Tristessa by Jack Kerouac Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Tristessa
Book Review: Better Than On The Road!
Summary: 5 Stars
One of Kerouac's best works. get drunk, high, and walk the mean Mexico streets with Tristessa, El Indio, and Kerouac. A Must read! Bop for the eyes.Book Review: Criminally Overlooked Novel
Summary: 5 Stars
When one hears of Kerouac - On the Road, Dharma Bums and his poetry are invariably brought up. Dont get me wrong, all three of those are excellent literary works and should be read. However if I were to pick my favorite and I think the deepest of the Kerouac novels I would pick this one. It explores the themes of true love in Kerouac's sad and spiritual style. This is simply Kerouac's best and probably one of the best modern American short novels.Book Review: Don't we all have a Tristessa?
Summary: 5 Stars
Kerouac is all creation and no craft, which is both frustrating and fantastic. I sit down and read something like Tristessa and wonder about the arrangement of ideas, what decisions Jack made when composing the story, and s*** like that. It's pointless though, because I don't think Kerouac could tell me even if we were sitting down and talking about it (and we were both alive). He said something in a letter that strikes me as his one and only basis for writing, saying "I want to work in revelations, not just spin silly tales for money. I want to fish as deep down as possible into my own subconscious in the belief that once that far down, everyone will understand because they are the same that far down." He's all emotion, and even in his earlier, more structured work he doesn't show much promise as an Updike or an Amis, though he deals with similar themes a lot of the time. As a writer, I want to figure it out and boil it down to craft.
Which is impossible.
So, I settle for merely loving his work. I bring this all up because, just as I was amazed by the completely bats*** crazy rambling f***pile that is On the Road and Big Sur, Tristessa is a huge mess that I can't help but love. Both the story and the girl, actually. Tristessa, the girl in the story, is a morphine addict that radiates and completely dominates, if only momentarily, Jack's thoughts. He's on some silly little celibacy vow, however, and he passes on the opportunity -- to paraphrase Tristessa herself -- to be friendly in the bed.
Though I feel that Jack has a sense of loss when Tristessa is pretty much out of his life, I have to wonder if he ever gets too connected to things in the first place. His life is a sieve, and he's always coming or going (burn burn burn, right?) one way or the other. He's too busy taking everything in and letting everything out that he doesn't have any time to get, grasp, and have. Does that make the story even more sad? Maybe so. Regardless, Tristessa is another classic Kerouac story as far as I'm concerned, because who hasn't had a Tristessa in his life? Has anyone gone through it all so far with no passed opportunities, no dissolution of reality, no irresistible woman who has no say in an empty future with(out) you? If you've made it through without meeting your Tristessa, sit down, crack open a Sue Grafton book and a Diet Fanta Grape, and go f*** yourself with the sound of life happening, echoing somewhere in the background.
Book Review: Excellent.
Summary: 5 Stars
First of all, I'm a big Smashing Pumpkins fan and always wondered where the inspiration for the song "Tristessa" came from. Then, I'd read that it was a Kerouac novel, but didn't actually read this until after I'd read ON THE ROAD..
While ON THE ROAD really got me into liking Kerouac, i think it was this one (and THE ART OF HAPPINESS by the Dalai Lama) that got me into spirituality and Buddhism more specifically. It's really his observations that stand out in this novel, and I have to say that this novel is sweet in its briefness, and also somewhat more emotionally involved than some of his other books, since it's a love story of sorts.
Definitely pick up this book.
Book Review: Fascinating insight into a beat icon
Summary: 4 Stars
This is among the best of Kerouac's works, revealing the competing world views of the beat rebels. Tristessa is a Mexico City junkie whom Kerouac loves; a junkie he sees in the Buddhist light "life is suffering." The book opens in her home - a hovel in disarray populated by chickens, dog, junkies, an altar to Our Lady, and a dove. It ends with the recognition that only fellow junkies can truly understand another junky - that a vagabond, drunk artist may depict and love but never truly understand.The book's strength is in the passages that reflect most directly the author's mental life - coherent or incoherent - and the role of Buddhism and Catholicism in that mental life. The book also has a secondary strength of providing insight into the beatniks' rebellion - the shape in took in those who, like Kerouac, seem never to have found a peaceful relationship to the world (in conparison to Gary Synder or Phillip Whalen, for example).
Not a book destined to be "top ten of the century", but an interesting read.