Bukowski on Jack Kerouac?

Bruno Dante

Bruno Dante

No, I thought it was a beautiful little book.
And I was just thinking the other day about stuff I need to re-read whilst looking through my bookshelves at home - some classic Vonnegut especially but there's a few books like On the Road that I haven't read in such a long time. I've been reading White Teeth by Zadie Smith and while it's ok, it's basically 500+ pages of not a great deal involving characters you care less and less about the further you get into it. It's well-written which has kept me going but I found myself thinking I could be reading the Sirens of Titan for fuck's sake. But when you're 400 pages into a 550 page book it seems a shame not to finish it I suppose.
 
Dr. Zorders

Dr. Zorders

Rekrab said:
My favorite Kerouac is the short novel, Tristessa. It has a simple purity that is flawless. To me, anyway.
Click to expand...

Absolutely. I'm so glad to see someone point this out. He worked hard at his craft despite what the "spontaneous prose" concept would have people believe, but some parts of On the Road feel like unrevised journal entries and seem very dated. Revolutionary, but dated in a way that Bukowski and even Fante writing in the 30's still doesn't seem. There were bits and pieces of other books I enjoyed; Desolation Angels has its moments. Mexico City Blues and Dharma Bums too. But Tristessa had more of what I was looking for. It's a drug addled mystical-romantic gem of a novella with a strange Mexican aura of morphine, alcohol, Christianity and Kerouac's own compassionate and sad Buddhism. Free form but more polished and concise somehow, at around 100 pages. It's great.
 
Black Swan

Black Swan

Abord the Yorikke!
Dr. Zorders said:
It's a drug addled mystical-romantic gem of a novella with a strange Mexican aura of morphine, alcohol, Christianity and Kerouac's own compassionate and sad Buddhism.
Click to expand...
Have you been there, been that and done that? If not, you can't say that! :DD
 
Rekrab

Rekrab

Usually wrong.
You don't see Tristessa discussed much, as if it were a minor work. I think it's far better than Desolation Angels, which has it's good parts but is flawed. I recently reread On The Road and it was better than I remembered, having last read it, and most of Kerouac, in the 70s. But I made the mistake of rereading the original edition when I also have the "Scroll" restored edition -- I should have read that version, so I need to reread it once more.
 
dont.try

dont.try

Like thousands of others, I read a lot of Kerouac in my late teens but very little since then. His poetry is very inconsistent and tends toward shitty. The comment about drugs and an editor publishing whatever Kerouac wrote is spot on. As for the novels, there's some real gems and some bores.

The gems:
On The Road (I think at this point in the game this is essential reading)
Dharma Bums
Lonesome Traveller (probably a good introduction to Kerouac, even moreso than Road. It's short and sweet and eases you in to his rambling style)
Big Sur (one of the best documents of an alcoholic's disintegration into a personal hell)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top