Kerouac epitomizes his roaming road-dog philosophy as oscillating from beat as in beat down to beatific as scintillant angel-in-waiting penitent walking, thumbing, noticing the lost backroads of the world's underbelly. "Desolation Angels" begins on a mountaintop in contemplation and after a roller-coaster ride through the detritus riddled mélange of Beat characters' antics arrives worn and shorn of hubris but nonetheless a writer of notoriety in the making. "On the Road" was published in early Sept. '57 and it would be his springboard to fame paving the way to his other works which dovetail each other in the new lit. free form style that was Beat. All these hepcats and to be fair their were women accomplices who would later gain at least some recognition for their contributions ushered in a lost-in-the-world consciousness of post-war freedom purchase on the souls in search of release from bourgeoisie ennui. They were desolate of undergirded values save to come to know thyself as angelic interpretations of fallen into the world dharma bums cooing to nirvana. It never came, ended badly for most of them, but a newer freedom was opened and America was changing forever.

Don't get me wrong, I love Jack's writing and describing of America and Jazz and all his trips. He is a great writer and so honest in this big book confessing his soul but all this Buddhist non-sense, all this unnecessary existentialism even to life's good things and at times his patriarchal opinions about how all women must be like his mother, (Jesus! That woman was so devoted to chores her whole life that at Cali she was scared of the bathtub and the big mountains, you kiddin' Jack?) all that unfortunately made this book very exhausting and sad for me to read.
I guess I prefer the more idealistic Kerouac, or simply a Kerouac that enjoyed life more and didn't cloud his mind with all this "nothing matters, there's death everywhere, whatever" non-sense and taking no stance in life. It's mostly sad for the person himself, really...

Pretty devastating - swerves two thirds in from a weary but often ecstatic Kerouac to a bitter demystified drunkard older perspective. While before he wallowed in the void gleefully you see the process of him being consumed by it . First half is my favourite bit of beat writing so pretty conflicting read

“My life is a vast and insane legend reaching everywhere without beginning or ending, like the Void – like Samsara – A thousand memories come like tics all day perturbing my vital mind with almost muscular spasms of clarity and recall…”
Solitude isn’t for Jack Kerouac – alone on the mountain peak he is tortured and intimidated by loneliness and gets bored with it.
“…the vision of the freedom of eternity which I saw and which all wilderness hermitage saints have seen, is of little use in cities and warring societies such as we have…”
So back to the madding crowd where Jack Kerouac does belong…
“Now everything is too cool for a fight, now it’s jazz, the place is roaring, all beautiful girls in there, one mad brunette at the bar drunk with her boys – One strange chick I remember from somewhere, wearing a simple skirt with pockets, her hands in there, short haircut, slouched, talking to everybody – Up and down the stairs they come – The bartenders are the regular band of Jack, and the heavenly drummer who looks up in the sky with blue eyes, with a beard, is wailing beer-caps of bottles and jamming on the cash register and everything is going to the beat – It’s the beat generation, it’s béat, it’s the beat to keep, it’s the beat of the heart, it’s being beat and down in the world and like oldtime lowdown and like in ancient civilizations the slave boatmen rowing galleys to a beat and servants spinning pottery to a beat – The faces!”
Beatniks seem to have existed only to burn their lives – like those moths circling around a candle flame – disoriented and hypnotized desolation angels.

I've been reading Jack on and off since I was seventeen but somehow Des Angst is not doing it for me. I just feel bored. Have to try again later.

Loneliness And Restlessness On Desolation Peak

After reading the memoirs of Helen Weaver 'The Awakener: A Memoir of Kerouac" and Joyce Johnson (Glassman) "Minor Characters", I wanted to read Kerouac's novel "Desolation Angels". Kerouac had a short relationship with Weaver in 1956 followed by a longer relationship with Johnson. In "Desolation Angels", Kerouac describes his relationship with these women from his own perspective. There is much more to the book.

"Desolation Angels" is the most literally autobiographical of Kerouac's novels, with the author frequently only slightly changing the names of his friends and supporting characters. The book covers about one year in Kerouac's life, from the summer, 1956, to late 1957, just before the New York Times published a favorable review of "On the Road" which took Kerouac from obscurity to fame. The book is in two large sections (called "books") written at different times and in different styles. Kerouac wrote book one titled "Desolation Angels" in 1956-1957 shortly after the events it describes. The book is written in the spontaneous, associative stream-of-consciousness style that characterizes Kerouac's best-known work. It was rejected for publication in 1957.

In 1961, when Kerouac was in the middle of a long decline, he wrote the second book of what became "Desolation Angels", titled "Passing Through" while living in Mexico. Kerouac's writing in this second book, which includes his relationships with Weaver and Glassman, is more straightforward narrative than in the first book. Kerouac thought of publishing each part as separate works but decided to combine the two together. The result is "Desolation Angels" first published in 1965. The current edition of the book, which dates from 1995, begins with a valuable introduction by Joyce Johnson.

In the summer of 1956, Kerouac worked for two months in western Washington in isolation on a fire tower on Desolation Peak. Kerouac thought he would be able to use this period of isolation for meditation and gaining control of his life. He soon found himself, however, missing friends, companionship and every day activity. Kerouac reflects on his surroundings, on his family, and on his earlier life in short, stream-of-conscious sections before he comes down from the mountain to rejoin the world. A sense of religious and philosophical meditation, which includes a great deal of Buddhism, also pervades Kerouac's discussion of his time on Desolation Peak and the novel as a whole.

The remainder of book one describes Kerouac's descent from the mountain and hitchhiking through Portland to San Francisco. He spends a riotous week with his friends in the middle of the San Francisco Poetry renaissance, but the best scenes are of Kerouac and his friends having fun and walking the streets. Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsburg, and Gregory Corso, with slightly changed names, play important roles. The sense of dissatisfaction and the need to move on, whether alone on Desolation Peak or with friends, is critical to Kerouac. Unhappy in San Francisco, he sets off for Mexico.

The aptly titled "Passing Through", book two of the work, describes Kerouac's continued restlessness, spiritual questioning, and dizzying journeys to Mexico, New York City, Tangiers, France, back to New York, California, and New York again. When he wrote "Passing Through" in 1961, Kerouac was famous.. He was seriously troubled by the faddish attention given to the so-called "Beat Movement" which he had not intended to create. In "Passing Through", Kerouac describes how "On the Road" is accepted for publication, but he makes relatively little of this.. In many places, Kerouac addresses his readers directly and intimately. Thus, early in book two he cautions his readers:

"And also dont think of me as a simple character-- A lecher, a ship-jumper, a loafer, a conner of older women, even of queers, an idiot, nay a drunken baby Indian when drinking--- Got socked everywhere and never socked back (except when young tough football player)-- In fact, I don't even know what I was-- Some kind of fevered being different as a snowflake....In any case, a wondrous mess of contradictions (good enough, said Whitman) but morefit for the Holy Russia of the 19th Century than for this modern America of crew cuts and sullen faces in Pontiacs--".

The scenes in Mexico City, with Bill Burroughs in Tangiers, and particularly with his mother in a long, disastrous trip to California are as good as the scenes with Weaver and Johnson.

This book captures a great deal of Kerouac and his contradictions. It shows a man who loved and tried to savor the common experiences of life, his friends, lovers, and food, and yet suffered from an inner loneliness and restlessness. Wherever he was, Kerouac felt he had to be somewhere else. Alcoholism and drugs and wandering inexorably took their toll. The story is told in "Desolation Angels" with strong religious overtones. The spirituality in this book is complex and unsystematized. It includes Buddhism, Catholicism and simple living in the here and now but does not reduce to any formula. I found the spiritual quest theme of this book challenging and moving.

"Desolation Angels" is a difficult mixed book, with eloquent writing together with portions that are less successful. The work gradually won me over as a read into it. This book will be of greatest interest to readers with a strong passion for Kerouac who have read, for example, "On the Road", "The Dharma Bums" and "Tristessa". These three novels are all available in the Library of America's excellent volume of Kerouac's "Road Novels". "Desolation Angels" itself is not included in any LOA volume of Kerouac.

Robin Friedman

Woah wow

This was my year-long "poetry" read for this year, even though it's more an autobiography than actual poetry.
Jack Kerouac once spent a summer at a forest lookout in the North Cascades: Desolation Peak, just across Ross Lake from the North Cascades Hiway. he wrote about his experience and the months that followed as he dealt with his burgeoning fame, his struggles with spirituality and his life as an Icon of the Beat Poets.
I was disappointed that Kerouac had nothing very good or interesting to say about living in solitude in nature. he wasn't inspired by it, did very little writing other than a diary and he couldn't wait to return to civilization.
More interesting were his travels from San Fran to Mexico City and his views on materialism and fame. It's obvious that during those days he was happiest hobo-ing around with only a rucksack, drinking wine and philosophizing with his poet friends, sleeping outside and being unburdened by any kind of responsibility.
Interesting, but not very artful.

I tried getting into this but wow, this is horrible and I dont understand why so many give it great reviews.
His style is extremely awkward, and the mini-rants(for lack of better term) are pointless. I could not get past page 5.

to the person who left this terrible book in the laundromat…count your days…and GET A JOB! zero stars

Reading this in 2025, what resonates most is the search for meaning in a violent, repressive society focused on wealth and hierarchy. America of the 50s: McCarthyism and an economy focused on the nuclear family and military-industrial complex. I feel those themes resurging in our time.

I’m also moved by Kerouac’s love of simply being alive, which drives him to try to understand the world through Buddhism and his writing. He manages to live on the margins of the mainstream. But at the same time any rebellion he represents seems mostly self-centered and ultimately unstable. Individualism and misogyny abound, including his interpretation of Buddhism. A glimpse here or there of solidarity, but still he isn’t able to escape the values of the society he is trying to resist.

Maybe that’s even what he is intentionally chronicling in a way- after the optimistic, explosive freedom of Dharma Bums, the tone of this book is a slow descent into acceptance.

While I truly loved On the Road, I was pleasantly surprised when I read Dharma Bums and found it to be an even better book. However, I found Desolation Angels somewhat of a disappointment

The book starts with his time as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak in the North Cascade, I've learned that this section of the book was mainly taken from the journals he wrote at the time--much of it deals with his musings on Buddhism and his life-and I found that part to be somewhat flat.More interesting was his discussion of his actual life on the lookout and the loneliness he clearly felt

The book continues with his reconnection to the beat writers when he returns to San Francisco. While there he tells Ginsburg, Cassidy and Corsi of his plans to take a freight train to Mexico and they laugh; in an example of Kerouac at his best he writes: But the laughter is genuinine, and I console myself with the reminder,embodied in the Tao of my Rememberance "The Sage who provokes laughter is more valuable than a well."

Kerouac does go to Mexico and here we also see Kerouac at his worst, a description of his encounter with a 14 year old prostitute. I'm including this writing, as offensive as it is, to remind us not to over romanticize Kerouac. Kerouac writes "my little girl leads me and starts washing unceremoniously in the squatting position. "Tres pesos" she says sternly, making sure to get her 24 cents before we start. When we do start she's so small you can't find her for at least a minute of probing. Then the rabbits run,like American high school kids running a mile a minute...But she is not particularly interested either. I find myself losing myself in her without one iota of trained responsibility holding me back"

Kerouac describes his next travels to New York and meeting different women, one of whom writes a foreword in the most recent edition. The writing here is again vintage "On the Road" Kerouac continues with his travels to Africa and Europe and this included the following poignant passage when he becomes homesick and wishes only for a box of Wheaties in an American kitchen

Many Americans suddenly sick in foreign lands must get the same childlike yen, like Wolfe suddenly remembering the lonely milkman's bottle clink at dawn in North Carolina as he lies there tormented in an Oxford room, or Hemingway suddenly seeing the autumn leaves of Ann Arbor in a Berlin brothel,Scott Fitz tears coming into his eyes in Spain to think of his father's old shoes in the farmhouse door."

That passage reminds me of the writer that Kerouac could have become if he had continued to evolve. Instead the book ends with his opening a box of the newly published "On the Road" and his reflections of the beat generation and what was hip and was what not, foreshadowing the disillusionment and spell that we all know sadly led to the isolated and bitter end of his life