Jean Louis Kerouac - he is the man.

When all said and done one of THE greatest men to ever set foot on earth :)

Sorry Neal. :(


The only think of the Beats that now stands up for me is 'Howl'.


I realise that this is a failing in me however.

Unfortunatly (for me) I see Kerouac through the same somewhat rose tinted specs as I see The Fall. The man, the myth... he can do no wrong.

Yes. I do like the idea of Kerouac.

Quite like The Dharma Bums, but I think Kerouac is more important as a cultural icon than as a writer. Burroughs was the best of them (and I know he wasn't exactly a 'beat' writer but he's associated with them). Snyder was the best poet.

Visions of Cody: read the mirrored pillar section and the Joan Crawford section. I think it's the best writing I've read.
Want to read something good and short: October in the Railroad Earth
I have read all on the list except "Hippos" and liked it all

The Subterraneans if woefully underappreciated

I would rate Corso above Ginzy if it weren't for Howl...if anything lasts from this literary movement that's not by Jack, it'll be Howl.

I think Snyder has less to do with the Beats than Burroughs and I like both

McClure's Meat Science Essays is wonderful and was influential to a small but energetic group

If only Jack would have left home for good, he still might be with us. Mamere did not have a positive effect on her son.

I actually saw Pull My Daisy first run in a theatre when I was 15 or 16...still have the book which was published only in paperback by Evergreen.

Kerouac was a terrific writer: His cultural influence may have over shadowed his writing but he was liberating to others who either wrote or wanted to write...When you think about it, that quite an accomplishment: Being the font of both literature and a cultural movement.

I think Jack got his love of word play in English because he never spoke the language until he went to school. His friends and neighbors spoke French most of the time too.

Jack's description of a Slim Gaillard performance[the Flat Foot Floogie man] in a night club is wonderful....both for Slim's performance and Neal's reaction to it.

The only Kerouac I've ever tried to read is Big Sur, and that was only because Richard Meltzer (a big fan of the Beats) has raved about it in the past.

I'm afraid I had to give up 40 pages in - it was doing my head in. Am I right in thinking that this was totally the wrong place to start?!

The man is both mythical and legendary. His writing never ceases to be a joy and a delight to me. Big Sur and On The Road or two of my favourite books, which I often re-read when bored. He had a singular vision of life that is an inspiration to others. His flowing passion seldom rivaled .

Big Sur chronicles Jack's alcoholic breakdown and signals the end of his travels[for the most part]. He doesn't spare himself at all and it's not a good place to start because it's sad he let himself get into this state and there is little sympathetic about the book[although it's well written]. His free association interposed with his writing the sound of the sea hitting the rocks on shore at the very end is much admired though

Thanks. Yeah, I did wonder if it was one more for the Kerouac aficionados rather than a total novice like me. Another time maybe...

Big Sur, imo, is a fine book in its own right but it clashes with the figure almost everyone has of Kerouac so to get his best writing and to see why he's been a cultural influence world wide, then, no, it's not the place to start

Like duckpin, I've read them all except the Hippo's one.
Again, top of the list is Visions Of Cody.

Its quite difficult coming to Jack (as I did) in the late eighties and knowing the myth that had grown up around him. To my utter delight and disbelief he lives up to it, and some.

The On The Road "scroll" was on display in Birmingham earlier in the year (first time outside the states), I actually filled up seeing it... his books, his life, move me in a way nobody else has.

Why... I know not :)

When I was 15 I paid 35 cents for Dharma Bums[I was already a Buddhist] and reading about Ryder and being a fire lookout and fighting fires
and climbing mountains and meeting like minded people got me to thinking.
I took the federal Civil Service test and aced it a couple of years later but at 17 I was too young so I played ball and worked etc...When I turned 18 I rode a bus 3 nights and two days 2200 miles to southwest Utah and became a firefighter/mountain rescue team member/ search and rescue employee.
Thank you Jack...I know from Desolation Angels you really didn't like the aloneness of Desolation Peak but your descriptions of the west opened my eyes....I sure didn't want to be a longshoreman or electrician like both sides of the family.
Man, it was tough to sleep because it was so quiet but I got used to it and got used to seeing the Milky Way at night and all sorts of plants and animals and helping people in trouble or just confused. You reported well and truly and the USA and French Canada should be proud.

If someone were to tell me they were interested in reading some Kerouac and had read none, I would probably recommend October in the Railroad Earth because it is both good and short.
Sometimes it hard to find, so I would recommend On The Road especially if the person could hear Jack read a little of it so the person would have the rhythm of the work.
I would also tell them that Jack came from a working class, poorly educated environment and was known to say hurtful things about blacks, Jews and gays but that he had close friends that were black[LeRoi Jones], Jewish[Allen Ginsberg] and gay[Peter Orlovsky]. Read Jack's first volume of letters for his expansiveness and supportiveness; read volume two for when he became embittered and stayed at home with mom a lot.
His friends stuck by him and he stuck by his friends. Somehow they could live with his comments and they didn't do it to make a buck off his name either.
Ginzy was the most generous one of the group,it seems to me.
His first biographer was Jewish and she was able to deal with the family and saw the destructive role alcohol played up close.

Thats a great story duckpin - I think he is an inspirational charecter.

Theres certain things about the way he lived his life I would certainly aspire too, drinking myself into an early grave obviously not being one of them!

Well yes, but Snyder is the reason The Dharma Bums exists!

I read "On The Road" first when I was 16. The One phrase in the entire book that has stuck with me to sum up people you meet is "Some's bastards some aint." Pure genius.

I, like Duckpin, would recommend "On The Road" as a starting point in to Jack's work.

Yes "Big Sur" can be a little depressing but also inspirational.

30 essentials, as set out by Jack.

Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for your own joy
Submissive to everything, open, listening
Try never get drunk outside your own house
Be in love with your life
Something that you feel will find its own form
Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
Blow as deep as you want to blow
Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
The unspeakable visions of the individual
No time for poetry but exactly what is
Visionary tics shivering in the chest
In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
Like Proust be an old teahead of time
Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
Accept loss forever
Believe in the holy contour of life
Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better
Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
You're a Genius all the time
Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

Yes, the master of the catcy phrase... I could quote page after page of the things, each one a joy :)

Some of the Dharma is interesting both for seeing how Jack educated himself in Mahayana Buddhism and for the notes he made and included and showed, when he was living with his sister and brother-in-law, that he fought for his dignity as a writer and those around him didn't want him without a steady job. His descriptions of the area around Rocky Mount are good as is his ability to adapt his schedule to the family to avoid bothering them with his writing.

Allen Ginsberg recorded all of Mexico City Blues for Shambhala and it's worth searching out. He knew how Jack sounded when he read and did his best to keep the spirit of Jack. Ginsberg's reading of his own material is quite different.

jacks no writer

but hugely enjoyable. chose on the road becasue that was the first one i read and the others never matched up. was listening to the poetry the other day. again, no poet but very enjoyable

also, by chance, came across something yesterday, his introduction to robert franks photographs of america

he cant write introductions but very enjoyable

a master of the catch phrase and a kind of rush: would have been good now i think, in television or on radio where these abilities are at premium

but, in the end, a bit too boys club for me and too light, too frothy

(love the song cassidy by bob weir