Big Sur by Jack Kerouac Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Big Sur
Book Review: Kerouac's most honest work
Summary: 5 Stars
Big Sur was the third book by Jack Kerouac that I read (On the Road being the first and Satori in Paris being the second). I thought nothing would top On the Road, but this did. I tried explaining to a friend why I thought this book was better than On the Road, and I told him this book was so much more honest, and so much more grittier. Some of the descriptions Jack gives throughout this book, such as his description of what it's like to be an alcoholic towards the book's beginning, are wonderful. The ending of the book, with Jack returning home to be with his mother (whom he would hardly ever leave for the rest of his life) is truly heartbreaking, and the last line "there's no need to say another word" takes on even more significance when one realizes that this book marks the end of Jack's truly creative period. He continued writing after this, but the works he put out post Big Sur couldn't compare to earlier pieces like this (just read Satori in Paris if you want to see what I mean). I haven't read all of Kerouac's books yet (I'm in the middle of Visions of Gerard) but I would have to say that it's a toss up between this book or the Subterreans as to which is my favorite. Think about this: in the Subterreans, he merely lost a girl. In Big Sur, he lost himself.Book Review: Kerouac's most personal work......
Summary: 5 Stars
Big Sur is one of Kerouac's most personal and intimate novels. It deals with his alcoholism and trying to break free from the throes of an alcoholic tendency while staying at Lawrence Ferlinghetti's cabin in the Big Sur mountains. As usual, Kerouac's spontaneous prose is witty, deep, and profound - workingman's literature. Big Sur is personally my favorite novel from the King of the Beats. It's a must-read for any Keroauc fan, as well as anyone who wants to spend some time in the depths of a deeply personal novel. Dont just take my word - buy this.Book Review: Kerouac's novel of self-vivisection.
Summary: 4 Stars
Big Sur is the story of Kerouac's mental and physical breakdown while on "retreat" at Lawrence Ferlinghetti's cabin at Big Sur. Having obtained instant fame after the publication of On the Road, Kerouac was not prepared for the adulation and pressures that accompany success. Pushed, pulled and used by various "hangers-on" on his return to San Francisco, he retreated to Big Sur to try to find solitude and to escape the hectic world of the city. While there, he is able to find the peace he was seeking, but in the end is lured back to the city where he begins a period of heavy drinking.Several characters from On the Road appear, like Neal Cassady and his wife, Carolyn, and give this novel a sense of continuity with the earlier books. The writing is similar to Kerouac's other efforts, but the prose in Big Sur is tinged with a certain urgency and sense of calamity. The climatic scene in the novel is Kerouac's vivid description of his delirium tremens after several weeks of very heavy drinking. I think this represents some of his best writing as he deals with his own anxieties and a variety of frightening hallucinations.
Not surprising, this novel received the best reviews of any of Kerouac's novels. But just as he was beginning to receive some mainstream acceptance, his experiences in San Francisco and Big Sur (as well as his new found fame) turned him away from the writing experience. Kerouac remarks at the end of the novel: "Books, shmooks, this sickness has got me wishing if I can ever get out of this I'll gladly become a millworker and shut my big mouth." Although a few minor books were to follow Big Sur, they never lived up to his earlier works.
Kerouac's poem, "Sea: Sounds of the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur," is appended to the end of the novel.
Book Review: Kerouac's soul painfully exposed
Summary: 5 Stars
Over the past two weeks I read, as a trilogy of sorts, 'On the Road', 'Dharma Bums' and finally 'Big Sur'. The word that comes nearest to describing 'Sur' is devastating. Kerouac's realization that his past as 'happy poet' was filled with human pride and ignorance of the pain of others ripped my heart out, after my feeling his deep love of life in the two previous books. It's a truism, but as Kerouac himself said, 'truisms are all true', but one can never feel the pain of others, and only through our own pain, can we even begin to touch the feelings of humanity. But in 'Big Sur', one comes close to feeling the grit and sweat and bleeding of Kerouac's soulBook Review: Like Watching a Train Wreck in Slow Motion
Summary: 4 Stars
Jack Kerouac's BIG SUR(1961) is like watching a train wreck in slow motion... horrible, but you just can't help yourself from watching... in Jack's case, he writes about the lead-up to, and actual experience of, a nervous breakdown - obviously caused by excessive booze binges.
In 1960, Jack Kerouac was a man who basically had it all - his hit book ON THE ROAD(1957) inspired and defined the "Beat Generation"... but, at 40 years old, Jack has trouble keeping up the "bohemian" lifestyle. He arranges to cross the USA by train from back East, and seek refuge from his drinking bouts in a freind's cabin in Big Sur. After an initial booze binge on arrival to San Francisco, Jack actually does make it out to the cabin alone, and actually finds the peace and sober living he had initially wanted to find... but Jack begins to get bored, and finds his way back to SF, were he starts back on his old wild ways - but, it eventually catches up to him back at the Big Sur cabin, where he has brought the party... Jack writes about his paranoid delusions, DTs, etc. as he begins to come down off the booze after a two-week bender. This book was a preview of the end of Jack's life - he died 7 years later, of internal bleeding brought on by years of chronic alcohol abuse.
I've also lead a somewhat bohemian lifestyle (although apparently much less so, as compared to Jack Kerouac), and have been gradually cutting back on the partying for a few years now, and now that I'm 48 - one-year-older than Kerouac when he died - I finally felt OK about reading BIG SUR, which I've been wanting to read for years, but which kind of scared me to pick up, because ON THE ROAD kind of lead me down some wrong paths over the years... Now, for those of you who have wondered (like I did) whether this book would help or hurt one who is trying to get away from "the bohemian experience" - I say that it definately helped in my case (a weekend bohemian).
This is a good book, and a quick read. It is written in Jack's "classic" stream of conscienceness style. There really isn't a lot about Big Sur, other than the little valley Jack stays in... if you want to know more about Big Sur, it really can only be understood if you see it for yourself... but, be prepared to spend lots of money... I, luckily, was able to experience the area for one night on a side trip that my company had paid me to take to the area to deliver equipment to Monterey -- I actually got them to foot the bill for the small cabin I was able to find -- the last one in town! I managed to stay mostly out of trouble on my short visit to this "magic" corner of the Earth.