Desolation Angels by Jack Kerouac Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Desolation Angels
Book Review: My First Kerouac
Summary: 5 Stars
This book actually made me dizzy: fast paced, crazy, emotional, funny, crude and touching. I've never read anything like it. Kerouac reels you into his life, mind and heart. I'm hooked.Book Review: My dear friend who knoweth my name not
Summary: 5 Stars
Jack Kerouac. The very mention of his great cool name that just rolls off the tongue will, at a mere mention generate the most passionate explanation from any book lover, historian, critic, or a "lost," unenlightened victim of an educational system plagued by the three letters which spell Satan; GOP.
This book was written in 1965 while the Beat Generation was minglling with the hippies and Kerouac had distanced himself from his friends Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady, sadly.
It's more like a diary of Kerouac's most deep thoughts while he lives by Desolation peak and in that case, it's like the Walden of the twentieth century. It has very beautiful and expertise descriptions which will bore some readers but it is an all around great book that any beat lover will like.
Book Review: Now don't you appreciate mom just a little bit more?
Summary: 5 Stars
Always searching, always moving towards, always observing. I really like the way his writing brings to life the world that he walks in and gives moments poignancy without melodrama. In a way, I think he was a latter-day Thoreau, both structurally (we did this and then we did that)and philosophically (y'all be cool, now) all bracketed by minute observations. I think this novel brings him full circle in a quest for spirituality (or confrontation with it). All his novels I have read (count 'em on one hand) and his poetry are excellent. I excerpted from 'Mexico City Blues' for a government agency newsletter type book review many moons ago. Oops.Book Review: ON THE ROAD...with Mom
Summary: 5 Stars
This book may come as a real shock to those whom have a preconcieved notion about what the "Beats" were all about, and it may also be a shock for those more familiar with the jubilant ecstatic life affirmations of On The Road or even The Dharma Bums.
In this book Jack goes on the road (with Mom), has sex with a fourteen year old mexican prostitute, meets up with a Neal (Cody) whom is a far fly from his On the Road days and is tied down with a wife + three kids and a job, meets Salidore Dali + William Carlos WIlliams + Carl Sandburg, gets his book published, is constantly compulsively depressed, has a paradigmatic consciousness flip after a huge dose of opium, meets up with junkie Burroughs in Tangiers (whom is lovelorn over Ginsburg), and kicks Buddhism down a notch for a more hardcore return to Christianity.
As others have noted, this book follows directly after the Dharma Bums and that book should be read first. What follows is Jack's experiences on the mountain which, contrary to his expectations in Dharma Bums, is almost like a nightmare prison sentence.
After he leaves the mountain, we enter into the first half of the book (his return to California), which is a bit ponderous and slow (but never boring). We are treated to a tortureous description of his day of betting at a race track with Neal and Corso.
The book picks up speed bigtime when he goes back on the road and then travels internationally.
His prose is brilliant and poetic and his observations remarkable and I think this book is brilliant; but it is also tremendously sad, deeply frusterated and lost, spiritually drained and destitute, and there is little ecstacy to be had. By the end of the book, and with the return of his compulsive obsession with Christianity, one can really sense the beginning of his psychosis and alcoholism and mommy obsession which would spell his death by age fourty seven.
I'm not sure to whom this book should be recommended- for I'm not sure whom would care about this descent of an icon for joy. It should definetly be read by those whom have read On the Road and the Dharma Bums, but also by those whom think that the counter cultural movements were all done by joy seeking thrill addicts without a care in the world. After reading this book, it would seem that caring is something that was not is short supply amongst these bands of fellow travelers on the way.
Also, those whom felt that the beats were all leftist radicals, anarchists and communists would be very suprised to read in this book that Jack almost seems like a rightist in many regards. He reads a book on the atrocities of communism on the mountain, he constantly is remarking about totalitarian regimes (in particular- Russia), brings up Mao (at a time when some on the left felt he may have been a hero and the crimes against "reactionaries" hadn't yet come into light) and Castro (while others went off to visit Cuba jack said "I'm not concerned with the Cuban Revolution, I'm concerned with the American Revolution.") and even Zapata is discussed in negative diatribes. He was also a fan of Ike. He spends far more time bitching about leftist than he does about rightists. He also has some special scorn put aside for the common hipster, the mass of "beats" whom came after.
Very moving, sad, beautiful, profound, funny, poetic- a treasure from a real man at the start of his turn into a caricature by the mass media. By the end, when he drags his mother to california and he doesn't have hardly a nickel, he truely does seem like a little boy lost, crushed still by the death of his brother Gerard and his father whom he found, crushed by all the love lost, by all the dreams evaporated.
Evey place he goes, he believes that happiness may lie at the next stop- but once he gets there, there is only sadness once again. At first he wants to return to the mountain on which he'd felt so trapped, but by the end of the book, he just wants to return to the womb.
Book Review: The Beauty Within the Tragedy
Summary: 5 Stars
Like all the Kerouac novels, the overriding point of this book is to show the beauty that lies within the tragedy of human life. Though Kerouac is "depressed" through most of the book, sickened by the people and places and travel which he once found so necessary, he finds mental respite in his mother and her unconditionally warm spirit, among other things. Another point which Kerouac strives to raise is religion. Though he and his friends more oft than not live a wild and consumptive life, Jack still remains devoted to the idea of God and the genuine goodness of people. This book, just as all Kerouac novels, describes life with a wide-eyed vivacity unlike anything I've ever read, if only in a less sunny way.