“The boys beat on curbstones seeing symbols in the gutter” An elderly couple, faces wrinkled by laughter and lined by worry stroll the Paseo holding hands. In many worlds theory they are out there now, Alene Lee and Jack Kerouac, aka Leo Percepied and Mardou Fox, having found the resolve and strength to leave it all behind, the fame, the booze, the parties, the life. For love, for life. But not in this world. If he wasn't a good man he wouldn't have hated himself as he put his boozy self first.
Jack Kerouac was driven to communicate his experience on Earth. He gives all. The facts, the impressions, the doubts of others, the self doubts; this essential honesty is imparted with a manic contagious rush that transports us to his moment. He and his fellow Beats absorb the pain, then seek anesthesia, they stare into the abyss, they resonate to the speed fury of bebop, determined to seize the day even as their hearts break with foreboding. Every time he begins to strut he calls himself out,

“(difficult to make a real confession and show what happened when you’re such an egomaniac all you can do is take off on big paragraphs about minor details about yourself and the big soul details about others go sitting and waiting around)"

“all those good things, good times we had, others I am now in the heat of my frenzy forgetting but I must tell all, but angels know all and record it in books”


That’s how I see him, a brilliant demented angel recording all in books. And I'm grateful. At times in the Subterraneans he is unlikable. At these times though, he does not like himself. That makes me like him, because I feel that way about myself. He is in love with Mardou, her mother a Black woman, her father a Native American, and in 1953 that is a big deal, so he explores it, in his breathy exhaustive style. He made me uncomfortable at times but I would rather read that than have him shy away from confronting his inner monologue. I learned something more about racism, and I use that to change. There is an evolution of consciousness in this country, so what did these hopped up beatniks really think about Black people? They loved Bebop, hung out with Black friends, what was really going on inside their heads? What did they think about Native Americans? Jack Kerouac is the guy who tells us. He did the work, He sat down at his typewriter and took the time to communicate to us beings from his future.

“She was afraid of all the behatted men ranged in the bar, now I saw her Negro fear of American society which never gave me any concern” “‘You don’t understand’”

“I saw the vision of her father, he’s standing straight up, proudly, handsome, in the bleak dim red light of America on a corner, nobody knows his name, nobody cares - “

“I’d been out there and sat down on the ground and seen the rail the steel of America covering the ground filled with the bones of old Indians and Original Americans, - In the cold gray fall in Colorado and Wyoming I’d worked on the land and watched Indian hoboes come suddenly out of brush by the track and move slowly, hawk lipped, rill-jawed and wrinkled, into the great shadow of light bearing burden bags and junk”

I’m adding a lot of passages because the rhythm of the writing, the ancient anglo-saxon alliteration, the bebop phrasing, sweeps the reader into a state of mind. Rather than offering a dryly carefully crafted rendering of facts, he transports us out there onto that windy plain, sitting on the ground.

“But they were the inhabiters of this land and under these huge skies they were the worriers and keeners and protectors of wives in whole nations gathered around tents - now the rail that runs over their forefathers’ bones leads them onward pointing into infinity, wraiths of humanity treading lightly the surface of ground so deeply suppurated with the stock of their suffering you only have to dig a foot to find a baby’s hand - the hotshot passenger train with grashing diesel balls by, browm, browm, the Indians just look up-I see them vanishing like spots-"


We get to know Mardou, to understand why he fell for her. Her wisdom awed him, she was well read and charted her own path. Alene Lee never cashed in on the fame that was there for the taking.

I’m left with the impression that he knew that a life with Mardou is as close as he would ever come to escaping a life cut by the ruin of alcohol, but he falls short, and we are there to experience it with him, to hold his hand, shake our heads in sadness, separated by time, but there when he reached out, and we make that connection, complete that desperate circuit, in reading this heartfelt lovelorn book. Kerouac saw the world in imagery of suffering, angels, bodhisattvas and junkies. He crystallized his moment and succeeded in delivering it to us. Akira Kurosawa made a terrific movie called Drunken Angel, maybe Kerouac saw it, I bet he would have nodded his head at the title.

¿Qué pasa cuando el poeta del frenesí beat se queda atrapado en un sótano emocional?

Olvídate de las carreteras abiertas, los paisajes en fuga y la épica de la velocidad. Aquí no hay horizontes que perseguir, solo callejones oscuros y jazz en sótanos llenos de humo. Los subterráneos es Kerouac encerrado en San Francisco, sin escapatoria, girando en círculos en torno a un amor caótico y febril. Si En la carretera (ver reseña aquí) era la exaltación de la libertad y la juventud, esta novela es el derrape existencial de quien ya no sabe dónde más huir.

La historia —o mejor dicho, la espiral— gira en torno a Leo Percepied (trasunto de Kerouac), un escritor atormentado que se enamora de Mardou Fox, una joven bohemia afroamericana de ascendencia nativoamericana. Lo suyo es un romance devorado por la inseguridad, el ego y la autodestrucción. Él la desea, la idealiza, la asfixia con sus inseguridades, y en el proceso nos arrastra a lo más profundo de sus obsesiones. No hay estructura convencional ni progresión narrativa clara: todo es un flujo de conciencia que avanza como un solo de jazz descontrolado.

Pero hay algo más en esta historia que la hace aún más tensa, más cargada de incertidumbre: su dimensión racial. Una relación interracial en los años 50 no era cualquier cosa, y Kerouac lo sabe. Leo y Mardou no viven su historia en un vacío romántico, sino en un mundo donde sus diferencias pesan, donde la mirada de los otros se filtra en cada gesto. Y esa sensación está ahí, implícita, soterrada en cada duda, en cada gesto, en cada momento de desconexión entre ellos y en la mirada de quienes los rodean. ¿Está Leo realmente enamorado de Mardou o simplemente fascinado por su otredad, por la idea de una mujer que encarna un universo que él solo puede rozar desde fuera? Hay un subtexto incómodo en todo esto, una tensión que Kerouac deja vibrando en el fondo como una nota de bajo en un blues melancólico.

Si en En la carretera la prosa de Kerouac era un himno a la velocidad, aquí es puro delirio confesional. Las frases son largas, atropelladas, vertiginosas, llenas de comas y de digresiones entre paréntesis, que siguen a otras digresiones entre paréntesis, y a otra más, para volver al tema principal. Es puro jazz en palabras. Leo Percepied piensa, recuerda, duda, se obsesiona, todo en la misma respiración. Es un monólogo febril que mezcla filosofía barata, revelaciones poéticas y accesos de autocompasión.

Hay algo de la verbosidad de Thomas Wolfe en la prosa de Kerouac. Ambos comparten esa tendencia a la prosa torrencial, expansiva y poética, con frases largas y una cadencia que parece imitar el flujo mismo del pensamiento y la emoción. Pero Kerouac toma esa musicalidad de Wolfe, esa intensidad lírica casi obsesiva, esa necesidad de capturar cada sensación con un lenguaje desbordante, y la lleva un paso más allá, incorporando el ritmo del jazz y la espontaneidad de la prosodia del bop. Leyéndolo, sientes que estás escuchando una jam session de Charlie Parker o Thelonious Monk: un flujo improvisado y rítmico que parte de una idea central, se desborda en digresiones vertiginosas y luego regresa, a veces transformado, a su punto de origen. Y, no obstante, la esencia sigue ahí: una voz profundamente personal, febril, que no teme perderse en la grandilocuencia o en la introspección más cruda. Si Wolfe es la sinfonía grandiosa, Kerouac es el solo de saxofón en un club lleno de humo, donde cada nota es un latigazo de vida.

Y, sin embargo, también hay algo hipnótico en la manera en que Kerouac nos lo cuenta, como si estuviéramos escuchando a un amigo perdido en su propia historia a las tres de la mañana, con un cigarrillo a medio consumir y una copa que nunca se vacía del todo. Es ese tipo de confesión febril que parece desmoronarse sobre sí misma, pero que en el fondo es un retrato brutal de lo que significa amar y perder en un mismo movimiento.

«Algún día no la encontrarás allí arriba, cuando quieras encontrarla, la luz estará apagada, alzarás la mirada y Heavenly Lane estará a oscuras, y Mardou se habrá ido, y esto ocurrirá cuando menos te lo esperes, cuando menos lo desees»

Porque eso es Los subterráneos: una inmersión sin botella de oxígeno en la ansiedad, el deseo y el fracaso. Una novela sobre la obsesión masculina, sobre la incapacidad de amar sin destruir, sobre los límites de la libertad cuando lo que deseas es pertenecer a alguien. Y también una crónica de los márgenes: Kerouac nos mete de lleno en la subcultura beat de San Francisco, con su jazz frenético, sus bares, sus antros y sus personajes al filo de la sociedad.

Comparada con En la carretera, esta novela es más claustrofóbica, más íntima, más desesperada. Si la primera era un canto a la amistad y la búsqueda de sentido en el movimiento, Los subterráneos es el testimonio de alguien que ya no cree en la carretera como vía de escape. Aquí no hay épica, solo el vacío de quien se ha quedado sin dirección.

Pero lo más fascinante de todo es que, a pesar de la angustia, a pesar de la toxicidad de su relación con Mardou, hay momentos de belleza pura, de lucidez poética. Kerouac podía ser un desastre en su vida personal, pero cuando escribía, atrapaba verdades incómodas con una precisión dolorosa.

Y lo más demoledor es que Kerouac lo acepta. No lucha contra su fracaso, no intenta disfrazarlo de enseñanza o redención. Su derrota es absoluta, y la asume con un estoicismo amargo, como alguien que ha bebido demasiado y ya no tiene fuerzas ni para justificar sus errores. No hay épica en su desmoronamiento, solo un murmullo de resignación: así es la vida, así es el amor, así soy yo. Los subterráneos no es solo la historia de un romance fallido, es la confesión de un hombre que se sabe perdido y que, en lugar de buscar una salida, se sienta a contemplar el desastre con una mezcla de autocompasión y lucidez brutal.

“Y yo me vuelvo a casa, habiendo perdido su amor.
Y escribo este libro.”

Los subterráneos es una novela que no te deja indiferente. Es breve, pero te deja agotado, como si hubieras estado atrapado en la mente de alguien que no sabe cómo dejar de pensar. No es la obra más accesible de Kerouac, ni quizá la más celebrada, pero tiene algo que la hace única: es el reverso oscuro del mito beat, el momento en que la velocidad se convierte en vértigo y el sueño se desmorona. Porque, después de todo, cuando pasas demasiado tiempo en los subterráneos, la luz del día se vuelve insoportable.

Mnogo sličnosti sa "Naked Lunch"-om ali i jedna bitna razlika između spontane proze "The Subterraneans" i Barouzovih narkotičkih naklapanja - postojanje nekakve centralne teme, suštine. Ovo je praktično priručnik kako upropastiti osobu i vezu ukoliko ste izgubljeni, poluparanoični, nekonzistentni i beznadežno romantični. Jer Keruak to jeste - romantičan, nesiguran, izgubljen, sanjalica, Kejvov Loverman i pored svih ispada i (s)lomova ne možeš a da ne voliš njegovu brutalnu iskrenost, dnevničko ispovedanje i eksplozivnu energiju. Ako usput poznaješ likove koji se kriju iza raznih pseudonima slika bitničkog života je jasnija. Pristrasna sam jer se lako mogu poistovetiti sa Džekom, volim ga i zato preporučujem svakome.

the most honest love story i have ever read--you have to sit and read the whole book in one outing to get the full appreciation of its beauty. wonderful stream-of-consciousness-prose. tres magnific from a poetic genius.

Quería encontrarme con una generación de intelectuales, y admirarlos. Me encontré con una historia de "amor", escrita desde un macho que "sensiblemente" narra cómo conoció y se enamoró de una chica afroamericana, claramente desde su mirada pretenciosa, machista y racista

I feel somewhat conflicted about The Subterraneans .

For context, the whole reason I read or even knew the existence of this book is because of Jourdan--a friend of mine who appears to be hellbent on consuming every literary output of the Beats. He had just traveled from New York (on a 4-day train ride, might I add) to visit me in San Francisco, and upon landing, he insisted that we visit City Lights to find him a copy of The Subterranenans . And that we did.

While he found his copy at City Lights, I found mine in the back of a coffee shop in the Richmond a couple of days later, tucked away on a secluded shelf filled with hundreds of other untouched books. A pure coincidence. The price? 5 bucks.

Reading this book made me nostalgic for a San Francisco I had never experienced--one that is saturated with vibrant colors, flourishing nightlife, and the eccentric characters of the literary intellectual circles of the 50s. The San Francisco that Jack Kerouac describes in this book makes me marvel at how different the city has become since he last resided in the lovely North Beach neighborhood.

It also made me reconsider my past relationships (both friendly and romantic) and reflect more broadly on where I stand with those who I no longer know intimately. I tell you, I will never forget the old adage: you never know how good you have it until it's all gone.

With that said, the aforementioned writing style of this novel can be jarring and thus hard to digest at times. Despite the short length of this novel, it took several tries for me to get through 100 pages. And to no one's surprise, a book written in the 50s from the perspective of a privileged Ivy League White man will inevitably contain materials that do not age well. (Although, to be fair to Kerouac, interracial relationships in the 50s were unquestionably progressive.)

But, if you can put those issues aside, you might find that The Subterraneans is a short yet entertaining love story that offers a deep insight into Kerouac's unstable psyche.

3/5

The Subterraneans has helped me fall back in love with Jack Kerouac's writing. This is a supremely poetic account of his doomed love affair with a mixed-race girl, visceral as only love can evoke. I wasn't a fan of his 'spontaneous prose' in Maggie Cassidy, but here it feels a lot more heartfelt and natural.

Another novella follows - an On the Road if you wish told from the perspective of Pic, a black boy who makes his way from North Carolina across the country to the promised land of the West Coast. While told using sometimes unconvincing vernacular, this one moves along at a nice pace and has some sweet moments.

Jack Kerouac fa le magie con le parole; è un atleta del racconto, una sorta di escapista. Mi attira nella bolgia delle sue storie, poi si dilegua, riappare. Mi fa venire voglia di scappare via, mi fa sentire in luoghi lontanissimi rispetto a quelli in cui mi trovo fisicamente. Più che la trama adoro e bramo questa sensazione enorme di viaggio, di frenesia, quasi cupa, travolgente. I sotterranei è un breve romanzo autobiografico, in cui si narra la storia d'amore tra il protagonista e una giovane donna di colore. Mi è piaciuta tanto. Questi amori di Kerouac sempre nevrotici, appassionati, mai sani, destinati a finire, notturni, corrosivi. Splendidi. Sono tornato a casa, avendo perso il suo amore, e ho scritto questo libro. Dice l'ultima frase del romanzo. E io ne voglio ancora, perché è tutto così vivo nei suoi libri.

"Llegamos al Red Drum, una mesa cubierta de vasos de cerveza (unos cuantos vasos para ser exacto), y todos los chicos que entraban y salían en grupos, pagando un dólar veinticinco en la entrada, con ese tipo bajito de cara de comadreja y ondulaciones de la cadera que vendía las entradas junto a la puerta; Paddy Cordavan que entraba casi flotando como había sido profetizado (un subterráneo alto y corpulento, rubio, con aire de mecánico y de vaquero, que venía del estado de Washington con blue jeans a esta fiesta de la generación loca, toda llena de humo y enloquecida; le grité: «¡Paddy Cordavan!», y él contestó «Sí» y se acercó); todos sentados juntos, grupos interesan­tes en varias mesas, Julien, Roxanne (una mujer de veinticinco años que parecía profetizar el futuro estilo norteame­ricano con el pelo corto casi a la marinera pero negro, rizado y serpentino, y una cara pálida, anémica de morfinómana; y hoy decimos morfinómano cuando en sus tiempos Dostoievski hubiera dicho ¿qué?, ¿tal vez ascético o santo?, pero no en este caso, la cara pálida y fría de la muchacha fría y azul con su camisa blanca de hombre con los puños desabotonados, así la recuerdo, inclinada hacia adelante charlando con alguien después de haberse abierto paso a través de toda la sala de rodillas, a fuerza de hombros, inclinándose para hablar con una colilla muy corta de cigarrillo en la mano, y recuerdo la exacta sacudida que le daba en ese momento para hacer caer la ceniza, no una sino varias veces, con uñas largas de dos centímetros, y también ellas eran orientales y serpentinas); grupos de todas clases, y Ross Wallenstein, y la aglomeración y allá arriba en la tarima Bird Parker con sus ojos solemnes, porque había perdido su anterior popularidad, hacía muy poco de eso, y ahora regresaba a una especie de San Francisco muerto para el bop, aunque acababa de descubrir o le habían hablado del Red Drum, había sabido que los chicos de la grandiosa nueva generación se reunían y aullaban allí, de modo que allí estaba, sobre la tarima, examinándolos con la mirada mientras soplaba sus notas «locas» pero ahora calculadas, los tambores resonantes, los agudos altísimos; y Adam que para hacerme un favor se retiró prudentemente a eso de las once de la noche para poder irse a la cama y levantarse a trabajar por la mañana, después de una rápida salida con Paddy y conmigo para beber una cerveza de diez centavos, rápidamente, en el bar Pantera, donde Paddy y yo en nuestra primera conversación echamos un pulso en broma. "

While at a used bookstore, I overheard two clerks in another aisle trying to decide where to shelve this book. They didn't mention the author or the name of the book, but location questions such as 'philosophy?' and 'biography?' and 'just plain fiction?' encouraged me to find their aisle and say, simply, "I'll take it." (Paperbacks were on sale that day for a quarter.) At that time, I had just finished Burrough's "Junky" and had just started on Ginsberg's poetry. Obviously, the universe conspired: "This too! Now!" Kerouac's prose/poetry here, such as'...the keenpure lostpurity lovelyskies of old California in the late sad night of autumn spring comefall winter's summertime...' is beautiful. The plot is a love story of sorts: Kerouac seems to have his hands full with a wide assortment of 'underground' lovers. Kerouac's impact (along with Burroughs/Ginsberg/Cassady) on the impending 1960's sexual revolution is arguably immense. But then again, these four guys and their women/men seem to have been there and back by the close of the 1950s (on a roll of sex/drugs/bopjazz). And arguably, Walt Whitman had been there and back by the close of the 1870s. Now, on to more Kerouac! And Burroughs! And Ginsberg! And I do want to know where Cassady fits in. Apparently, this novel was written in just three days. It almost feels like, given the popularity of Kerouac's other work, the author was pressured to meet a deadline. While messy, one can't deny Kerouac's honesty, his way with words.

Here’s what I had forgotten about Ti Jean.

The legend of Kerouac, promoted by the publication, highly edited for public consumption, of On the Road, in 1957, portrayed the Beats as upbeat, glorying in the joy of the road and of life lived on the edge.

But that was bullshit. Already in 1951, when Kerouac finished his OWN draft, the single scroll, now finally published, in uncorrupted format, as The Original Scroll, Ti Jean was so thoroughly disillusioned and eye-full and awake to the sorrow of his sad brief life — so sad was the book as he wrote it, and which the marketplace altered and corrupted.

So with the Subterraneans, written in 1953, during his years of neglect, and only published after the success of On The Road, already past 30, written in a ‘white heat’, 3 days, in his honest, sorrow’d, unbowdlerized style, the book is so utterly sad, disillusioned, self-aware... Ti Jean tried to play along with the myth for a few years, but he couldn’t really do it. Unlike Ginsberg, whom I met in 1973 or 1974, when he came to my college to sit cross-leg’d and chant for an hour “Nam Myōhō Renge Kyō”, who kept the Myth of the Beats going all those years.

Anyway..., revisiting this, so many years after it fashioned my youth, I can see what a fabulous writer Kerouac was, what heart — even when pathos descended to bathos — and that the cynicism of those who return to Kerouac in their 40’s, only to realize — or to prove, really — that they’ve ‘outgrown’ him, will pass, years later, when they are no longer threatened by the illusions of their *own* youth — and can see him unfiltered and so full of woe.

By the way, Alene Lee was something of a genius. Lucien Carr, who conducted an affair with her for many, many years, said that he had his IQ tested as 155, but that he always considered that Lee was smarter than him — that they all, Burroughs, Ginsberg, himself, considered her as an equal. That’s something that doesn’t quite come through as clearly, though Kerouac knows it, to the uninitiated. The book also contains an interesting scene with William Gaddis (Harold Sand), along with the famous scenes with Gore Vidal and Alan Ansen and others.

Tf?? Horribly unlikable narrator (slips between novel and memoir throughout) who exoticizes the black woman at the center of his affections UNTIL he puffs his ego up so big he fucks up (in a really ugly way) the only thing he cares about..

Though there were some moments of clarity, prose is almost incoherent the entirety of this— has he ever heard of a period??

Convinced that you just had to be a white boy who kinda knew how to write in the 50s bc no..
THIS is the canon???

I’ll try on the road but not sure if I’ll get through if it was anything like this.