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Orpheus Emerged

by Jack Kerouac, Robert Creeley (Introduction), Robert Creely (Introduction)

3.22 of 5 stars 3.22 · rating details · 437 ratings · 26 reviews

Rebellion, self-destructive behavior, alcoholism all the Kerouac hallmarks are in evidence... Publishers Weekly A striking success. Philadelphia Inquirer There will never be a moment like this one, says poet and fellow Beat writer Robert Creeley, in his introduction to this literary event: the first full-length work to be published since Kerouac s death in 1969. Discovered...more

Paperback, 176 pages

Published October 1st 2005 by ibooks (first published 1945)

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Oct 29, 2010 Patrick rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: grunge-slacker-twentysomething

...or On the Road: The College Years.

I had trouble with this one. It's full of melodramatic, super pretentious college kids bumming around, having those Big Conversations on the fire escape at 3 AM that is college life. Kerouac can write bad Kerouac, and here it is, though give him a break, he was only 22, and I KNOW at 22 I would be/was writing the same sort of thing, hell I still do or would like to, right down to the embarrassing self-mythologizing notes in the back of the book.

I guess in th...more ...or On the Road: The College Years.

I had trouble with this one. It's full of melodramatic, super pretentious college kids bumming around, having those Big Conversations on the fire escape at 3 AM that is college life. Kerouac can write bad Kerouac, and here it is, though give him a break, he was only 22, and I KNOW at 22 I would be/was writing the same sort of thing, hell I still do or would like to, right down to the embarrassing self-mythologizing notes in the back of the book.

I guess in the end I found this book to be pretty charming. I hate to use the cliche, but I think I would've loved this book in high school or college, but now all the exuberance of those fresh-faced, pretentious, self-indulgent years have soured on me, because they lead to nothing and are created in a bubble, and are part of a fabricated world that only exists for some fleeting 4 or 5 years where all your friends are nearby, going through the same thing and full of all the same open-eyed enthusiasm for life, and have time and enthusiasm, and have not matured enough to feel the Fear or become shy and weary about certain subjects, or groan and roll their eyes at you and tell you to grow up and get a job when you talk of things like The Artist, God, and Poetry.

There are some grating moments: one important character's poetry is terrible, and though in some regards it is held up to be terrible and self-indulgent, it is not ever truly considered to be as really really terrible and self-indulgent as it truthfully, painfully is. These passages made me blush with their flaunting lack of self-consciousness, a modern disease to be sure and one I despise, but would have worked here in small doses. Also, the dialog for the most part is terrible; it goes from excruciatingly melodramatic to a tone-deafness right out of a dubbed lowbudget Anime ("What? You mean, what would he think of that! You're being very stupid, by the way..."). The "doubling" of two characters is very forced and heavy-handed, but in the end I sort of liked its spookiness.

Though much of this book is cringe-worthy, as with all of Kerouac's works, I get a vicarious pleasure from it: this is the sort of thing I would write, have written, and the sort of stock characters and slumming Dostoevsky situations I am always comforted by in literature. It ain't great, and I can only recommend it to budding, annoying 18 year-old intellectuals (who are these days probably too cynical for Kerouac anyway) and people who like to live a vicariously hip life, but what the hey, I enjoyed it as much as I sometimes enjoy looking in the mirror.(less)

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May 20, 2012 Tancredi rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: statunitensi, memoir

"Io non voglio essere coraggioso, non fa parte del mio modo di sentire. Voglio solo essere felice."

Dopo aver letto la storia dell'omicidio che ha dato vita alla Beat Generation (il romanzo a quattro mani E gli ippopotami si sono lessati nelle loro vasche), non ho potuto fare a meno di procedere a ritroso e riscoprire questo Orfeo emerso, un altro, ennesimo romanzo sommerso, riscoperto solo negli ultimi anni. E che pare non sia nemmeno questo il vero primo romanzo di Kerouac.
Preludio al romanzo s...more

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May 20, 2009 Joseph rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a book that should give hope to all young writers,that no matter how poorly you write now,there is still a chance you will improve and even become famous.In a word this one is terrible. I believe Kerouac wrote it when he was 18 or twenty. Having taught a lot of students in that age group, I can tell you his writing would not have stood out as among the best.

It isn't only that the book is filled with the pseudo sophistication and self-importance that many of us fall prey to when young an...more

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Feb 14, 2012 Mat rated it 3 of 5 stars

First let it be known that I'm an absolutely HUGE fan of Jack Kerouac and I intend to read every word that that great man ever wrote.
So okay, I might be a tad biaised in this review.
But I'll try to be as honest and dispassionate as possible.
The three stars are for ENTERTAINMENT and HISTORICAL value and NOT for quality of LITERATURE.

First, I gotta say that this is by no means a great work of literature and I think even Jack would agree with me here, which accounts for perhaps why even he didn't...more First let it be known that I'm an absolutely HUGE fan of Jack Kerouac and I intend to read every word that that great man ever wrote.
So okay, I might be a tad biaised in this review.
But I'll try to be as honest and dispassionate as possible.
The three stars are for ENTERTAINMENT and HISTORICAL value and NOT for quality of LITERATURE.

First, I gotta say that this is by no means a great work of literature and I think even Jack would agree with me here, which accounts for perhaps why even he didn't try to have it published in his lifetime. Yet he kept it among his archive materials for future Kerouackian scholars to pore and argue over.

However, despite being a rather slipshod piece of literature, which it is, a few things have to be kept in mind. As other reviewers have pointed out, he wrote this in his early 20s (22 or 23 I forget) and I know that this, although vastly inferior to what Kerouac was later capable of, is far better than anything I coudl have written at that age.

Secondly, if you are a beat scholar like myself, then the release of this early work is obviously important in that it shows just how much Kerouac grew as a writer and it gives us some intriguing insight into his circle of friends (it is interesting to see early 'versions' of Ginsberg, Lucien Carr and Burroughs etc.), before they became known as the 'Beat Generation' (Note: I'm deliberately avoiding the use of the term 'beatnik' here as that was an explicitly derogatory term used by the Madison Avenue crew along with all those who launched or were part of the anti-Kerouac campaign and a term deviously but cleverly derived from the Russian 'sputnik' to make the obvious and subtle connection with Cold War distrust in this group of young people who intelligently and understandably attempted to give voice to their grievances with the oppresiveness of American conformism at the time)

Finally, although there were quite a few parts of the novel which made me cringe (some characters like Michael were more cringeworthy than others), I still found it ENTERTAINING (both in good and bad ways) and it DID remind me of how pretentious and exuberant we were back in those days way back when we were at uni/college and didn't know any better. So, you might find yourself waxing nostalgic at times throughout the book as I did, even though I did not like most of the characters in the novel itself.

In fact, this story reminded me of all those philosophical discussions I used to have in French cafes with friends around this time in my life. Just because I was doing philosophy at high school (that's right it's an actual required subject at French high school - ain't that cool?), made me feel like some deep thinker and savant. I now know how very little I knew back then but Kerouac, whether intentionally or not, does capture that blissful but brief cocoon of youth in which we feel we KNOW so much about life to be qualifed to comment on it to everyone within earshot (not quite true as we grow up and find out) and also in which we FEEL so much (to the point where we don't know what exactly it is that we feel, why we feel that way or what we can do with all those emotions inside of us).

I have heard people complain about how you need to have a knowledge of Greek mythology in order to understand this book better. That is a little exaggerated. To the best of my memory, there are only two mythological figures mentioned in the book - Orpheus (obviously), a kind of 'god' of bewitching music and poetry and Prometheus, whose punishment should be famous to all, being chained to a rock and having his liver pecked at by an eagle. While the latter one obviously refers to the suffering artist referred to in the book, I'm a little at a loss as to who Orpheus refers to or when he is going to 'emerge'.

I recommend this book for young people in their first or second year at university or for diehard Kerouac scholars (like myself) who have to read everything he ever wrote, for good or for worse. But for the casual Kerouac fan who has just discovered or stumbled on to his work, skip this and pick up a copy of the wonderful On the Road (original full scroll now released at last!) or The Subterraneans or Big Sur or even his poetic masterpiece, Mexico City Blues. (less)

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Sep 02, 2011 M rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Referred to as the voice of the beat generation, Jack Kerouac penned various works that proved inspiring to a generation. In Orpheus Emerged, found and released after his death, I am unconvinced that this particular wiriting needed to see the light of day. The book centers around a group of collegiate scholars and their attempts to dicipher a new idea of understanding. Caught on the fringes of the debate is the tortured poet Michael and the roving wanna-be scholar Paul. Whereas Michael seeks to...more

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Jan 08, 2013 Ana rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: good

This was an unkowned author for me. I looked him up on the Internet and found out some really interesting things about his life, and about his role in the so called "Beats" or "Beat Generation". I also read a little about this book, before reading it, and already knew that it was one of his early books, that didn´t even get published before his and his wife´s death. Many fans see this book as a poor work, as compared to his primary and most important work.

However, for me, this was my first Kerou...more

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Aug 29, 2012 Simona rated it 3 of 5 stars

E'inevitabile quando si legge un libro di Kerouac paragonarlo a "Sulla strada" che è un libro che mi ha dato tantissimo, a differenza di "Orfeo emerso" che non mi ha regalato particolari emozioni, sebbene racchiuda molto di ciò che sarà la Beat Generation.
Racconta le passioni, le delusioni, i sogni, la vita di alcuni amici, ovvero Paul, Arthur, Michael, Leo, studenti bohèmien, libertini nei quali è facile intravedere gli amici di Kerouac, da Burroughs a Allen Ginsberg.
"Orfeo emerso" non è solo...more

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Apr 09, 2009 Misha rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2009, beat-generation, novel

A posthumous release of Kerouac's unpublished first novel, and it definitely reads like a first novel. It isn't badly written, but I found it boring. It's probably only of interest to the kind of fans who must read every word an author ever produced, even if it's a grocery list. I may try to come back to this for some perspective once I've read a couple of his other works that I have on my shelf.

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Jul 29, 2011 Simar added it · review of another edition

Exclusively for fans still hung up on Kerouac. It's highly pretentious and juvenile...well good to know where he comes from ...his days of trying to find his own style. Nevertheless didn't like it...specially having read Of Mice and Men just last week.

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Feb 19, 2013 Hiwot Abebe added it

Once you read this book you can understand Kerouac wasn't very experienced. It feels like a first novel. It needed more maturity. But it was a really cool story. I enjoyed it.

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Dec 30, 2009 Brittany rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2009

I liked the book, it is one of those stories where it is more about the conversation and what people say than what actually goes on in the story line and what people do.

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Mar 14, 2009 Kevin rated it 3 of 5 stars

An early unpublished novella and one of Kerouac's better efforts, along with The Dharma Bums, On the Road, and Satori in Paris.

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Aug 02, 2011 M. Cornelis van der Weele IV rated it 2 of 5 stars

It reads about how you'd think anything written by a 22 year old novice would read. I can empathize, though, so I kind of respect him for trying.

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Sep 28, 2010 Tav rated it 3 of 5 stars

Strange little posthumous novella by Kerouac. Early and ruff, but familiar themes.

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Feb 07, 2012 clarenina rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: alco-poet-bums, americana, art-imitating-life, beat, cult, literature, 2012

Kerouac's first novel is somewhat pretentious in places; the work of a young, idealistic intellectual, but it hints at what was to come with Kerouac's writing and thus is not without its charm.

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May 12, 2010 Louise Tobin rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: borrowed-from-library, read-in-2010

The dialog in this book reads like a poor mans Dostoevsky. Not that that's a bad thing.

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Sep 15, 2011 Nativeabuse rated it 2 of 5 stars

Really huge misfire by Kerouac, This really should never have been published and Jack probably never tried to get it published with good reason.

This is just plain bad writing to the nth degree. If this didn't have a famous name attached to it I would wonder how this seriously made it onto paper.

Some unfinished novels in artists closets that are dug out after they die, should stay buried.

What were they thinking publishing this, were they trying to tarnish a good guys name?

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Jul 26, 2007 Martin added it Recommends it for: no-one

Tedious at best. Lots of kids running around thinking they are great just because they have moved out of home for the first time, acting all Bohemian and smart. If you have been to University there are all these freshmen who think they know everything, this is a story about them and is awful. Greek references make up most of the story. Wish I had never read it.

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Mar 29, 2008 Drew Harrington rated it 3 of 5 stars

A very early Kerouac novel. The distinctive Kerouac writing style is absent from this one and he hasn't yet found his knack for writing natural dialogue. Definitely worth a read as a look into Kerouac's evolution as a writer.

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Nov 25, 2008 Kevin p. rated it 4 of 5 stars

Not Kerouac at his best. Nor Kerouac at his worst. It's mostly dialogue, O.E. is, and it is interesting to see the 'Beats' before they were really the Beats. But I like a bit more story in my stories. Just a smidgen.

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May 09, 2007 Helen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: philosophysocialcommentary

Compelling story, fast to read. This book probably would have been a little bit easier for me if I had been more well versed in Greek mythology.

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Jun 16, 2007 Evan rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is my favorite book by Kerouac b/c it reminds me of all my friends, and the college parties we threw.

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Jun 19, 2008 K M rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I realize that this is not among his best work, but I rather liked the idea behind it.

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May 11, 2008 Ronnie rated it 2 of 5 stars

sometimes things shouldn't be published, no matter who wrote them.

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Jun 14, 2007 kate rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Underdeveloped in comparison to his other novels.

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Apr 04, 2007 Kevin rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Kerouac's first...

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Jun 17, 2013 Kelsey Breseman rated it 2 of 5 stars

Jun 10, 2013 Erin marked it as to-read

Jun 10, 2013 Jessica Deodene marked it as to-read

Jun 10, 2013 Martola added it · review of another edition

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About Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac was an American novelist, writer, poet, and artist. He is perhaps the best known of a group of writers and friends who came to be known as the Beat Generation, a term he himself created.

Kerouac's work was popular, but received little critical acclaim during his lifetime. Today, he is considered an important and influential writer who inspired others, including Tom Robbins, Lester Bang...more

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