Should you read this book? Well, to quote Jack Kerouac himself, “I don't know, I don't care, and it doesn't make any difference."

What inspired me to read Big Sur, which I somehow skipped in all earlier Kerouac stints, was Ben Gibbard and Jay Farrar's 2009 LP: One Fast Move Or I'm Gone: Kerouac's Big Sur. If you've not heard about the album, its genesis was Kerouac’s nephew Jim Sampas requesting songwriter Jay Farrar (Uncle Tupelo, Son Volt) to compose some songs based on the Big Sur text for the soundtrack of a documentary film attempting to depict the period of Kerouac's life when he was dogged by the celebrity resulting from the big sales success of On The Road, trying to quit drinking and writing this novel.

According to Noel Murray's review of the album in the A.V. Club, the original intention was for a variety of name musicians to perform Farrar's compositions with him, but he clicked so well with Ben Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie) in preliminary production that the two of them completed all 12 tracks. The album is a damned fine listen in my opinion, but it’s the title track—which I believe I read somewhere is more a Gibbard than Farrar composition—that manages to illuminate something quintessential about my perceptions of Kerouac, particularly the Kerouac of this final novel who can look back on all the excesses and holy goofs from the roads of his erstwhile youth and wonder if it was all worth it. As far as I can tell, the only line in the song's lyric that comes from Big Sur is the title/chorus ("one fast move or I'm gone"), but all the other words ring true to the Kerouac I see in my mind's eye after having read seven of his novels and (a long time ago) Ann Charters' biography.

Listen to at least the title track yourself, paying close attention to the words. Whether it was Gibbard or Farrar (or both) who wrote them, they really hit upon what I see as the core of Kerouac. During one of my earliest times listening to the song, I found myself thinking of the beautifully turned close of the first chapter in Kerouac's first novel, The Town and the City, where a third person narrative voice, rarely if ever used in Kerouac's later work, describes the exterior of the Martin family's house: "When all the family was stilled in sleep, when the streetlamp a few paces from the house shone at night and made grotesque shadows of the trees upon the house, when the river sighed off in the darkness, when the trains hooted on their way to Montreal far upriver, when the wind swished in the soft treeleaves and something knocked and rattled on the old barn—you could stand in old Galloway Road and look at this home and know that there is nothing more haunting than a house at night when the family is asleep, something strangely tragic, something beautiful forever."

I'm not trying to romanticize the man. That has been done to death way before Gap used an airbrushed version of one of Jerry Yulsman's Kerouac photos to move units, before a living William Burroughs starred in a Nike commercial ("Who couldn't use such easy money, kid, I'm hustling myself," I can almost hear him croak in defense), in other words, before American commerce learned to pimp hip so hard that anyone foolish enough to be a true believer was left to wonder whether they missed the bang or whimper that had heralded everything cool tipping over into a vat of meretricious shit. But that too is a case of "twas ever thus, science and time have only made it worse." More on that in a minute.

What I am trying to say is that the man could write and write well when he put his mind to it. One of the most important things a writer can do, besides tell a story, is make a reader feel something. And few writers can make me feel loneliness like Kerouac could. Similar to what Burroughs has written about Hemingway and the subject of death, loneliness was Kerouac's thing, his specialty. Sure, you find a fair share of exhilarating headlong rushes into life that "burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding" in Kerouac's body of work but is it that much of a stretch to imagine those were inspired by the desire to take flight from a haunting inherent loneliness? And, I think, it's when his prose strives to convey the bedrock loneliness of the human condition—or at least his condition—that it really takes off to a place beyond ultimately predictable descriptions of what it feels like to be on the passenger side of car expertly driven at breakneck speeds.

Having decided to read Big Sur, I went online and bought a used copy of the original 1963 Bantam Books paperback edition (original cover price-75¢!). The synopsis blurb on the cover page is at least 75 cents worth of hilarity. Consider the following:

A NIGHTMARE SUMMER

DULUOZ—The King of the Beatniks—tortured, broken idol of a whole generation; great modern sex god who just wanted to be alone with his cat; all-time boozer of the century who was slowly drinking himself out of his mind.

BILLIE—his fashion-model mistress who knew every dirty trick in the book. Duluoz was her man, meal ticket and stud rolled up into one, and she wasn't going to let him get away from her no matter what!

ELLIOT—Billie's son—he saw things that would make any adult flinch.

AND

BIG SUR—the lonely, wild surf-pounded shore where Duluoz went to hide; where the world tracked him down and made its final attempt to destroy him.

Clearly the boys in the marketing division of Bantam Paperback Books thought it best to reduce anything that might have been authentic, original, artistic or (god help us) hip about the novel to teaser copy that reads like it would have been more at home on a poster for a B-movie horror flick. This is what I meant by "twas ever thus, science and time have only made it worse." The ad executives from a couple of yesteryears ago thought people could be swayed to buy Gap clothes if they were associated with the images of Miles Davis and Jack Kerouac. Further back in '63 apparently some creepy Don Draper types thought the best way to sell Jack Kerouac’s final novel was to render an overview of it in third rate Mickey Spillane type bombast.

But, I can hear you asking through clenched teeth at this point, what did you think of the goddamned novel? When I told several people I planned to read it, I was warned that it’s a bleak, unsparing “breakdown” novel and that Kerouac would take me right along with him. That’s true enough. Yet for all the time Kerouac seemed to devote to working on his own unique style (his "spontaneous bop prosody," which was a double edged sword just as likely to turn him into a silly flibbertigibbet as help him produce searing, evocative prose), I get the sense that he didn’t spend too much time thinking about the structures into which he flaunted his style. Many chapters before the breakdown really manifests itself in his behavior, he makes numerous references to its pending arrival, so it comes off as less poignant and less visceral—to me—than it might have had it been allowed to gradually build with scant foreshadowing. Even so, as the book’s “plot” descended fully into Kerouac/Duluoz’s paranoia and delusion, I sensed an organic acceleration to the pace as if we were zooming ever faster toward a horrible crash. The description of his dream of the “vulture people” near the end is so weird and repulsive that—as another Goodreads review of this book mentioned—you absolutely don’t buy the “and then I woke up to find that I, and everything else, was just fine and dandy and golden” ending. In dramatic contrast to Visions of Cody (which I thought was a travesty), I’m glad I read Big Sur. Seldom did I find the book taking me away from myself in the way books that I think are truly great do, but it was aggressively honest of Kerouac to stick with his self-aggrandized autobiography as legend approach to his novels after things were not nearly as fun for him as they once were.

Here’s a thought that’s immediate, unrehearsed, unrevised and probably more than a little bit irresponsible (seems like Kerouac would, if not approve, perhaps recognize a kindred spirit): yesterday I listened to Mark Helprin being interviewed about his newest book In Sunlight and In Shadow. I’ve not read it yet nor have I read Helprin’s most famous book Winter’s Tale. I might find myself duly impressed—taken away from myself even—by either of those books when I do finally get around to reading them. But good lord almighty did the man sound so pedantic, so full of himself, so much like someone I would not want to sit down and have a beer with (I’m confident he would see no value in having any exchange with me either) and so convinced of his relevance, if not his superiority, that I shuddered.

When Kerouac, on the other hand, writes in Big Sur “Books, shmooks, this sickness has got me wishing if I can ever get out of this I’ll gladly become a millworker and shut my big mouth,” I feel like the human being who was on the other end of that writing would never have shoveled Helprin’s brand of shit in my direction for very long, even if I let him get away with it. But this—as I warned—is hardly a sensible position. Just pure gut. In this book, and in all of his others that I’ve read, Kerouac is interesting when he’s interesting and not when he’s not, but he’s always pure gut.

Grabbed Big Sur after avoiding it for sometime. Grabbed Big Sur as I walked out the door for my third solo trip to Big Sur. Because I had had enough. Enough of everything. As I said to someone on my way out, "I just need to not talk to anybody for a little bit."

So I grabbed Big Sur, not knowing exactly what it was about.

I bombed the curves of Big Sur, passing people I shouldn't have passed.

Got to my campsite, and set up camp. After people told me I shouldn't, no, I *couldn't* camp alone. I'm a girl.

Actually, I'm a grown-ass woman, and I can handle myself.

Grabbed Big Sur.

Hiked 11 miles. Because there is nothing like hiking in Big Sur. Chaparral, redwoods, ocean. The Santa Lucia mountains abruptly rise from the Pacific, creating an amazing and unrivaled ecosystem and landscape. Wildflowers. Scouted out the next campsite for the next trip, in which I backpack in. Because "girls" shouldn't backpack alone, either.

Came back to camp. Read Big Sur while sunbathing, yogaishing, cooking dinner, and... drinking a hot toddy. Read Big Sur under the night sky with the full moon rising over the Santa Lucias. Read Big Sur in my sleeping bag, my tent dripping with condensation, a raccoon perusing what I left out.

Big Sur is like being hit square in the stomach with a 2x4. Kerouac's brutal honesty toward his state of mind. It was meant to happen in Big Sur, where the ocean is bigger than your problems, the redwoods are older than your family, and the mountains are higher than your state of being.

It was the perfect time, the perfect visit, the perfect setting for me to finally read Big Sur and to reacquaint myself with Kerouac. Did I identify with him? Not really, but his prose in this novel brings forth something that lies within us all, don't you think?

Read it in one sitting.

And:
“On soft Spring nights I'll stand in the yard under the stars - Something good will come out of all things yet - And it will be golden and eternal just like that - There's no need to say another word.”

"because a new love affair always gives hope, the irrational mortal loneliness is always crowned..." //147

I only finished this book as a labor of love, because someone recommended to me.

The book is basically a journal entry, complete with ridiculous run-on sentences, self-indulgent narrative, and a chapter-long dream sequence that doesn't actually add to what counts as a "plot". It reminded me a lot of college--excessive drinking, pointless trips with people you only sort of know, sudden love affairs that are clearly poor ideas a day into them, paranoid delusions, melodramatic declarations of intense emotions both positive and negative...all wrapped up in the package of somehow being a meaningful and revelatory experience for the narrator.

How does this crap count as great literature? I have never understood how some drug-addled men's love affairs with substance abuse repeatedly form the basis for Literature. Am I really supposed to care about this? Am I supposed to respect this? Am I supposed to, worst of all, aspire to this somehow?

Jack Kerouac is not for everyone. "It's not writing, it's typing." said Truman Capote. I have read a good amount of Kerouac and his contemporaries' works. Usually I would rank him 3 to 4 stars.

Big Sur is different. The book stays with me. It's bittersweet. It follows the same character line-up, the people in Kerouac's novel, are people from his real life, Neal Cassady, Michael McClure, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, etc. It is very helpful to know which characters refer to specific people.
The focus is on the "beat scene" in and around San Francisco.

A key difference in this book compared to his others, Jack, creates his alter-ego as a successful author, well known to the public. He is coping with the stress of fame as he is trying to heal up his alcoholism. This book is about alcoholism. He is surrounded by friends who care for him, enable him, chastise him. Jack shows you his paranoia, his nightmares, delusions, his self-hatred and envy of friends who "pull it of". Jack harbors a lot of unfulfilled desire to be a "family man" the "pater familiias" or as he often states "the He-Man" but he knows he can't live that dream because of alcohol.

We get to see Jack in solitude (at the cabin in Big Sur), in San Francisco, in domestic scenes with friends' families. He reflects on times past, especially with Neal Cassady and Neal's wife. There is a sense of loss in this novel. The writing is very playful, rambling and tangential. Rarely profound. But the presentation of Jack as he is, warts and all, famous and dying from alcohol addiction, it makes for an amazing read: Big Sur is not the beginning of the end of Jack, it is nearly the last act.

Jack Kerouac was already one of my favorite authors before I started on Big Sur, but now he's even higher up my list. I'd fallen in love with his prose in The Dharma Bums and On The Road, but the writing in Big Sur is on another level. I'm aware that Kerouac is a controversial author and is often criticized for his exuberant naiveté, but I've always found something pure, beautiful, and--more importantly--useful in his ideals, no matter how romantic or ill-advised. But here, those ideals are a little more mature, and Kerouac is somehow able to make them seem reasonable (for example that, perhaps, insanity is as inevitable as death), which is a true testament to his genius. In The Dharma Bums and On The Road, we see a younger Kerouac who, in spite of his inner demons, still seems to have such hope in life. In Big Sur, however, we see a wiser, more cynical, Kerouac, who's now lived long enough to see many of those youthful dreams and ideals die. Who's already been ground through the fame machine and spit out the other end and is hesitant to do anything to bring more fame on, even if it means denying his need to write. Who's simply trying to find a place where he can get some much needed peace. At first, he seeks this peace in nature, but when the demons start closing in again, he runs back to the city hoping to find some much needed distraction from the death and insanity he's beginning to see everywhere he looks. But even in the midst of chaotic celebration, he can no longer distract himself from that dark end. He slowly starts losing his mind, and the indifference of the people surrounding him only makes it worse. Hoping to gain some control, he convinces his friends to return to Big Sur, but there, the nightmare only worsens, as he detaches from the reality he questions whether or not he was ever really a part of, in one paranoiac delusion after the other.

The writing in Big Sur is about as sublime any I've ever read. While I think there's still quite a bit of naiveté in his "wisdom," his insights about fame, alcoholism, friendships, romantic relationships, religion, man's place in nature, etc... are remarkably profound and laden with examples of brilliant and masterful figurative language. While he may be "lost," he seems to have a fairly decent idea of where he truly is, and even though he curses his foolish need to write, that need never quite escapes him. In fact, even after his grand realization at the end, he still goes on to write 188 pages of wonderful words, which I think only further proves that those blessed with creative gifts have no ability to turn them off no matter how they're tortured by them. Kerouac is an artist, and even in the darkest hour when he's denouncing this need to write, I never quite believe him and think that he'd eventually follow that need right over the edge into eternal darkness given the opportunity/necessity.

This is not an easy book to read. There are no "nice," "clean" story arcs with "likable" characters (whatever the hell that means). No, here, readers will find a raw, powerful, gritty, poetic story about a highly flawed man's inability to find solace anywhere he turns and his inevitable break from reality, which is so brilliantly written, it's hard to believe that he could ever come back from it to write such a beautiful book. Anyone who's ever suffered a nervous breakdown, panic attack, period of drug-induced psychosis, etc... will be able to relate with Kerouac's increasing detachment from reality and the horrifying isolation he feels, especially in the company of friends and the isolating power of nature.

Big Sur is easily one of the best books I've ever read and I highly recommend it to anyone seeking a profound and artistic work of literature; however, I'd recommend reading a few of Kerouac's other books before starting on this one so you have a better appreciation for the changes Kerouac has made here as a writer and a person.

سومین کتابی که از جک خوندم (امیدوارم ناراحت نشه به اسم کوچیک صداش می‌کنم).

کتابای کروآک مثل آینه‌ای هستن که اگه بهش نگاه کنید قیافه‌ی جک رو می‌بینید. شاید بگید خب هر کتاب از هر نویسنده‌ای همین ویژگی رو داره (یا باید داشته باشه)، اما اگه کتابی از کروآک خونده باشید می‌گیرید که چی می‌گم!

به همین دلیل به‌نظرم خواننده نباید برای امتیازی که می‌خواد برای کتاب در نظر بگیره، «خیلی» به اتفاقات کتاب و پایان‌بندیِ اون توجه کنه چراکه کتاب فقط روایتگر بازه‌ای از زندگی کروآکه.
چیزی که باید بهش توجه بشه اینه که کروآک چقدر تونسته اون سبکِ بداهه‌نوازیِ (نگفتم بداهه‌نویسی!) جز مانندِ دیوانه‌وارِ لعنتیش رو پیاده کنه. و چقدر تونسته در اینکه داستان از ریتم نیوفته موفق عمل کنه و اون پُرچانگیِ خاصش رو داشته باشه.

طبق موارد بالا بنظرم امتیاز ۳/۵ براش خوب باشه.

درخشان‌ترین پارت کتاب جایی بود که کروآک احوالات یه آدم دائم‌الخمر رو توصیف می‌کنه. و چه غم‌انگیز که تصویری که اینجا از جک در آینهٔ این کتاب می‌بینیم به اون توصیفات خیلی شبیه.

مرسی که اینقدر صادق بودی جک و اصلاً هم اشکال نداره که به قول خودت، سر و وضعت هیچ به نویسنده‌ها شباهتی نداره!

A great book about the demons of Jack Kerouac. If the reader doesn’t know anything about Kerouac and/or had never read any of this books, this novel will not have the same meaning. Having personally read some of his books, especially the Dharma Bums, If found this book to very interesting, and like nothing else I had read. It’s basically about Jack, in 1960, trying to deal with his fame being known as the most famous beatnik. As we know now, he really looked at himself as more of an author than a leader of the beatniks and would rather had people read his books than idolize him as the paragon of beatnik ways…ala drinking, womanizing, traveling and partying.

Throughout the book he chastises himself for the way he has lived. He also drinks heavily which weighs heavy on his psyche and outlook on life. It’s hard to tell exactly when the DT's get him but believe me, he’s gottem in this book. I don’t want to say what it is, but it leads to a classic bit of prose, near the end, that makes the novel all worthwhile and displays the true brilliance of Kerouac. He seems to act like a bit of a jerk in the book but he’s totally aware of it. I unique and introspective self-study by a man who finds himself in turmoil from living his life in excess.

Kerouac struggles with the knowledge that he is trash as a human, and also trash as a writer.

He tries to get away to one of the most gorgeous locations in North America, but he trashes it up with his trashy tag-along acquaintances.

End of the book includes grotesque, obscene hallucinations, child abuse, and an absolutely terrible poem.

I enjoyed the first 30-40%, because it looked like the author was finding himself in nature, becoming obsessed with the sea and trying to learn its crashy swishy language. . . Cute and harmless. But he gets bored and resumes his stinking drunk ways.

Seems like Jack Kerouac was an easygoing, talented guy. He fell in with quite an inspirational crowd, he used up a ton of energy suppressing homosexual leanings; he struggled with alcoholism. And meanwhile fame ate away at him. Obviously his publishers would put out any shit he slapped together on paper. Result: Big Sur

No one, and I mean no one, writes alcoholic horror better than Jack. This book is powerful for those of us who have fought the demon. Jack, of course, succumbed to it and this savagely beautiful work was simply a precursor.

When I was in Saint Petersburg, Florida this past spring...( I'm going for a week again this coming December)...I noticed that in every book store I visited...Jack Kerouac's books were on display. He died in Saint Petersburg in 1969....yet his presence is still felt today in 2106 in Saint Pete.

So, when I discovered "Big Sur", was a $1.99 Kindle special recently --( having not read it) --I bought it. The writing is intimate from the start.

Now -- since reading "Big Sur", I want to rent the movie with Kate Bosworth, Jean-Marc Barr, and Josh Lucas. I saw clips... and it looks great.

So... what's this book about? Jack Kerouac spent three weeks in Big Sur.......struggles with alcoholism, and has an agonizing love affair. He describes his hallucinations---in ways that are are to imagine. He's so honest, vulnerable and clearly struggling.
Towards the end of the book Jack returns home to be with his mother-- and its all so very sad. There's a poem in this novel which he wrote called 'The Sea' ....( translating the sound of the ocean) .

A sad, tragic story surrounded by one of the most beautiful places in the world.

I like who I am when I read Kerouac, I love all the trees that go by on this train I’m on right now and I love all the sky that’s up above and the sun, its wide rays across all these fields and then the sun when it goes all sharp and pricks through the trees – And right now I’m forgiving everyone I’ve ever hated or been sore with because what is it they are all as close to being Buddha as you are? – The light continues to make me happy the whole journey, I’m feeling pleased and the only other person in this carriage looks relaxed too and we are in a little pocket of content. I’m reading Big Sur though and sometimes looking out the window at all the grass, sometimes hay bales, now the river all glittery in the lovely sunlight and long and thin like a snake-tail – snake body, snake tail and body, one and the same – but Jack is now making me feel sad suddenly, he’s talking about him and Cody’s wife Evelyn, and how she is always maintaining that she and I were really made for each other but her Karma was to serve Cody in this particular lifetime, which I really believe and I believe she loves him, too, but she’d say ‘I’ll get you, Jack, in another lifetime…And you’ll be very happy’ and that makes me happy, at least, because I hope he will be happy with her someplace else because you know, he says I want her to say I’ll never get rid of her – I wanta be chased for eternity till I catch her. It makes me feel good to think that’s gonna happen sometime – At the station I gotta take a piss and I am now with this guy beside me and his piss is so loud and I’m thinking about Kerouac and how he is in his other life now because he went and died and it’s tearing me up inside and I’m so damn upset he only lived to 47 and I damn near punch the wall in front of me and punch the guy beside me (though he doesn’t deserve it and in the back of my mind I know it) but I think – heck – it’s okay and I’m alright I tell myself ‘come on, it isn’t that bad’ and I know I’m right – The water from the tap is hot and healing on my hands and it’s crazy because I now love this guy in the bathroom with me because he’s a beautiful damned human like me so I go out the station and the clouds are so white and fake looking and I forgot how sad I was just a minute ago – Jack’s been pretty torn up about dead things in Big Sur though is what I’m thinking now as I walk past all the strangers in the city, with that dead otter he asks himself ‘Why do they do that?’ – ‘Why did he die?’ and I think why did he? I’m thinking of the dead things I’ve seen in my time and I feel like Jack, thinking why did it all have to happen, why did stuff have to die, just couple of weeks ago we saw sheep in downs with broken legs all limp at funny angles, limping around looking so sad and it damn near broke my mum’s heart and I’m thinking about them again now too passing the cross in Chichester, thinking it made me sad too – The issue is Jack is drinking too much and he’s shouting how SICK he feels and waking up drunk or hangover, whichever one is worse and all the Beatniks aren’t helping (back at home trying to break into his house and scaring his mother half to death) especially with the death he’s been thinking about even though it isn’t human it doesn’t matter it’s enough to make you sad like those sheep I saw, those poor damn sheep, I feel bad for them still, half way up North Street. It always makes me proud to love the world somehow – Jack says and I think the same; it is hard though and that’s why it makes me proud, maybe him too. He thinks he’s going mad. Maybe he is. No, I don’t want to think like that but it’s true, God, I think, now I’m in College Lane, I hate the number 47 forever now –

So the Big Sur is over the next day, I cleaned it off with four coffees or five. The light’s all fading already, January has been cold so far but I like girls when their noses go red – I think it’s cute. Jack’s been honest this time and it’s been breaking my heart hearing it. Next time I’m walking in town I’ll look at the sea maybe, think of James Joyce or whatever – Pluto eats the sea –/ Ami go – da – che pop/Go – Come – Cark -/ Care – Kee ter da vo. In the end though this has all been said a long time ago and I’m only hearing it now too late for anything. Doesn’t matter. It still makes me sad – There’s no need to say another word.

It's all fun and games till it ain't, this is the ain't part, the "Duluoz" crack-up novel installment set pinballing from San Francisco to Big Sur back an forth and peopled by the usual suspects of Beat Gen. notables, but really it's a mostly dyad between Dulouz, the Big Sur location and the sea in particular, that mix of devils brew, a tempest that threatens his will to go on. Booze will kill you eventually and it did for Kerouac, but not before he'd amassed a respectable oeuvre of personal novels all electroning around the nucleus of "On The Road" like sentinels guarding the ju ju so the bop won't flop an pinwheel off into the gawping maw of samsara again annagain. But really it was never about nirvana now wassit? Come home to God and Mother like a good boy, Jack, it was all just a dream.