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Product Description
Review
'Big Sur has a swing and a concern with living, a feeling for nature, a self-doubting humour and an awareness of posture which puts it squarely in the powerful tradition of American folk writing. Stunning and vivid.' Sunday Times 'In Big Sur, the mirror of the Beat way of life is hammered at and it shatters. The Kerouac hero "cracks up" while doing the things he has always liked best to do.' New York Times
--This text refers to an alternate
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Book Description
"Each book by Jack Kerouac is unique, a telepathic diamond. With prose set in the middle of his mind, he reveals consciousness itself in all its syntatic elaboration, detailing the luminous emptiness of his own paranoiac confusion. Such rich natural writing is nonpareil in later half XX century, a synthesis of Proust, Céline, Thomas Wolfe, Hemingway, Genet, Thelonius Monk, Basho, Charlie Parker, and Kerouac's own athletic sacred insight.
"Big Sur's humane, precise account of the extraordinary ravages of alcohol delirium tremens on Kerouac, a suerior novelist who had strength to complete his poetic narrative, a task few scribes so afflicted have accomplished—others crack up. Here we meet San Francisco's poets & recognize hero Dean Moriarty ten years after On the Road. Jack Kerouac was a 'writer,' as his great peer W.S. Burroughs says, and here at the peak of his suffering humorous genius he wrote through his misery to end with 'Sea,' a brilliant poem appended, on the hallucinatory Sounds of the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur." —Allen Ginsberg
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First Sentence
THE CHURCH IS BLOWING a sad windblown "Kathleen" on the bells in the skid row slums as I wake up all woebegone and goopy, groaning from another drinking bout and groaning most of all because I'd ruined my "secret return" to San Francisco by getting silly drunk while hiding in the alleys with bums and then marching forth into North Beach to see everybody altho Lorenz Monsanto and I'd exchanged huge letters outlining how I would sneak in quietly, call him on the phone using a code name like Adam Yulch or Lalagy Pulvertaft (also writers) and then he would secretly drive me to his cabin in the Big Sur woods where I would be alone and undisturbed for six weeks just chopping wood, drawing water, writing, sleeping, hiking, etc. etc. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
THE CHURCH IS BLOWING a sad windblown "Kathleen" on the bells in the skid row slums as I wake up all woebegone and goopy, groaning from another drinking bout and groaning most of all because I'd ruined my "secret return" to San Francisco by getting silly drunk while hiding in the alleys with bums and then marching forth into North Beach to see everybody altho Lorenz Monsanto and I'd exchanged huge letters outlining how I would sneak in quietly, call him on the phone using a code name like Adam Yulch or Lalagy Pulvertaft (also writers) and then he would secretly drive me to his cabin in the Big Sur woods where I would be alone and undisturbed for six weeks just chopping wood, drawing water, writing, sleeping, hiking, etc. etc. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Why?,
By Real Name Attribution (There you are . . .) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Big Sur (Paperback)
Why more people aren't drawn to this book, along with Mr. K's DESOLATION ANGELS, is beyond me. Forget about ONE THE ROAD--I read it years ago and didn't see what all the noise was about. So perhaps that's why I came to this book not expecting much . . . and got a lot more. The greatest piece of literature ever written? No, but it is a great chronicle, and a superb example of the "beat" generation's wordsmithery (if that even is such a word). If you're a fan of Kerouac, don't miss this book. If not, I'd suggest starting with DESOLATION ANGELS first.Also recommended: Katzenjammer by McCrae, Post Office by Bukowski, and Naked Lunch by Burroughs
4.0 out of 5 stars
Essential Kerouac,
By A Customer
This review is from: Big Sur (Paperback)
Though not my absolute favorite Kerouac novel, I can honestly say once again that I loved every bit of it(if you want some of my overall favorite Kerouac work, check out On The Road or The Dharma Bums). It was, though, one of the quickest flowing books to read. Big Sur grabs you and drags you vigorously through the psychotic barriers of Kerouac's impending insanity, and will not let go until you have completed the extremely intense final chapters. Kerouac also included at the end of the book a poem entitled "Sea" that he wrote while observing the ocean at Big Sur.Read Big Sur. It is an amazing work of literature, and is guaranteed to catch hold of you from the very first page. And if you enjoy this, do not stop there. I recommend anything with Jack Kerouac's name on the cover. Take my word. Also recommended: The Losers' Club by Richard Perez
5.0 out of 5 stars
I'll drink to that,
By ERIK (Appleton, WI United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Big Sur (Paperback)
This book was written after all the damage had been done, and you can feel it as you read the book. Jack tried for years to get his writing out and by the time it was published he was well on to the state of mind you read in "BIG SUR".I really think this is a brilliant book, you get to experience a bit of the torment he put himself through to get away from the critics that called his work childish. You even get to hear about Neal Cassady ten years after "ON THE ROAD". A book well worth reading, slowly, Jack had a tendency to run paragraphs and sentences together, a technique he uses quite a bit in this book.
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