-making industry of fame - this is a novel of where the old words got Kerouac, and all his senstivities and insecurities.
Much of the old pantheon is here: Ginsberg, as the floatsam Irwin who barely figures into the picture, and Dean Moriarty - AKA Coady, the friend now turned antagonist, who - fresh from his two years in San Quentin - 'feeds' Kerouac his mistress in a self-destructive drama to end his own failing marriage.
I've always enjoyed Kerouac's novels for their emphasis on character, rather than 'plot', and the storyline of this novel functions as many of his other works: a geographical tension - in this case, the isolation of the cabin at Big Sur versus the urban psycho-sprawl of San Fran; and, coupled with that, the personal tension of of lust and loneliness trying to convert itself into 'love', as in 'Tristessa'. The storyline here lacks the verve of 'On the Road' and the slow, spiritual gallop of 'The Dharma Bums'. 'Big Sur' unravels rather than tells: it depicts a kind of mosaic of panic in which the pieces become disassembled until ending in the falsely optimistic final chapter.
This novel is unquestionably important to the Kerouacian Divine Comedy. Stylistically, it relies on a manner of dream-convulsions to portray poor Ti-Jean's mind's eye, and it does so without the finesse that is the Kerouac poise. Yet, this book languishes with an essential truth of Kerouac's own literary epic, offering a chronological statement that cannot be divorced from everything else. Does it condemn fame, love, religion? Does he condemn himself? Instead of pushing for Paradiso, Kerouac takes Dante's slown-train into the depths.
Not simply a novel of destruction, this is a novel which wrecks regret, self-criticism, and identity upon the shores of Big Sur. It's importance is its place within the mind of the man who wrote it.
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Title: Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac ISBN: 0140042520 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: February, 1991 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Desolation Angels by Jack Kerouac, Joyce Johnson ISBN: 1573225053 Publisher: Riverhead Books Pub. Date: September, 1995 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Subterraneans by Jack Kerouac ISBN: 0802131867 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: September, 1989 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: On the Road by Jack Kerouac ISBN: 0140042598 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: January, 1991 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Visions of Cody by Jack Kerouac ISBN: 0140179070 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: August, 1993 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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