This is my second attempt at reading Kerouac and i have to admit defeat and accept that he's not for me.
There are moments of brilliance in this book, passages of great beauty and insight but they aren't enough to carry the whole novel. There are large chunks that are nothing more than journal entries and drunken bohemian nonsense.
I'm afraid Kerouac is going on my list of things Baby Boomers consider iconic but which are totally overrated, he can sit on that list alongside Bob Dylan and The Doors and gather dust.

This book rocks the fucking cock.

Not all Kerouac's books are created equal. "On the Road" is the blockbuster breakthrough, "Dharma Bums" pares down some of the meandering of "Road" and tells a more focused story, and "Desolation Angels" is like a mix of the two. There are many other good books by Kerouac, but I think these 3 are all very key to his legacy. They are all autobiographical, and his style is completely audacious and revolutionary for its time. "Desolation Angels" is the most substantial, and witnesses the protagonist (I forget his name, maybe Jack Duluoz) grappling with his own burgeoning legacy in his early 30's, still living wildly but now recognizing that burning the candle at both ends is not all he ever wants. Particularly what makes this novel great are the scenes with his mother. They give the novel a grounded and endearing perspective, and it is as if Kerouac knows that these are the highlights. There is a lot of rehash of "Road" and "Dharma Bums" (and "Big Sur," later, mimeographs them again) but what's new is the emphasis on getting famous for things that other people want to celebrate but don't totally understand. It's an idea like, if you are a big fan of a band that nobody knows about, and then all of the sudden they have songs in TV commercials, they are less special to you personally and have gotten away from what they mean to you. Here, Kerouac's freewheeling lifestyle has now been acknowledged by millions, and it does not really affect how he lives (apart from a couple publicity scenes), but it is not quite as fun now that everyone else wants to do it, too. Everyone will keep reading "On the Road," and a lot of people will be put off by it - but if you want to introduce someone to Kerouac, this is as good a place to start as any. I do not think I am the only one that considers it his best (though I have a few more to assess....)

http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2008...

New German translation: Engel der Trübsal (The old, incomplete German translation was titled Engel, Kif und neue Länder - WTF???)
Kerouac is having a spiritual crisis, and his inner and outer movement has a more pathological angle here than in On the Road. "Desolation Angels" was first published in 1965, and the book tells the story of Kerouac's life in the year before the publication of On the Road (1957). The first 100 pages are him spending two months alone at Desolation Peak, WA, which drives him into a deep alienation and depression - than the Catholic comes down from the mountain to get on the road again, first with his friends, then with his mother. traveling in the US, Mexico and Europe.

Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac was already 35 when his second novel "On the Road" was published and finally made him famous. Before that, Kerouac had slowly become more and more miserable: He had lost his dreams to become a football star at Columbia University and dropped out, he was discharged from the Navy on psychiatric grounds, he was taken in as a material witness in the murder of David Kammerer (for more info, consult And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks); he was twice divorced, had worked odd jobs, traveled around and maintained a concerningly close relationship to his mother, who had to take him in and give him money again and again. His whole family was concerned because Jack could not live self-reliantly and was by then already a heavy drinker and pot smoker.

At the same time, he was deeply convinced of his own genius and worked to create his own literary legend, the Legend of Duluoz (duluoz meaning „louse“ in Kerouac’s French-Canadian dialect). The crisis resulting from his situation is reflected in the book, as well as his spiritual search: Kerouac was born a Catholic, but his pals Allen Ginsberg and especially Gary Snyder were Buddhist scholars, and Kerouac, in his desperation, turned to Buddhism, but ultimately without much success.

The language is Kerouac's typical jazz-inspired spontaneous prose / sketches, but mixed with religious outbursts, and beat / beautitude merge with desolation, referring to (Catholic) martyrdom. Kerouac might have been the most unpolitical of the Beats, but his personal plight certainly had a political dimension.

A great entry to the Legend of Duluoz (although the engimatic first 100 pages are a strugle), I'll tackle Tristessa next.

It was all downhill after the beautiful title save for some sporadic flashes of poignancy... I was leery of picking up this late-career work of Kerouac's, coming at a point when his writing had saturated the market and booze had flooded his talent. My worst fears were confirmed: this is an incoherent mess. He primes us for tedium by shamelessly recycling The Dharma Bums for the first 70 odd pages, then rambles his way through an endless procession of tired, desultory nonsense. It has none of the swagger of his earlier more exuberant prose and the dialogue frequently gets interrupted by half-assed, self-conscious bee bop bullshit... Nowhere near the standard as his pre-1960 work, Desolation Angels is a painful, pretentious bore.

Ángeles de Desolación es el libro más introspectivo y triste de Kerouac: el más humano. Sin embargo, y a pesar de ser una gran seguidora de su obra, se me hizo pesado y desconecté a menudo de su prosa espontánea cargada de un egocentrismo demente que me incomodó mucho.

Tal vez lo que más me gustó fueron las palabras que dedica a su madre en las páginas finales del libro, como las que dejo a continuación, muy conmovedoras:

n  Voy a hablar ahora de la persona más importante de toda esta historia, y la mejor. He notado que casi todos los colegas de la pluma parecen «odiar» a sus madres y construyen grandes filosofías freudianas o sociológicas alrededor de ello, [....]. A menudo me pregunto si alguna vez han dormido hasta las cuatro de la tarde y visto a su madre al despertar zurciéndoles los calcetines a la luz que entra por una triste ventana o si al volver de los horrores revolucionarios de los fines de semana la han visto remendar los sietes de una camisa manchada de sangre con la silenciosa cabeza eternamente inclinada sobre la aguja. Y no con la resentida pose del martirio, no, sino sincera y seriamente desconcertada por tener que "remendar", remendar la tortura, la locura y toda clase de pérdidas, remendar todos los días de tu vida con una gravedad casi alegre y misionera. Y cuando hace frío, se pone el chal y sigue remendando, y en la cocina las patatas no paran de hervir. Poniendo furiosos a algunos neuróticos que ven estas muestras de salud en una casa. Poniéndome a mí furioso a veces porque he sido tan imprudente que he roto la camisa, he perdido los zapatos, y he perdido y hecho trizas la esperanza en esa imbecilidad llamada existencia "salvaje". [...] desgarrarme la camisa, sólo para que mi madre, dos días después, se siente a remendar esa misma prenda, porque es una camisa y es mía, de su hijo. [...] Y cuando la camisa ya no tenía remedio, la lavaba y la guardaba «para poner remiendos» o para convertirla en trapo de fregar. En uno de esos trapos he reconocido tres decenios de vida atormentada, no sólo mía, sino de ella, de mi padre, de mi hermana. Habría remendado hasta la tumba y la habría usado, si hubiera sido posible.n

This was an odd one because I both liked and absolutely hated the actual experience of reading this book. I hit this bump slightly with On the Road for the same reason, but this book had a much more exaggerated style. I thought I would like this more than On the Road because it’s basically the same thing, just internationally traveling as opposed to staying in the confines of North America. I was wrong!
Going back to what I started with—yeah, some lines really were great and some passages felt very ethereal and unique and more like an experience than simple lines on a page. This is great, except when its JUST THAT for four hundred pages, with a plot or even just an understandable sequence of events being basically nonexistent.
I’m with Callum on this one, the style is both the bane and the benefit of this book, but leans into its bane a bit more.

le sobran 200 pàginas y los comentarios sobre prostitucion infantil

Certainly not the excitable, lust-for-life Kerouac of On The Road and his earlier days, but still a very recognizably Kerouacian stream of thought. Originally a double novel, the first section is based on his time spent on fire watch upon Desolation Peak and the metaphysical rambles that run through the mind during 60+ days of isolation and solitude. The following section is then Jack's stories of returning to the world and his friends after his brush with the Void. In this section, in this end-half of the book, in this period in his life, you certainly see the beginnings and feel the melancholy of the author's later-life. An amazing read for those who can find beauty in the author's sometimes bleak views on the ephermeral, trivial nature of life.

The spirituality and nuggets of Buddhist epiphany that guided The Dharma Bums is mostly gone here as a jaded Kerouac returns from isolation to pursue a seemingly endless, desperate search for sexual/physical/spiritual/artistic stimulation on the road. The best part of the book is in the last stretch that details Kerouac's cross-continent trip with his mother. But after nearly 400 pages of confusion and babble, reading the last part feels akin to returning to humanity after being atop a mountain for 2 months. And boy was I happy to come down.

_Adios muchachos_ by Carlos Gardel is being played again and again in my head. As one of my relatives does, I try to summarise what old Jack made me feel. Although this time, as I'm a limited dog, my sincere review will be just to express admiration for this book. (Once I've been told there's nothing that I dislike). This is not an exception. Indeed it's an exceptional piece of paper that drop by drop reminds you this empty dark world is full of angels no matter if you're in Casablanca, Paris or Los Angeles, they hug you and bless you by their light. As "sa Merè", open up your eyes and let that sharp thunder penetrate your retina.
I've graduated, laureated and cum laude on crying, foolishly, happily and joyfully.
Gracias por todo amigo

Kerouac’s later years seem to make him a little more cynical toward the things he expressed such love for in his earlier works. He makes the attempt to travel the world but finds a strange distain for new experiences. His time spent on Desolation Peak is the continued story following the end of Dharma Bums, and I found some of his most beautiful writing within those first 100 pages. His cynicism brings him down to earth in a way where his spiritual awareness is still available but it’s grown a protective layer to it; He seems to be more responsible in his whims, or at least what he takes from them, and has begun to see his life through the eyes of a man who is reaching an age where age is recognized and almost feared. Desolation Angels is intriguing, particularly because of this side of Kerouac that seems to grasp the ever-forward movement of life but also a simple ability to deal with it.