Unreadable.
There's a story here. But the prose reminds me of a single guy taking off his clothes and throwing them around his apartment and never picking them up.

This book contains two shortish stories, The Subterraneans and Pic, both take place during the 1950s.

'The Subterraneans' is set in San Francisco and the main storyline is of a white man having a sexual relationship with a black woman and its subsequent breakup. The story is part biographical and explores the Bohemian subculture of authors and artists of the time.

Whilst the book does touch on some of the intricacies of interracial relationships, what stands out most is the writing style. There is an almost total lack of punctuation, an entire page consisted pretty much of one or two run-on sentences, paragraphs ran to several pages and there was a very liberal use of brackets, some of which seemed never ending. Couple this with the fact that the ideas bounced around all over the place made this a very hard story for me to follow. I considered stopping on more than one occasion, but I did finally start to get it and continued to see what happened next. Ultimately however, I felt my initial thought was best and I should have thrown in the towel. The main character was a racist, sexist bore with no redeeming features.

'Pic' is a very different, it's the story of a young black orphaned boy who makes a road trip with his older brother initially from North Carolina to New York and from there then on to California following the sudden death of their grandfather.

It is hard to think why a middle-aged white guy would want to try and replicate the voice of black youth but to my middle-aged white male ear he seemed to be relatively successful in doing so. This story has echoes of the author's 'The Road' about it but whilst better than what went before, for me, did not raise the overall book much above the mundane.

Urban legend has it that On the Road is the primary example of Kerouac's "spontaneous prose," but the description works much better for The Subterraneans, for better and for worse. (He actually reworked On the Road heavily before it was published, but wrote TS over a three day period. It took me slightly longer to read it.

Let's start with the "for worse" part. Man, Kerouac could be a sexist pig. The cavalier treatment of women in TS will drive many readers bat-shit. It's an honest and accurate picture of the protagonist's (and I think it's fair to say, Kerouac's) consciousness, and you can learn a lot about masculine consciousness (of a certain time and place), but still....There's almost no sense that Kerouac took women seriously as intellectual/creative or for that matter sexual equals. (See Joyce Johnson's brilliant Minor Characters for an incisive take on women and the beats; she did some time as Kerouac's girlfriend). Similarly, the racial stereotyping creeps into the novel through a variety of windows and side-doors, often in the guise of celebration. Not nearly as bad as Mailer's White Negro, but a less obnoxious cousin. For all Kerouac presents his protagonist as a guru of bop prosody, I never get the feeling that he understands much about the discipline demanded by bop, looking at it as pure improvisation.

Now for the "for better" elements. The prose is frequently quite energetic and at times brilliant. You can see how Kerouac influenced songwriters like Dylan and Tom Waits, both of whom boil down the energy into more focused forms. Kerouac paints sharp and often satirical portraits of the people hanging around the literary world of beat San Francisco. And, to circle back to the problems, the picture of male psychology *is* striking and honest. Kerouac isn't exactly celebrating the shortcomings of his main figure, but he also doesn't really have much of an idea of an alternative to the self-indulgence.

An odd book. Definitely worth it for Beat fans. Nowhere close to my favorite Kerouac (On the Road Dharma Bums, Desolation Angels).

Oh, Jack. As always, the enthusiasm and momentum in his writing is infectious. I haven’t read anything by Kerouac for a few years before picking this one up, and I’d forgotten about the weirdness of trying to settle into it like it’s a linear story intended to be clearly followed in detail when really it’s a tilt-a-whirl kind of ride not about to stop and explain itself so all I can do is hang on, watch the colors spinning past, catch enough bits and pieces of the conversations and memories to be able to follow along. Once I remember that, and let go of what I think I know about grammar and punctuation, this evens out into a smooth read.

The scenes that lend themselves best to the carnival feel of Kerouac’s writing are the late-night, not entirely sober party scenes. These are vibrant and cacophonous and we can see how easy it is to get swept up in the enthusiasm of this group of people and their wild migrations from home to a bar to a virtual stranger’s house, everyone talking and yelling over each other and chasing some big idea to the next stop.

Plot in a nutshell: Boy (Leo) meets girl (Mardou), boy crushes on girl, boy and girl date/hook up/get a little soulmate-y, boy flakes on girl and gets jealous of her flirting with other boys, boy decides he’s done with girl then decides he’s not, girl breaks up with boy. It’s sweeter than this, of course, and more frustrating, and somewhat more complex once all the secondary characters are added into the mix, but this is the jist of it. Leo pines for Mardou early on in the book, mentioning his great pain frequently and desire to die occasionally. It feels a little indulgent, all the moping, kind of a prod for us to start a Leo pity party that makes me glad when they do get together, because he steps away from the pathetic for a while when he’s with her.
I think I would label this one of the truest love stories I’ve ever read. It’s not the fairy tale, happily ever after variety, but Leo and Mardou’s relationship feels real. They get together in a lopsided, fumbly sort of way (she takes a while to warm up to him), make grand statements and promises in the rush of a new relationship, and then fail each other in small ways until the magic fades. There is no final reunion scene, or red-roses apologetic gesture, just the sadness of something ending that could maybe have been better than it was. In many ways, I like this better than I would a fluffy happy ending. By the end, I’m also more inclined to indulge Leo in his mopey sadness, because I’ve seen his ambivalence in action (want the girl, but jealousy and wanting other girls and a certain amount of self-sabotage get in the way), and it makes me a little sad, too.

DNF

The spontaneous prose is the only thing I was enjoying about this, then the casual racism become overt and vicious. Can we please leave rubbish like this in the past and focus on brilliant classics that are worthy of their title?

Well... finally finished this book. I takes some effort to get into the rhythm and cadence of the prose in this one... This is one of Jack's spontaneous prose efforts, and once I did get into it, I moved quickly. OK so now for the review, I'll not consider the style in doing so.

This was an interesting story about a person searching for his path and purpose. A story about a man who would love you but push you away at the same time, a man who while able to adore everything good about you, could find negatives in all of those said good things. All in all, it is a couple months snapshot of what Jack Kerouac's life was, or would turn out to be. He loves his friends but at the same time doesn't hesitate to turn on them in an instant of alcohol fueled delusion and rage. How can one man can in one moment see the world through rose colored glasses and then next see it all crashing down around him in fits of paranoia. Well that is the riddle of Kerouac isn't it, because in the end he did succumb to those delusions and paranoia, and escape to his mom to be taken care of.

One thing about some of the most powerful Kerouac work is that it is not about an uplifting story, it is not about having some good underling message or meaning of life. Sometimes it's there (Dharma Bums) and sometimes it is just real (Big Sur). But whether it is real or uplifting it is the true story, if not of events, then of the emotions of Jack Kerouac. In that regard Kerouac was never more open and honest than in his writing, he laid it all out there, his soul for dissection. Here he loves a woman (Mardou) but as always can never let that love develop and take root, he uproots it before it can, just another self sabotaged relationship in a life of broken bonds.

Kerouac gets a bad name for being immature, being misogynistic and his use of racial terms. I can only say that he did reflect his reality, and the only true knock on him that I can see is immaturity...that he had in spades and there is no reason for it other than his own character. Late 1940s / Early 1950s America was a far cry from what we are today, and yes we still have a lifetime of marathons to go before we can say we no longer have racial and gender issues, but America in that age was much farther away from where we are today than we can imagine. When you are raised with certain notions from an very early age they are truths in you consciousnesses, automatic reflex so to speak. To get past those first you must identify them as wrong, second you must disavow them in you inner self and finally you must replace them with newer, more reflective versions of life, and then you need to fully commit to this and ingrain these new values in your self, replace your neural pathways so to speak in logic and thinking so that it all becomes automatic. Not easy or quick and for some people only doable in part, Kerouac tried but could never complete this task.

So as we read Kerouac from On The Road to Dharma Bums to Big Sur we see his ideals and optimism slowly leave him only to be replaced by darkness and despair. The early optimism of his discovery of Buddhism is replaced as he slips back into is ingrained devotion to Catholicism. Looking at the physical events that occur through any other means except his own point of view betrays his work. There is no message for anyone in his prose, there is only a communication of his own mind and emotions that are presented. And in this effort, he is one billions times successful, you feel his pain, his joy, his delusion and disappointment every step of the way, you are there on his journey through the fever, pain and betrayal in Mexico City, to the joy of summing in Dharma Bums and of the near alcoholic psychosis of Big Sur. You are there with him, first person experiencing it all...that's what makes Kerouac a great writer.

I really disliked this book at first. I thought Kerouac had gotten lazy and was just writing whatever the hell popped into his mind-- and he his. And that is what makes the novel has compelling as it is. Kerouac is doing stuff I haven't seen anyone do in American Lit, and Kerouac is just such a romantic and optimist that it is hard to hate the man. "The Subterraneans" is a book about a 3 month fling between Kerouac and a young black woman. Kerouac's writing is tender and moving; one gets the feeling he really cares about humanity and people in general. He wants everyone to be happy, including the girl he falls for. I really feel that with this book Kerouac captured a "fling" type of relationship perfectly: the intense first love, the passionate fights, the irrationality of love, Kerouac does a fantastic job nailing all of this down. Why the 3 star rating then? The formatting really sucks for this book; it is hard to read--like literally hard to read. The type is all bunched together and the font isn't the best. I struggled through the first twenty pages, but ultimately felt rewarded. A very good story.

Written in three nights – and, yes, for good and ill it reads that way – it boils down to the story (according to Kerouac, a true story, with the names changed and the location switched from Greenwich Village to San Francisco) of a Canuck-American writer in his early thirties in the early 1950s who falls for a ten-years younger African American “bohemian” woman. They’re both fragile psychological messes, and he’s a drunk – the affair flairs up, burns bright, and then his drunken antics and his weakness kills the fire. It reminded me of one crazy sweaty drunken summer affair I had when I was a few years younger than the guy in this book – insanity feeding off insanity, the highs are very, very high, the lows are very, very low...

Kerouac's American Bohemia

Kerouac's novel "The Subterraneans" is based on a summer love affair between Kerouac and a young black woman in New York City in 1953. The setting of the story was moved to San Francisco at the behest of the publisher.

The book tells the story of the love, and its end, between Leo Percepied, the Kerouac character, and Mardou Fox. Mardou is half Cherokee and half black. She has grown up in poverty in Oakland and has suffered serious emotional breakdowns. She has gone from lover to lover among the Bohemia of San Francisco until she meets up with Leo.

The book shows some of Kerouac's understanding of his own character. He describes himself (page 1) as both an "unself-confident man" and as an "egomaniac". A few pages later (page 3) he confesses that "I am crudely malely sexual and cannot help myself and have lecherous and so on propensities as almost all my male readers no doubt are the same."

The Subterraneans are a group of hipsters, aspiring artists, drop-outs, con men who inhabit that bars and streets of San Francisco graphically described in this book. The book is full of mean streets, cold water flats, alleys, run-down stores, cheap bars, late evenings, pushcarts, and sad mornings.

Leo is initially sexually attracted to Mardou. When he learns and listens to her he truly falls in love. She is indeed a lovable character. The picture of the love is convincing. Unfortunately Leo/Kerouac remained throughout his life a mother's boy. Mardou tells him, properly and sensibly "Leo, I don't think it good for you to live with your mother always" (p.47) Leo nonetheless can't part from his mother. He also has doubts about his ability to commit to a black woman, particularly given the prejudice of his mother and sister. He dumps Mardou. It is his loss.

The book is written in long stringy sentences to imitate the "bop" improvisatory style of jazz riffs. I was put of by the style when I began the book but came away concluding it fit the subject matter. The apparent spontaneity and the sincerity of the narrative move the story along.

The book describes well the American hipster of the 1950s. It is ultimately a story of the need for love and the difficulty of commitment. It is a sad story and I think in the emphasis on the wildness of Bohemia can easily be misunderstood. Kerouac may have been somewhat wiser as a writer than he was as a man. He was able to take his inability to form a lasting relationship with a woman and describe it. He turned his experiences and personal difficulties into a poignant and lasting novel.
Art in Kerouac as in so many writers becomes a way of understanding and transcending one's life.

Robin Friedman

How did he become a writer?!

I was going to rise, do some typing and coffee drinking in the kitchen all day since at that time work, work was my dominant thought, not love- not the pain which impels me to write this even while I don't want to, the pain which won't be eased by writing of this but heightened, but which will be redeemed, and if only it were a dignified pain and could be placed somewhere other than this black gutter of shame and loss and noisemaking folly in the night...

Valoro de Jack Kerouac su sinceridad e inocencia. Puede que, al menos dentro de lo que leído, Kerouac sea el escritor más inocente de todos: genuinamente interesado por la diferencia, por el ritmo frenético de su vida y la de los demás, por las nuevas formas y maneras de ser y vivir y, por qué no, por las nuevas potencias narrativas que su pluma estaba siendo capaz de generar. En cierto modo, siento a Kerouac como ese niño que juega sobre la arena y se asombra con el potencial que dicho material, en conjunción con su propia capacidad creativa, encierran.

Sin embargo, me suele molestar un poco (puede que esto sea un rasgo más de su inocencia) su provincialismo; de hecho, Kerouac pareciera ser un vaquero texano gringo más (a pesar de ser canadiense)...uno de esos que cree que el orden instituido en el lugar más recóndito del sur norteamericano viene siendo el orden "divino" o, mejor, el orden "americano". A veces su escritura tambalea ante sus prejuicios (raciales, sexuales, etc)...tanto que uno se entristece de que alguien con una pluma tan poderosa puede ver reducido su potencial en virtud de sus creencias (y aclaro que he leído gente despreciable de la que valoro profundamente su oficio sin que sus juicios deprecien el valor literario de sus obras. Ahora se me ocurren dos: Celine y Hamsun, dos de mis favoritos).

A pesar de todo, este libro es bello. Es la vida y el desamor agrupándose en las páginas. Es el vuelo de alguien que no conoce a donde ir. Es Kerouac: su sinceridad, inocencia...estupidez. De lejos, el mejor de los beat que he leído.