Big Sur by Jack Kerouac Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $5.21 You Save: $9.79 (65%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $2.30 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Big Sur
Book Review: Felt it in my soul
Summary: 5 Stars
While I'm a fan of virtually any beat writers' works, I'm partial to books by Jack Kerouac. This one is the one that touched my soul the most. Worn down by alcohol and drugs, he bounces in and out of sanity, and everything he writes comes from the truest, rawest part of his pain. After reading this I took a roadtrip to Big Sur and even stopped in his old hangout, Nepenthe. I bought a journal there and started writing like mad. Thanks for the inspiration, Jack!Book Review: Get it! Read it! Hear it! Sing it! You'll love it!
Summary: 4 Stars
Kerouac's didn't just write a book, he wrote an epic, a song and a novel. No justice is done to his writting if it is ever read silently. You must read out loud. You must hear the melody of his words, even if its only from your own lips. I read it aloud with nothing in the room other than my beaten up couch and tired record player spinning John Coltrane. You simply must read this book!Book Review: I'll drink to that
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Book Review: Kerouac's most honest and raw work
Summary: 5 Stars
This novel marked the close end to Kerouac. Kerouac was controlled by alcohol and depression. He hopes to find peace in a cabin in the Big Sur(Which I went to just a few weeks and is very beautiful). There he is just tortured by his own thoughts from too much alcohol. In this time Kerouac looks back at his outgoing "On The Road" backpacking days and begs for mercy in his own misery. The main reason I love this novel besides Kerouac's honesty and splendid writing is the message it has on contemporey america. 10 years after "On The Road" and as the 60's unfold so does the destruction of friendly america. Kerouac can barley hitchike because of america's new fear of the hitchiker being a criminal. This is a very symbolic point of how friendly america was and now how everyone lives in fear. We also are re-visited with Kerouac's "On the Road" hero "Dean Moritatey", Who is still wild and hyper but with a family. Kerouac slowly starts to crack for a short while in Big Sur and we see some of Kerouac's most haunting writing ever. This novel also includes a poem Kerouac wrote called "Sea" which translates the sound of the ocean into speaking english. It is tedious yet fascinating at the same time. "Big Sur" remains a potrait of a troubled writer who struggles with society and alcohol addiction. This book should be read by all, However it is not a good to start as an intro to Kerouac( Atleast read "On The Road" first). This may be Kerouac's best work since "On The Road".Book Review: Kerouac's most honest novel.
Summary: 5 Stars
Kerouac pulled no internal punches with this one. He's there, at his worst in many ways, but the sordid tale is beautifully told. How he makes something so depressing and painful into a work of pure beauty is almost magical. No one had ever done fiction quite like Jack Kerouac, and no one has since been able to duplicate that style, or even ape it effectively.
BIG SUR is one of the top four of the Beat works. For me, it remains one of the most powerful--easily the saddest. And I think we need something of the expression of this kind of sadness.