Tristessa by Jack Kerouac Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Tristessa
Book Review: Interesting, but not enlightening....
Summary: 3 Stars
While I have great respect for Jack Kerouac, I am not all that impressed with his writing. I never really got into The Beat writers, although by all accounts I should have in late high school when I was interested in "automatic writing." That stream of consciousness, punctuation-less thought that comes from your mind when it can't quiet itself. I think I have the same assessment of many of the Beat writers and poets, and I did have the unique experience of going to City Lights Book Shop in San Fransisco, which is owned and run by one of the original Beat poets. I respect their art and their way of expressing it, but it never really hit me as anything profound. I enjoyed Tristessa some, but not as much as I was hoping I would. I had heard so much about Kerouac from my best friend, who loved On the Road, but I was never hooked. If you are interested in esoteric topics presented in slurred poetry then this is for you. I don't care much for some performance art, and much of what I have read from the Beats seems like a literary version of that. Perhaps I haven't read the right things, so I may not have a good grasp on them. I'll have to try and read some from William S. Burroughs. I hear he had some great books.Book Review: Kerouac's most overlooked novel, and his best.
Summary: 5 Stars
Kerouac has fallen in and out of cult hero worship, for many
reasons. He was the forefather of the spectacularly popular
Beat Generation, his books are full of raw energy and
rebellion, and he died of a brain hemorrhage watching "The
Galloping Gourmet". These are all wonderful reasons to read
"On the Road" or "Subterraneans". Do not read "Tristessa"
for these reasons. Read "Tristessa" for its pure Kerouac
voice, for its wonderful hollow music which echoes the
wildest romantic poets, the heroin-desperate streets of Mexico
City, and the soul of Kerouac himself. This is Kerouac's
most haunting, melodic, and starkly religious work,
the story of true love and the lie of love, the story of
hope and of the crush of drugs, poverty and despair.
To read this
book is to be Kerouac, to be crazy-drunk with no place to
sleep and no money to eat, but to be crying with happiness
because the woman you love is unconscious in the gutter beside
you. You can hear the words inside your head long after
you close the book... "shouldna done it Lord, Awakenerhood,
shouldna played the suffering-and-dying game with the children in
your own mind, shoulda whistled for the music and danced..." "I love her but the song
is---broken---"Book Review: My Favorite Kerouac Novel
Summary: 5 Stars
There are great writers who write a number of novels, but it is only one or two books that get the nods from the establishment and are earmarked into the culture vernacular. "On The Road" was a groundbreaking novel, but "Tristessa" is everyone's favorite. It is the one novel in which he got it absolutely pitch perfect. It is a beautiful novel and everyone should read it.Book Review: Near greatness.
Summary: 4 Stars
I have yet to read a perfect Kerouac novel that I can say I unreservedly like. Nonetheless, there is something in his writing that keeps me coming back to book after imperfect book. Maybe it is his ever-present sadness, the all-pervasive melancholy that is there even in his moments of exuberance. Maybe it is the Romanticism at the core of his worldview. Maybe not. In any case, Tristessa is certainly the best of his books I've read thus far, and I've a feeling it is the best of all of them. If so, it means he never did write a perfect novel, but here he came close enough.Tristessa ("sorrow" in Spanish) is Kerouac's shortest book. Out of all the stories he tells, it is perhaps the one which had the most importance to him. It certainly chronicles a very important point - his disillusionment with Buddhism, and the beginning of his final disillusionment with life. Observe how different the first part of the book is from the second - the first is filled with Buddhist mantras and reaffirmations of Buddhist faith, whereas the second mentions Buddhism only tangentially, and then in very bitter tones. (The year that passes in between the two parts is, I believe, the subject of his novel The Dharma Bums.) After that is his disillusionment with his own beat culture, as represented by Mexico City. Recall how joyously Kerouac enters Mexico in On The Road, his infectious sense of wonder and excitement and seeing something so new and so (he then thought) much closer to his heart. Now compare that with the hellish, rainy, junksick Mexico City of Tristessa, which Kerouac avows pure hatred for...but where he stays, only exacerbating his sadness.
All this disillusionment comes back to the story of the title character - Tristessa. Kerouac loved her intensely. She loved junk intensely. He stayed with her until he had nowhere else to go. Here I won't say too much, except that this is where Kerouac's most beautiful and touching writing ever comes in. There are sentences here which perfectly encapsulate such love as his, such as this: "She would look awful if she wasnt holy Tristessa--" The conclusion, in which Old Bull Gaines (William Burroughs?) gets her instead of Kerouac, is just about the most understated, knuckle-bitingly bitter episode I've ever read, or could have been if not for one thing, which I shall now explain.
I have never been a fan of Kerouac's spontaneous prose, and I think that more often than not it actively damages his gorgeous stories. Even Tristessa often reads like a first draft, probably because it is - Kerouac submitted first drafts straight for publication. The stream-of-consciousness is sometimes effective, but very frequently not, because it allows for utterly incomprehensible diversions. Three examples immediately come to mind:
1. "This woman is crying because you take all their money,--what is this? Russia? Mussia? Matamorapussia?" (27) Uh...what?
2. "You don't know what in a hell you're doing in this eternity bell rope tower swing to the puppeteer of Magadha, Mara the Tempter, insane, ...And all you eagle and you beagle and you buy--All you bingle you baffle and you lie--You poor motherin bloaks pourin through the juice parade of your Main Street Night you don't know that the Lord has arranged everything in sight." (42-43) Uh...what?
3. "Min n Bill n Mamie n Ike n Maronie Maronie Izzy and Bizzy and Dizzy and Bessy Fall-me-my-closer Martarky and Bee, O god their names, their names, I want their names, Amie n Bill, not Amos n Andy, open the mayor (my father did love them) open the crocus the mokus in the closet (this Freudian sloop of the mind) (O slip slop) (slap) this old guy that's always--Molly!--Fibber M'Gee be jesus and Molly--" (92) Uh..._what_?
This sort of impenetrable verbal murk contributes absolutely nothing to either story or mood, and only obscures the very real and very raw emotion underneath. Perhaps a revision or two would not have gone amiss here. Nonetheless, the story, the love, the intensity and the loss all carry this book, and there's so much beautiful writing that I don't have the space to quote it all. If ever you're wondering what the fuss over Kerouac was about, this is the book that will show you.
Book Review: On The Road......Eat My Shorts!!
Summary: 5 Stars
Pseudo-Intellectuals think "On The Road" is Kerouac's...you know, "holy grail" so to speak. Wrongo! Tristessa (am I pronouncing that right?) is Kerouac at his finest hour. I wanted to go out, get drunk and high, and then go to Mexico and stumble around in the gutter to see if I could re-enact some of the book. Guess what, it worked! A real boink for the old peepers!