ok i still have a few pages left of jack's drunken manic breakdown, but i have to say that i am just not impressed with kerouac, at least not based on what i've read. i read on the road years ago, and all i really remember is that i wasn't significantly impressed with it, and i couldn't get past his misogyny. And now, 20 years later, I feel the same way. I respect kerouac for what he was at the time, the new kind of literature he helped create, the irreverence for convention, the love of art and attempts at making meaning of life in the postwar 50s ozzie and harriet world. brilliant? i'm not sure, maybe, in some way. i saw an exhibit at the NY public library of some of his artifacts, the scroll he wrote on the road with, a fantasy baseball league he created as a child, complete with elaborate stats and baseball cards. but if he was so brilliant, why was his opinion of women so low? He seems incapable of recognizing women as intelligent people, they are nothing more than sexual objects to him, only significant in their relations to men, and i can't ignore it.

but i do like thinking of big sur, thanks for that jack.

Big Sur-prise !!! What a bad pun !! I guess COVID isolation makes one come with these.

I have often read about journeys on the US West coast and to the Big Sur by others. I almost attempted it once but took a different route driving to Vegas from San Francisco.

Kerouac’s travelogues had sounded legendary with quite a few of my friends referring in our book conversations. This was a wonderful surprise though I think I was expecting it. The sentences are as long as possibly the journeys you might take to the Big Sur. The storyline - if there was one I missed it - is a large mass of thoughts passing through the author’s mind. Something like what will be on your mind let’s say when you on a long drive. With the music playing and everyone in the car is in their own reverie.

““This is the first time I’ve hitch hiked in years and I soon begin to see that things have changed in America, you cant get a ride any more (but of course especially on a strictly tourist road like this coast highway with no trucks or business)—Sleek long stationwagon after wagon comes sleering by smoothly, all colors of the rainbow and pastel at that, pink, blue, white, the husband is in the driver’s seat with a long ridiculous vacationist hat with a long baseball visor making him look witless and idiot—Beside him sits wifey, the boss of America, wearing dark glasses and sneering, even if he wanted to pick me up or anybody up she wouldn’t let him”

Loved the references to the various experiences en route. I will definitely read more of Kerouac ( hope I get the time to do it ) and love his easy writing style.

Recommended

The most harrowing account of alooholism I have ever read. As a recovering alcoholic myself, I found I could relate to his story, as I can also to Kerouac's life. This was a well written book, (some of his quite frankly are not). As he descended into alcoholism he could no longer write with any real coherence, and became an obnoxious fool who was no longer taken seriously anywhere, and was no longer wanted anywhere, not even in his hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts. The kind hearted and softspoken writer featured on the Steve Allen show in 1958 turned into someone who was drunk all the time, spouting racist comments and radical right wing comments in bars. In fact he is probably the worst alcoholic famous writer we have ever had.
That said, this story of his life right after the fame of "On the Road" is vividly portrayed and honest. Brutally honest- the shame, paranoia, and alcoholic delusions and hallucinations are all too real here. JK never wanted fame and he could not handle it. At the end of the book Kerouac seems to recover, momentarily, for his next adventure. This book was probably his last good one, and it resonated with me and disturbed me, which it should anyone.

A world weary Kerouac seeks a physical and spiritual retreat...I so wish he would have found both and stayed with us a little longer. It would have been nice to see what works he would have produced past his 50th year; sad to say I think we have lost much from his untimely passing.

I don’t know why I did this to myself.

The thought of being stuck in an isolated California cabin with these wankers took me back to my brief time in art school; listening to dreadful night-scrawled poetry in the canteen as a bunch of tossers sought to shout their profound waffle.

As I slogged through ‘Big Sur’s’ ‘gloopy’ fucking beatnik twattery I had many of the same reactions I felt while reading ‘On the Road’. This autobiographical novel simply annoyed me with its rambling, introspective un-stoppable-ness. I don’t have much sympathy for narratives of big drinkers who bring about a daily existential crisis by getting pissed and fannying about with like-minded drinkers, so I wasn’t surprised that I didn’t enjoy this. More fool me for feeling compelled to give Kerouac another go.

Maybe I’m just a philistine, un-attuned to the clever nuances of beat think, but the work of Burroughs and Ken Kesey and even Ginsberg doesn’t have me rolling my eyes so violently as I read.

Yes, as always there are some stunning sentences, some lovely insights in amongst all the ‘goopy’, stream of consciousness, cliff hanger to a mental breakdown junk in there, but is there anything as tedious as someone recounting their dreams? And there are at least 5 examples of dream narratives in this hell ride!

Big Sur is the second Jack Kerouac work that I've committed myself to reading. The first was On The Road, which I left about a third of the way in. I was unable to connect to it at the time. I feel that reading Big Sur at this specific time in my life was an excellent choice being that many of the topics Kerouac touches on in this work are the same as those I've been mentally wrestling with in the past several months, i.e. human interconnectedness, role of love in the chaos of life, relationship between the living and the dead, symbolism in nature, human incapability to fully comprehend/empathise with other humans, and the list goes on. Kerouac's writing style, stream of conscious, was thought provoking. It kept my full attention and led me to pause at the end of sentences, paragraphs, pages or chapters to contemplate what he was attempting to convey and to relate it to my own life. It's been a few days since I've finished the book and I still find my own thoughts being structured in his writing style. In a way, it's led me to see my own mind from a different perspective. Big Sur may not be for everyone but I do encourage at least giving it a try.

My fourth Kerouac, and the best I have read of him so far. But, unlike the others where he simply goes a wandering from one place to the next, Big Sur mostly takes place in, Big Sur, California. Damn, what I'd give to be there now. All that sun. I'm due a much needed break.

Jack Duluoz (the fictional Kerouac) who is suffering with mental and physical exhaustion as a result of not being able to cope with a life in the public eye seeks comfort in a secluded cabin. There he drinks, types, drinks some more. Actually he drinks a lot. In fact Big Sur is a novel about the effects alcohol has on the body and soul. Kerouac’s description of the paranoia and existential disconnectedness he feels during his marathon binges makes for some pretty despairing writing, but then that is the whole point. Big Sur eschews the almost Transcendentalist hopefulness of On the Road for the most negative kind of existentialism. There is no majesty in the waves against the rocks as Kerouac looks out at the ocean, only the horror that life and all of its meaning seems a deep nothingness, as abruptly as the coast disappears into the water. Even the landscape fills him with a sense of impending dread.

Characters from his other novels do crop up, but I feel like this is jack at his most cut off from the world. The first-person descent into madness and psychotic delirium that takes hold leads to one of his most powerful works. It's certainly not a book to be inspired by like some of his other novels, but his wry observations and thoughts under the influence of alcohol did make for some compelling reading. For those who are big fans of both On the Road and The Dharma Bums this might lead to disappointment, but I was more impressed with this.

Sometimes I live in the country.

I thought that I was going to be in for a treat, but I found that I disliked this book. Some say that this book represented his downfall, but I don’t know why since he lived another 7 years and got married two more times. Was this his last book? He was drinking too much, and then for a week, the last chapter of this book, he was drinking and not eating. His depression was deep and his mind, rambling, and it actually gave me a headache. But I was finished with the book by then, so took an aspirin and went to bed.

Early on, when listening to his talk about Buddhism and his depression in which the grass was said to be “sad Grass,” and his temporary girlfriend’s hair, “sad blonde hair,’ I thought that he should go into a Buddhist monastery, and when at the end of this book, his girlfriend said, “Jack, let’s go into a monastery,” thinking it was a solution, I laughed. It was the only time I laughed in the entire book, but it wasn’t meant to be funny anyway.

I started out enjoying the book, after all he was going to stay alone in a cabin for 3 weeks at Big Sur. What could be more lovely? Well, the Smokies in the fall could be. His descriptions of the land and nature on his walk to the cabin were wonderful which made me think, he can really write when he isn’t writing that crazy beat poetry of his that I hate. I even hate the beat of it when it is read.

Well, he gets to the cabin and begins feeding the birds and a little mouse, even Alf, the mule that he sometimes says is a burro, but he knows he is just a mule. He walks across or under the highway to see the farmhouses, walks along the beach, and even saves the bugs from drowning in a river. He doesn’t seem to be drinking much either, or I am too caught up in nature to notice. But then, he gets bored, opens the rat poison container that he had closed when arriving and leaves for San Francisco where he gets with his friends and gets drunk. Stayes drunk. Then they all head back to Big Sur, and now Big Sur looks more dangerous than before. It always has been with its winding narrow highway that makes you realize if you look at the ocean too long while driving, you could become one with it, driving right off the highway, tumbling down a cliff.

I didn’t read “On the Road” when I was in Berkeley, but I had heard of it and knew that all the kids that came into town with backpacks were hitchhiking across America. I was jealous. Then I took a creative writing course, and the professor introduced us to Allen Ginsberg’s poem, “Howl” and another about a supermarket. Both were good, “How” was excellent. His others, that I tried to read later, did not make any sense. I just didn’t get it. Years later in the late 1980s I began reading beat literature, if you want to call it that. First, I read Allen Ginsberg’s biography, some poems, then “On the Road,” and “Junky.” I stopped reading them all but had always said that I would read more of Kerouac, so this book and maybe “The Subterranean.” I should have read them while in Berkeley because I was much less judgmental of people’s lifestyles, for while nott being a Christian then, my later Buddhist training taught me to not harm others, and that is where I am now in life, although no longer a Buddhist, no longer believing in karma, knowing that this teaching harms, I still hold on to the other.

I, at least, thought that there would be interesting conversations in this book, but much of it was about his own feelings, his depression, and how everything looked bad or sad. I suppose this is the fault of years of drinking, which is really sad, to use his own word. He certainly was no longer the Kerouac that loved life.

Christ jesus, Jack Kerouac. You made me sit on an overturned newspaper box on the corner of 14th and 8th at 10:30 PM on a Sunday night and race to finish your book before my eyes, unglasses'd, lost their focus. It's not writing. Nor is it typing. Instead, Big Sur is the hangover to On The Road's glorious golden binge. In it, Jack Duluoz is stuck in an endless cycle of slugging down cheap wine and drifting from party to adventure to mistake in San Francisco. He achieves a kind of peaceful salvation in his buddy's wilderness cabin along the roaring coast of Big Sur, scribbling free verse by the nighttime sea cliffs and chopping wood and feeding a mouse. But it's the early 60's and his book On The Road has gotten him crowned King Of The Beats; naturally, this does not solve problems as much as it creates them. Dean Moriarty, aka Cody Pomeray, enters the picture, but whereas in OTR Dean was the sparking mainspring that spurred Sal Paradise onward and upward (with a little help from his auntie, of course), here he's pushing 40 just like Jack, trying to maintain his family despite his continued foibles and flaws. Dark, booze-damaged sex and an ever-dominating sense of unease begin to creep into the usual talking jags and uncaring wackiness of the Beats. Never quite unable to outrun the DT's, Jack makes one last trip to Big Sur with his companions, and there, as he puts it, "sees the Cross". Harrowing. As. Shit.

My father, who gave me this book on my 21st birthday saying "read this after your first pub crawl" (too late) describes this as the penultimate book in what could have been Kerouac's great narrative of life, the final volume being his ultimately finding sobriety. Which, of course, he never did; he died choking on unclotted blood fountaining from a liver too exhausted to save itself. Looking forward to seeing the movie of this; wait a few months and maybe I can double-bill it with the similarly upcoming On The Road movie. Should be interesting.

Que faire après les années de frénésie racontées dans Sur La Route, et quel sens donner à son existence quand on a vécu si intensément? Voilà bien je crois la question majeure posée par Kerouac dans Big Sur, question à laquelle on ne donnera pas de réponse bien sûr pour ne pas gâcher votre plaisir de lecteur(trice):)

Cette question, Kerouac a dû la tourner et la retourner dans sa tête maintes fois après 1957, et les années de folie qui ont suivi la parution de son manifeste beatnik. Aussi, quand il écrit Big Sur vers 1960, il est fatigué des excès en tous genres, des gens bigger than life, des beuveries qui vous laissent pour presque mort le lendemain matin et des voyages aux 4 coins des États-Unis sans aucun répit.

Le personnage principal de Big Sur, Jack Duluoz( avatar fictionnel de Kerouac) décide donc de passer 6 semaines seul, coupé de cette vie de tumulte, au bord de l'océan à Big Sur, Californie. Là, il y apprécie la nature apaisante, le silence ou au contraire le fracas des vagues et il jouit d'une solitude et d'un repos complets.

Mais très vite l'exalté en lui commence à douter de sa capacité à s'arracher à sa vie de bohème et au fait la nature est-elle si bienveillante que ça ? Peut-on laisser tomber une vie aussi intense pour se retirer soudain du monde et de son chaos ?

Kerouac nous livre un roman bien différent de Sur La Route: moins mouvementé, moins excessif, moins drogué, moins sexuellement débridé, même si on retrouve tout ça bien sûr mais dans des proportions moindres comme si Jack, le roi des Beatniks, s'était assagi à l'aube de la quarantaine.

Le roman est bien plus contemplatif que Sur la Route, Kerouac y livrant de très belles descriptions de Big Sur. On sent tout l'amour du personnage pour l'endroit et en même temps on pressent ce que cette retraite en pleine nature peut avoir d'incompatible avec la caractère de Jack. Et puis tout comme lui la nature est double: apaisée et déchaînée.

Mais plus que cela, c'est une très belle méditation sur la place de l'Homme dans le monde, son rapport à soi et aux autres, une interrogation sur les choix de vie que l'on fait et qui peuvent nous sembler mener dans une impasse, ainsi qu'un portait très efficace d'un homme qui se cherche encore à 40 ans et qui n'aura sans doute jamais fini de se chercher.

En cela Kerouac nous offre un second roman aux thèmes universels, extrêmement spirituel et un deuxième chef-d'œuvre à mon sens:)

Pour aller plus loin:

Voir Into The Wild(2007) de Sean Penn.

Écouter California Saga(1973) et plus particulièrement le morceau Big Sur, et également Until I Die(1971) des Beach Boys.

The sea seems to yell to me GO TO YOUR DESIRE DON'T HANG AROUND HERE -- For after all the sea must be like God, God isn't asking us to mope and suffer and sit by the sea in the cold at midnight for the sake of writing down useless sounds, he gave us the tools of self reliance after all to make it straight thru bad life mortality towards Paradise maybe I hope... But some miserables like me don't even know it, when it comes to us we're amazed -- Ah, life is a gate, a way, a path to Paradise anyway, why not live for fun and joy and love or some sort of girl by a fireside, why not go to your desire and LAUGH... but I ran away from the seashore and never came back again without that secret knowledge: that it didn't want me there, that I was a fool to sit there in the first place, the sea has its waves, the man has his fireside, period.

Kerouac's last stand, for all intents and purposes. The Beat Legend is in top form here, as he describes as best as we could ask him to the sickness and insanity that plagued his final years, shortly after the publication of On the Road. We watch in horror and sometimes sick fascination as his mind and body deteriorate under the pressures of the bottle, the sudden fame, and the sadness of existence which took his life just a few years after the novel's publication. I couldn't help but feel guilty to even be reading this, and hooked on it, like a grim soap opera where I want to see just how shitty things can get for our dear protagonist over the course of the events being described.

Ah, Jack, you were one of the best we had and I believe I owe you an apology. I'm sorry I ever said a bad word about the writing you left behind for us, and I'm sorry I criticized your style for not being polished enough, not quite "F. Scott Fitzgerald" enough. It is my hope that in death you found not the horror you have outlined here, but the peace that's described in the Zen, Bhuddist, and Christian scriptures you so often cited. You were more human than you ever gave yourself credit for, and as such, subject to heights and depths of light and darkness that most of us will never be able to imagine. Whether describing joy or utter despair, you did it with a tender generosity that could make even a nervous breakdown seem like a perfectly logical response to this modern world of ours. So, thank you.