So I finished my first read of 2017,  Jack Kerouac's  Big Sur. The first thing I should probably mention, if you're not already familiar with his work, is that Kerouac's writing style is definitely not for everyone, with long, meandering. stream-of-consciousness sentences - and a frequent ignoring of conventional grammar. Seriously: commas are routinely ignored and full stops are a rare sight indeed. It takes some getting used to.

Kerouac's writing is, however, in my humble opinion, beautiful. Clearly the product of a tortured, wild man, addicted to alcohol and the endless drive to live life to its fullest - but in this reader's eyes there is a genius to his descriptions; a way of seeing the world that wouldn't even occur to most others. He plays endlessly with words and language, manipulating it to his own will, producing crazy flights of linguistic fancy that have you guffawing and producing melancholic sighs - often both in the space of a single paragraph.

Big Sur is part of the Duluoz Legnd - Kerouac's vast array of travel writings that essentially chronicle his incredible life - but it is very much a different kettle of fish compared to Kerouac's better-known and oft-praised  On the Road. That novel, which propelled him to such unwanted fame, basically tipped him over the edge. Big Sur chronicles Kerouac's descent into madness - his struggle to deal with the success and responsibility brought on by his earlier novel's success. “I’m just plumb sick and tired… of the whole nerve-wracking scene", he says - and he means it.

A friend offers Jack Duluoz - the pseudonym Kerouac uses throughout all his books - Big Sur cabin, a place to stay, hold up, write, and ultimately use to save himself. Sadly, this does not prove to be the case, as Jack goes on relentless drinking binges, starts a twisted love affair with his friend Cody Pomeray's (Neal Cassady in real life) mistress, and generally becomes increasingly more paranoid about the motives of his friends. He falls out of love with nature, argues and fights, struggles to make sense of anything, drinks himself into further stupors, and waits for the end.

Big Sur is not a book that is easy to 'enjoy', at least not in the traditional sense. It's too harrowing, too painful - perhaps, after all, too real. It isn't easy to sympathise with Duluoz (or, rather, Kerouac) who was obviously not the nicest of people. He was, however, a distinctly troubled man, and a very talented one. This book, one of his last before death finally caught up with him, is so far removed from the free-flowing, optimism and celebration of the Beat lifestyle that we got in On the Road. This is no great American dream, the romance of the road. Instead, it is the stark reality that death waits for us all. A tough read, but one worth exploring.

Kerouac in a more contemplative mode. Much quieter and introspective than his reputation from On the Road.

Ma mentre siamo in viaggio per andare da Cody la mia pazzia comincia già a manifestarsi in maniera più vistosa, un altro di quei segnali che qualcosa non va di cui avevo parlato in precedenza: pensavo di aver visto un disco volante nel cielo sopra Los Gatos - a otto chilometri di distanza. - Guardo e vedo quella cosa che vola e lo dico a Dave che dà un'occhiata e dice: Ah, è solo la punta di un ripetitore della radio. Mi ricorda di quella volta che avevo preso una pillola di mescalina e avevo scambiato un aereo per un disco volante ( strana storia questa, per scriverla uno deve essere comunque pazzo. )
Parecchi anni dopo On the road Jack Kerouac ci trasporta nelle profonde malinconie, nella disperazione dovuta alla dipendenza da alcool. Big sur è un lavoro sincero, che assomiglia quasi ad un urlo liberatorio. All'inizio lo scrittore è rasserenato dalla sua permanenza in una baita, a Big Sur California, poi viene assalito da un profondo tormento con forma da incubo a occhi aperti. La compagnia degli altri, le bisbocce, le maratone di bevute, lo conducono velocemente verso una spirale di delirio da cui non si rialzerà davvero. E infatti il libro ha una improvvisa implosione, esattamente nell'ultima pagina, dove lui finalmente si tranquillizza. Andrà tutto bene, dice, ma non perché ci sia effettivamente miglioramento, ma è un fatto di accettazione. Aveva capito di non poter guarire.

Knowing that I was about to venture on an 'intervention' weekend with an alcoholic relative, a friend recommended this autobiographical piece to me for its vivid subjective descriptions of extreme alcoholism. As such, it offered some insight, but was too idiosyncratic to have much relevance to the person I've been dealing with, lo, these many years.

This book happens to be the first I've read by Jack Kerouac. I'd tried his On the Road when friends were reading it during high school, but hadn't liked the style. This book, by a considerably older writer, wasn't so off-putting, though Kerouac's habit of misspelling and mispunctuation was, in many cases, pointless, perhaps just downright lazy, and therefore irritating. Still, occasionally there'd be a passage of almost poetic lyricism.

But if Kerouac's prose approaches poetry, his poetry, if "Sea", the poem concluding this edition, is indicative, then his poetry approaches absolute incoherence. I couldn't finish it.

Керуак хоч і писав все життя одну книгу, в сенсі з тими самими персонажами й собою як головним героєм, але вони можуть сильно відрізнятись за стилем і настроєм. Щойно прочитавши «Волоцюг дгарми» з їхнім бадьорим оптимізмом, я взявся за «Біґ-Сур» і отримав somthenig completly different. Втомлений славою й докучливими фанатами письменник, намагаючись вийти з запою погоджується пожити в хатині приятеля у Біґ-Сурі, спочатку все ніби непогано, а потім все летить шкереберть, герой поступово спивається і божеволіє, останню третину роману читати, м’яко кажучи, важкувато. Якщо Комубук його колись перевидасть, хай на обкладинці наведуть цитату "«Біллі, я не хочу одружуватися. Мені страшно...» — «Страшно?» — «Я хочу повернутися додому і померти разом зі своїм котом»", думаю, буде гарний маркетинговий хід.

Read from my 1962 reading list, this is the third Kerouac novel I have read. (The Road, Dharma Bums are the others.) I am even more impressed.

Don't get me wrong, it is not a happy book. In fact, it is the most disturbing of the three. But his power to describe: the natural world, the intricacies of friendship, the inner life. And the sheer propulsive energy of the writing. Finally, he captured in all these books a lost era, the Beat generation, an important, if under-the-radar, element of American society. If it had not been important he would not have become so famous.

But in Big Sur, he paints the life of an author ruined by fame, having a major identity crisis, and driving himself deeper and deeper into depression. Also he is clearly in the grip of the alcoholism that will send him to an early grave-he died at age 47.

I know there are those who decry any writing done under the influence of alcohol and probably they are right. Even more then the wonder of this writer who could so vividly write the experience.

Throughout the novel he alludes to a breakdown he had, while telling of all the weeks leading up to it, as he careens back and forth from a cabin in Big Sur to San Francisco, from solitude to being surrounded by people, from moments when he transcends his existential anguish to the depths of depression. The pages where he describes the actual hours of his breakdown felt true and real to me. And then, overnight, he is fine.

I don't know what that ability is, to recall and record moments from drunkenness and psychic meltdown so accurately. Certainly not an ability that promotes a stable or happy life. But if, as mental practitioners claim, memories are lost in blackouts and during madness, Jack Kerouac belies that theory.

“An awful realization that I have been fooling myself all my life thinking there was a next thing to do to keep the show going and actually I'm just a sick clown and so is everybody else.”

I have been avoiding writing this review for a long time. Jack Kerouac is an author I will always hold dear; his free spirit, his unquenched thirst for life and adventure, along with his unique writing style set him apart from any other author I’ve come across.

Kerouac was born on March 12, 1922 in Lowell, Massachusetts and he was 35 years old when he became famous, after the publication of his most well-known book On the Road. He wasn’t only a writer after that; he was a symbol; he was the embodiment of freedom, of youth. Above all, he was the spirit of the endless American road, the wanderer of the vast American planes. Jack was considered a revolutionist, a pioneer; the man who rebelled against society’s prudish morals, whose lust for life made him a legend.

In Big Sur the reader witnesses how wrong the public opinion was about him. Jack Kerouac wasn’t a legend, he was a human- being. Older now, and depended on alcohol, Kerouac sought solace from people’s expectations of him, in his friend’s cabin in Big Sur, only to deteriorate faster into madness.

“All over America high school and college kids thinking "Jack Duluoz is 26 years old and on the road all the time hitch hiking" while there I am almost 40 years old, bored and jaded in a roomette bunk crashin across that Salt Flat.”

Big Sur isn’t an easy book to read, nor a great one. It was written when Kerouac was at breaking point and it shows; whole passages make no sense at all and his attempts to a prose similar to On the Road’s are vain. But at the same time, Big Sur is heartbreaking. It’s an honest account of a man plunging into alcoholism, anxiety and depression. Kerouac was an icon, an inspiration for many young Americans to travel and dance and write, but in the end that wasn't enough to save him from his own deamons.

“'One fast move or I'm gone', I realize, gone the way of the last three years of drunken hopelessness which is a physical and spiritual and metaphysical hopelessness you can't learn in school no matter how many books on existentialism or pessimism you read, or how many jugs of vision-producing Ayahuasca you drink, or Mescaline you take, or Peyote goop up with- That feeling when you wake up with the delirium tremens with the fear of eerie death dripping from your ears like those special heavy cobwebs spiders weave in the hot countries, the feeling of being a bentback mudman monster groaning underground in hot steaming mud pulling a long hot burden nowhere, the feeling of standing ankledeep in hot boiled pork blood, ugh, of being up to your waist in a giant pan of greasy brown dishwater not a trace of suds left in it-The face of yourself you see in the mirror with its expression of unbearable anguish so hagged and awful with sorrow you can't even cry for a thing so ugly, so lost, no connection whatever with early perfection and therefore nothing to connect with tears or anything: it's like William Seward Burroughs' 'Stranger' suddenly appearing in your place in the mirror- Enough! 'One fast move or I'm gone'”

I really liked this one. Being inside Jack’s mind as he goes from a contented solitary man in the woods, trying to explore the sublimity of nature and being to a place of horror and anxiety caused by his alcohol withdrawal. His writing style is something I had forgotten since I last read him, and somehow I can now appreciate it more. This rambling poetry of a man who perhaps is able to see more than he wants to see. All descending to the point where all the mysticism of the era just doesn’t save him from his self-inflicted madness. In the end, of course, it was the alcohol and drugs and the others who shared his days and nights of philosophical pondering that made Kerouac one of the spokesmen of his time. All the innocence and “transcendent” debauchery of their attempt to make a more enlightened sense of the world.

1.5 stars. Jack Kerouac books: Bibles for bums. Drunken rants of an alcoholic. No plot or story. Truman Capote on Kerouac: “its typing, not writing.” Today Kerouac wouldn’t get published. No publisher would say “we’ll publish your drunken rants and descriptions of nothing!” Prozac Nation wouldn’t get published today either, but it was the original woman’s depressed blog. Now EVERYBODY does this.

Very hard to read all at once bc it’s line after line of personal angst of Jack walking around Big Sur: hey I’m in a cabin! What food do I need? If someone randomly picked up this book without knowing the backstory of Kerouac they’d laugh and throw it. On its own, without knowing the backstory, Big Sur doesn’t hold up as a paperweight. Like the movie Rumble Fish. If you see that and don’t watch the special features you think it was a POS. If you see that Coppola was trying to do a jean luc godard french new wave type film. Then you look at it in a different light “this is like watching a french film that makes no sense, its stupid; but artsy! Now i get it! There’s nothing to get”. With Big Sur you must know Kerouac is the beat generation (and all that encompasses) and it was interesting at that time, so this is culturally historical of the era and cultural milieu.

Today it doesn’t hold up. In order to appreciate Big Sur (if possible), the reader must know this is cultural history of the so called “beat generation”. The “Beat Generation” was afforded by people being in a certain age, in a strong US economy and environment of the 1950s when they could sit around pontificating, smoking cigarettes, drinking booze and stale coffee bc they could afford to. No farmer in the 1930s dust bowl had time to wax poetic. Kerouac weasiled out of military duty on psych /mental issues after a week when he should have been in WW2. It’s fine, there is no longer a draft (military isn’t for everyone). Post Wars 1950s was a time when life was free and easy. Kerouac was already rebellious sliming out of WW2 so he was able to sit on the outside of society narcissitically writing about himself and his drunk observations at a time when life in america was very free and easy. The beats were the beginning of the counterculture that became mainstream in the 1960s. Just like today, the liberal millennials are mainstream due to social media when prior; they were fringe. I suspect millennials, if they can read and know history (which they don’t) would find Kerouac fascinating and a cultural hero bc he’s basically a bum hanging out all day doing nothing but drinking (millennials smoke a lot of pot). I certainly don't look at a guy who dies at 47 from his stomach exploding after self-determined bad health as a hero. But i will see Big Sur ever so slightly differently bc the coastline hasn't changed (thank God) and think ‘this must have been exotic when Jack was here’.

The majority of the USA in the 50s was conformist, Jack may have appeared unique in that he was hitchhiking along PCH and the occasional conformist reader could say “wow look at his freedom!” (in the same way a homeless person has freedom) Today Kerouac is nothing close to unique. He managed to “afford” to live his lifestyle and that’s great. No wife or kids gives one a lot of narcissistic freedom. Yes he had a daughter but he was an absentee father not acknowledging her and only seeing her twice. I appreciate Jack being this guy in the structured 50s as the counterculture hanging out, describing his world in an ethereal manner bc he had time walking along pch to stop and smell the roses while he watches the tourists drive disparaging them (mainstream conformists). He’s mad bc “things have changed in america you can’t get a ride anymore” especially on a tourist road bc station wagons with FAMILIES wont stop to pick up a bum. Let’s stop and give a smelly bum a ride and squeeze him into my station wagon filled with my children. Kerouac makes the family man tourist the bad guy. Kerouac the entitled pontificator. Saying the father is a “witless idiot” makes fun of “wifey” bc even if he wanted to pick him up wifey wouldn’t let him (bad wifey! She doesn’t want to enanger her children to give a dirty smelly asshole bum a ride.). He makes fun of the children being children. “No room for a hitchhiker.” Today he would be a liberal yet wouldn't have an illegal immigrant move in with him. Makes fun of the father bc he has to raise a family and doesn’t have his freedom. I understand both perspectives but i don’t make fun of the conformist family man. Like being a family man is a waste of life (said by the drunk idiot who drank himself into a painful death). He disparages “tourists” diving by not picking him up like they are cruel, then says “but I don’t blame them” (bc I could be a serial killer. exactly!). He whines about his blisters as he walks along PCH in Big Sur like he’s on the Bataan Death March. To fringe liberals and millenials alike they may find this impressive and Jack thinks he is suffering being thirsty with blisters while walking (bc he’s too stupid to be prepared). All the while there were military men younger than him who were in Iwo Jima, D-Day, and Korea who I guarantee you had more to deal with than blisters and wanting a FREE ride while walking along the most beautiful coastline in the world. But like most liberals they only see their own perspective thinking they are heroic for doing nothing but mediocre “feats”. To the unaccomplished loser Kerouac is a Medal of Honor winner bc he got blisters on PCH bc he was too stupid to have a change of socks and extra water (when he could have taken a Greyhound bus).

Written in 1962, a product of its time. Then, living the bum, no real job, hang out, slacker lifestyle was different and unheard of. Adults in that generation had memories of the great depression and WW2. A real grown up in 1962 likely participated in WW2 or Korean War, and certainly remembered it. So this era was was the hardworking culture of america. This idiotic book was written after the biggest economic boom in USA. 1950s was an era of unprecedented prosperity AFFORDING this bum’s lifestyle. Kerouac was 28-38 during the 50s and that was a very affordable time to be a bum. Kerouac’s 8 days of military service gave him no respect for the country or the work ethic of his peers: Kerouac joined the United States Merchant Marine in 1942 and in 1943 joined the United States Navy, but served only eight days of active duty before arriving on the sick list. According to his medical report, Kerouac said he "asked for an aspirin for his headaches and they diagnosed me dementia praecox and sent me here." The medical examiner reported that Kerouac's military adjustment was poor, quoting Kerouac: "I just can't stand it; I like to be by myself." Two days later he was honorably discharged on psychiatric grounds (he was of "indifferent character" with a diagnosis of "schizoid personality").[28]

You must consider the source of anything you hear, are told, or read. I wonder why no such book was written during the 30s, or 40s? Essentially Kerouac is writing about party times AFFORDED by the economic climate that others sacrificed for and he denigrates. Kerouac would be a millennial today. Hanging out, smoking dope, drinking, “blogging” of the free wifi at Satarbucks about anti-establishment and accomplishing nothing.

Shocking any of his books are considered novels. Just autobiographical rants.

At that time anyone under the age of 30 got to experience the FREEDOM and prosperity of the 1950s: refrigerators, ovens, toys, TELEVISION, a newly invented concept of LEISURE TIME that great depression and war survivors had never experienced. So a reader could afford to think “wow how cool this idiot Kerouac is! They could afford to think that way. “I grew up with a nice family, went to the park, church, boy scouts, etc all american things but I never thought about literally aspiring for nothing and hanging out! Wow this is different.” Kerouac was a millennial pioneer. Today there are tons of millennials doing the same, so it’s nothing special. This is how he got his following, bc he was counterculture then. Today it is the culture. Conservative normal is counterculture (certainly in northern california where Kerouac was or NYC with the Beats).

The same people that would admire and have Jack Kerouac as a role model are the same who have reality stars, rappers, and celebrities as their role models. A mental midget, college drop out (when it was cheap and easy) alcoholic druggy who drank himself into a painful pathetic miserable death and hung around heroin addicts, homosexsuals, murderers (William Burroughs (a habitual heroin user that once accidentally shot and killed his wife while they drunkenly tried to do a William-Tell-like party trick.). Choose your role models wisely. Hemingway lived and experienced, sure he drank, but he boxed, went to war as a correspondent and ambulance driver, hunted, hung out with interesting people. Lol how Kerouac became a role model for some. If you ask why did I read it? So i can know and understand the enemy.

See Kerouac for what he is and his writings are. The minute I put Jack in proper perspective (like knowing what Coppola was trying to do with Rumble Fish or knowing you are watching a french film so your expectations change, the book became more tolerable (it still sucked). Maybe one shouldn’t have to have the proper mindset to see a movie or read a book to understand it. Then the book and french movie fail. But that limits one’s horizons.

You have to consider the literary and cultural historical position of Jack and the beats to endure this book. Anyone without knowing the background or read my review picked this book up, the sensible person would stop after 2-3 pages of reading a drunkard’s dribble of useless observations of other idiots. Knowing the backstory like Buwkoski is what makes it bearable. Beats are immortalized as 50/60s heroes. When really none were any literary genius or great american writers (they pretty much sucked at writing). A great american writer is Tom Wolfe. Not these substance addict losers.

Youth subculture really immortalized and idolized this as romantic. What’s romantic about being a drunk and alcoholic that you die in physical pain at 47 from your stomach blowing up? Their writing sucks, it’s not clever. Just mindless uninsightful observations that anyone can write.

For liberal potheads these guys are heroes seeing these losers as generational voices like they had something profound to say when all they were doing was just hanging out ranting at the world. Seeing it for what it is makes it possibly amusing (but not really). Taking this as literary genius is the emperor’s new clothes. They offer no insight or uniquely intelligent observations of society. Tom Wolfe (different era) does that. Liberals want their heroes so they see this as profoundly deep and meaningful bc they can relate to another bum addict.

It’s the “glorification of 'madness' from bums who could AFFORD to live 'mad' lives.”

Bunch of drugged out weird losers, nothing much more, romanticized by liberals as heroes bc they made a living (barely) from being drunks and alcoholics.

Today it wouldn’t be published with every blog ranting about what they did yesterday afternoon, nobody cares. But in 1962 it was unique bc people’s personal rants and angst wasn’t widely distributed (no internet or social media). Today there are a million blogs of people ranting about themselves thinking that others are interested. Today Kerouac would be a blogger of no consequence. However he started that beat “movement” and for that he remains in the pantheon of the pre hippie movement.

Couldn’t wait for this to be done (thank God I was smart enough to audiobook) felt like i was wasting my time and life listening to this. The point was made 30% into the book and could have been substantially shorter as the point remains the same. Surprised he even stopped bc he could continue writing as there is no end to ranting about your daily life. He probably turned in 80,000 pages and the publisher just took the first 256. Hence kerouac would be a blogger today (and nobody would read it or care bc there are denizens of this blogger crap).

No plot or story to this. Just a rant. This life may be interesting to do for a summer, but to make drinking and bumming around your entire life today doesn’t really work, now does it. Life’s too expensive. You and Jack will end up homeless in San Fran sleeping on sidewalk feces.

These are the ramblings of a man who writes great sentences. The story is about several trips taken by a man who may or may not be a fictional version of Kerouac. This may have been wildly popular in the 1960s, but I did not relate to the characters or their thought processes.

All over America high school and college kids thinking “Jack Duluoz is 26 years old and on the road all the time hitchhiking” while there I am almost 40 years old, bored and jaded in a roomette.

I brought this on the road with me hoping to recapture some of the magic of Jack Kerouac’s more storied work. Man, was I in for a shock. Big Sur finds our hero in a very different place. Struggling with alcoholism, ennui, anomie, general anhedonia, he takes a number of ill-fated trips out to Big Sur in hopes of finding a moment’s respite. Shuffling through scenes and crowds, the idyll he seeks proves elusive – the presumed haven turning to nightmarish metaphor before his eyes as he gazes out from this final jetty onto the monstrous expanse of the Pacific. He oscillates between anger and guilt, lashing out erratically at those around him. All the beatnik bromides and zenned-out nonsense that so confidently animated his earlier adventures have revealed themselves to be naught more than vapor and he’s left to confront the bleakness of the cliff’s edge alone. Desperate for a tether, he spends his days attempting to catch the essence of the sea through poetry. The godawful results serve as a final, resounding indictment. The real art, of course, is the book. What a brutal and haunting portrait it has become.

La mia videorecensione: https://youtu.be/15ruy9c31Qw