Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #45291 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-18
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Synopsis
Kerouac's gritty, moving take on the destruction of his own myth, as the "King of the Beats" approaches middle age! Unmistakably autobiographical, "Big Sur", Kerouac's ninth novel, was written as the "King of the Beats" was approaching middle-age and reflects his struggle to come to terms with his own myth. The magnificent and moving story of Jack Duluoz, a man blessed by great talent and cursed with an urge towards self-destruction, "Big Sur" is at once Kerouac's toughest and his most humane work.

Customer Reviews

Very Readable
Beat literature seems very popular again right now, and this book is one of Kerouac's most readable. The sentences flow together, and images are easily portrayed with minimal fuss and maximum impact.

As this is one of the last books that the author wrote, there is a strong feeling of self-contemplation, with the author tuning in most immediately to his encounters with the wild beats of the ocean on the shores of Big Sur. You sense while reading this the smallness of the human soul when placed up next to the unimaginable forces of nature.

Keroauc's mind seems to wander relentlessly as you follow his thought, and he only finds respite once he has given into the wildness around and inside him, and completely surrendered to the ocean of being.

Escaping from the Beat
This is a book written by Kerouac several years after On the Road had made him famous. Fame did not sit easily with him and most of this book is his attempt to escape from fame and the notoriety it brings. I found this a sad book after OTR because although Kerouac exhibited a certain amount of youthfull insanity in the story of his crazy trips across America, in Big Sur the realisation has hit him that he may actually be insane. This is a very troubled book, but none the worse for that, just sad when you know that Kerouac died a few short years later, in his early forties, from the results of his drug and alcohol fuelled life.

BIG SUR
By the time of writing "Big Sur" Keoruac had developed this style of spontaneous writing and had a certain confidence in his work that payed remarkable dividends. His discriptions of the coastal retreat "Big Sur" are lively and poetic. For example "But there's moonlight fognight, the blossoms of the fire flames in the stove - There's giving an apple to the mule, the big lips taking hold" Many sections of this text are poetic, and indeed there is a poem entitled "Sea" at the back of this edition. Early on in the novel Kerouac understands from a letter from his mother that his beloved family cat has just passed away, he explains his grief in such a way that you actually feel pity for him and excuse him for getting nasty drunk to the cat's memory.

Big Sur is a very personal novel, a cry from a man on the edge of a alcohol induced nervous breakdown. It is somwhat sad in parts, altough there are many more jolly and even funny moments penned by Jack probably in less sober conditions. This book is all about getting behind the myth and understanding the real Jack Kerouac. As such, this novel will give a better insight into Kerouacs life than any biography, or even perhaps any other Kerouac novel.