The Subterraneans (Paperback)
by Jack Kerouac
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recommends it for:
Fans of beat lit, jazz, and the avant garde
IF LOVE WERE JAZZ AND VICE VERSA
THE SUBTERRANEANS is a novel remarkable for a number of distinctions, not the least of which is the report that Grand Beat Master Jack Kerouac wrote it in only three days. The book's analytical depths, structural complexity, and richness of language would make one more inclined to believe it took three years to write. To read this novel is to sink into a mesmerizing whirl of bebop jazz rhythms, uncompromising confession, and the audacity of raw images f...more
THE SUBTERRANEANS is a novel remarkable for a number of distinctions, not the least of which is the report that Grand Beat Master Jack Kerouac wrote it in only three days. The book's analytical depths, structural complexity, and richness of language would make one more inclined to believe it took three years to write. To read this novel is to sink into a mesmerizing whirl of bebop jazz rhythms, uncompromising confession, and the audacity of raw images f...more
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Read in October, 2007
In my spin through Kerouac's books, my friend said after reading On The Road and The Dharma Bums that my next task should be The Subterraneans.
Apparently, he wrote this 110-page book in only three days. While the bulk of On The Road was written in this way, making it an American classic, I have to say that for this book, it didn't work as well.
Here, Kerouac shows a more poetic than prosaic style. The sentences seem more like lyrics than in the other two books. Yet here that seemed to tak...more
Apparently, he wrote this 110-page book in only three days. While the bulk of On The Road was written in this way, making it an American classic, I have to say that for this book, it didn't work as well.
Here, Kerouac shows a more poetic than prosaic style. The sentences seem more like lyrics than in the other two books. Yet here that seemed to tak...more
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Read in April, 2008
This is the third book by Kerouac I have read, and without fail, they all have an unusual raw emotional gravity about them. This book is short burst of linguistic invention--supposedly written in only three days, and it reads as such. It weighs in at a little over 100 pages, but is full of love, disgust, drunkenness, excitment, and the peculiar next-day regret hangover. It does not match either On the Road or The Town and the City in terms of overall narrative power, but is a strangely compellin...more
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Read in January, 1999
Jack Kerouac fell in and out of love with women--white women, Latina women, and black women, but it proved that he was always mommy's boy. This book proves it, showing how he at once wanted and was smitten by the lovely Alene Lee--Mardou Fox in the novel--and then sabotaged the relationship by pushing her in his jealousy and self-doubt into the arms of someone else.
Some may call him sentimental and tender in this novel. A few others have called him superficial and downright racist in his...more
Some may call him sentimental and tender in this novel. A few others have called him superficial and downright racist in his...more
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Read in March, 2008
If it weren't for the legend that is Jack Kerouac I don't know that I would have finished the book. I hated it past the first provocative line: "Once I was young and had so much more orientation and could talk with nervous intelligences about everything..." It rambled and babbled on and on in "beat speak" a language he assumed I would know. I wonder what he would like of Hip Hop. How similar it is to bop?
I struggled to the center of the book where the spine is its weakes...more
I struggled to the center of the book where the spine is its weakes...more
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Read in November, 2007
I am occasionally dizzied or nauseated by the oddest things. Knitting with black yarn, for instance, or the novel "Nausea," of which I could not pass two pages. My reason for getting queasy with this novel, however, requires no exotic explanation. Poor grammar! Perhaps it could be mistaken for poetry in prose. A whirlwind of ideas, a maelstrom of images rushing towards the reader to allow him or her to experience the narrator's emotions and reactions. This approach may have worked, had...more
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Read in October, 2007
The only other Kerouac I've read is On the Road, which I liked a lot. This one is a quick sketch of Kerouac's crowd of cool kids in San Francisco, and a love affair gone bad due to the narrator being kind of an asshole (as are most of the cool kids). But at least he's an asshole with some insight about himself and others, and a good eye and ear, so there's a lot of dense, vivid description of places and people. There's not a whole lot else: in between boy-meets-girl and boy-chases-girl-aw...more
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Read in January, 1993
Forget "On the Road" or "Dharma Bums" - this is still my favorite of Kerouac's works, and one of the few that continues to speak to me a decade and a half after my Beat phase.
Simply put, this is the story of broken romance, familiar in all the warm and cold spots, all the sad erotic moments and the dizzy uncertainty and the blank morning-after regret. There are images in this book that I have never been able to shake, even after years and miles and millions of words in-b...more
Simply put, this is the story of broken romance, familiar in all the warm and cold spots, all the sad erotic moments and the dizzy uncertainty and the blank morning-after regret. There are images in this book that I have never been able to shake, even after years and miles and millions of words in-b...more
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Read in October, 2003
This is my favorite Kerouac. Roughly: Jack's character semi falls in love with a semi crazy girl who seems like she needs him badly because she's very poor, yet she doesn't because she's independent and seems to always find a way. He uses and neglects her, she gets angry and freaks out on him a couple times. The next thing he knows she's seeing his friend who does the same thing to her, just like one of their other friend's did before Jack. Jack realizes, too late, that he should have treate...more
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Kerouac was at his best with this book. It's a short read, but it's denser than most of his other books. It's probably his most honest, guilt-ridden work. His narrator, Leo Percepied (pierced-foot, just like Oedipus, wink wink), is fascinated by homosexual and black subcultures, but as much as he wants to become accepted by the people within these groups, he is only a voyeur. He admits early on in the book that he is a mooch, cadging drinks, and to some degree credibility, from his friends, but ...more
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Read in July, 1995
The Subterraneans is not prose. It is not a story told to the reader. It is frantic bebop hopped up on Benzedrine played in words not notes. Sounds strung together for spoken syncopation not sentences, improvisation stopping only to let the author catch his breath.
Mad and beautiful. Dark and chaotic. Finally becoming too much for itself and unraveling as you read. Maybe it was too much for me. Maybe I just could not keep up with the frenetic pace of the prose. By the end I was too tied up in...more
Mad and beautiful. Dark and chaotic. Finally becoming too much for itself and unraveling as you read. Maybe it was too much for me. Maybe I just could not keep up with the frenetic pace of the prose. By the end I was too tied up in...more
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The thing I liked best about this edition was the contrast between the writing styles Kerouac uses in the two stories. The only other Kerouac book I've read is On The Road, and I rather thought that the "spontaneous prose"/stream of conciousness style that he uses was just the way he happened to write. Pic's straightforward narrative illustrates Kerouac's talent and versatility - the incredible language and style of The Subterraneans is much more impressive when re...more
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If you are no longer a nineteen year old boy then Kerouac probably doesn't hold much sway for you. On The Road probably seems a little juvenile and you've quit looking for caulfieldian figures to tie your angst and wanderlust to. The Subterraneans is a book that still gets me. Maybe sweeping heartbreak in San Francisco appeals to me more directly from personal experience, but Kerouac's almost haphazard lack of punctuation and liberal use of the comma instead of the period make his language soar ...more
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Read in July, 2008
Full of cool jazz and lyrical prose, Kerouac has the uncanny ability to tap into raw human emotion that undercuts the coolness of the swinging hipsters and beatniks that are his characters, diving into the core elements of fear, insecurity, and a life unknown. Though the premise of this book was rather simple (boy and girl fall in love and then break-up, leaving only pain and confusion) the stream of consciousness that accompanies this all-too-familiar story will make you ask for cheap whiskey ...more
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Read in October, 2001
recommends it for:
drunken poseur buddhists
Kerouac's kind of a dick in this one, whining and chasing after this black girl Mardou all through the book. Once she caves in to his non-existent charms he dumps her like he's Tommy Lee or something.
When he's not crying for her to take him back he's busy fetishizing her blackness like she's a pickaninny doll and then drunkenly makes in-crowd jokes to his pals about Buddha and Boddhisatva. What a shithead.
When he's not crying for her to take him back he's busy fetishizing her blackness like she's a pickaninny doll and then drunkenly makes in-crowd jokes to his pals about Buddha and Boddhisatva. What a shithead.
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Read in June, 2006
recommends it for:
true fans of beat literature
Widely regarded by Kerouac's peers as his best work (Ginsberg especially praised it highly), this relatively short novella details the birth and death by jealousy of a relationship that Kerouac had with free-spirited jazz lover Mardou Fox. The book is often pointed to as one of the best examples of Kerouac's "First Thought, Best Thought" style of writing- though at times this leads to disjointed story-telling and an uneven pacing of the story. Still, for fans of all things Beat, this...more
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Jack Kerouac is profoundly hit or miss for me (I could never finish On the Road), but The Subterraneans hit and stuck. The story of his own doomed romance — retroactively cynical, but, in the moment, painfully innocent — is one of the most touching works, along with Tristessa, that Kerouac ever wrote. His free associative wordplay is also in top form here, meandering but not pointless, and lends itself perfectly to a story of impulsive and swooning love.
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Read in January, 2003
I read this because somebody left it at my house and I was curious to read some of Kerouacs work. What I should have been curious about was why somebody left it at my house. I soon figured out it was because they hate me. Not a fan. I took this on a plane and was desperate to read but could not get into this book. The style might have been cool but I could not find anything interesting enough to keep me reading. And the crazy to no punctuation really sucks. No, really.
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Recommended for: people who have complicated relationships with San Francisco, have ever been lovelorn, or prefer big sprawling civilizations where sentences would normally be.
Not recommended for: times when you can only read intermittently, those who think the beats should be impaled on their participles
This book is great for fans of compound neologisms. A few new favorites: loveracts, bellysweet, hightingled, blurfaces, bleakhatted, keenpure, healthybook
Not recommended for: times when you can only read intermittently, those who think the beats should be impaled on their participles
This book is great for fans of compound neologisms. A few new favorites: loveracts, bellysweet, hightingled, blurfaces, bleakhatted, keenpure, healthybook
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Read in April, 2006
I had given up on Kerouac a few years ago after reading and hating On the Road and a few ill-fated attempts at enjoying his "poetry." But my fiance suggested this and I reluctantly agreed to read it. I was surprised and stunned by how much I enjoyed the book. I did not know Kerouac to be so sentimental. I enjoyed the subtle touches as well as the drunken spurts. Also I thought it a wa
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book data (includes all editions)
avg rating (all editions): 3.64 (1565 ratings) avg rating (this edition): 3.63 (1432 ratings) number of reviews: 112popular shelves
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quote
"I stood in the middle of the room flipping and Pusher was plucking at the guitar, just one string, and I went up to him and said, 'Man don't pluck those dirty notes at ME,' and like he just got up without a word and left. [Mardou]"
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