Subterraneans

by Jack Kerouac

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2,684 ratings, 3.64 average rating, 151 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		20%
4		35%
3		32%
2		9%
1		1%

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published

September 12th 1973 (first published 1958)

details

Mass Market Paperback

isbn

0345235568 (isbn13: 9780345235565)

description

Written over the course of three days and three nights, The Subterraneans was generated out of the same ecstatic flash of inspiration that produced an…more

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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 3,590)

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Aug 29, 2009

Nicole rated it:

(review of isbn 0802131867)

bookshelves: my-hero

Read in September, 2009

Oh, Jack. As always, the enthusiasm and momentum in his writing is infectious. I haven’t read anything by Kerouac for a few years before picking this one up, and I’d forgotten about the weirdness of trying to settle into it like it’s a linear story intended to be clearly followed in detail when really it’s a tilt-a-whirl kind of ride not about to stop and explain itself so all I can do is hang on, watch the colors spinning past, catch enough bits and pieces of the conversations and memor...more Oh, Jack. As always, the enthusiasm and momentum in his writing is infectious. I haven’t read anything by Kerouac for a few years before picking this one up, and I’d forgotten about the weirdness of trying to settle into it like it’s a linear story intended to be clearly followed in detail when really it’s a tilt-a-whirl kind of ride not about to stop and explain itself so all I can do is hang on, watch the colors spinning past, catch enough bits and pieces of the conversations and memories to be able to follow along. Once I remember that, and let go of what I think I know about grammar and punctuation, this evens out into a smooth read.

The scenes that lend themselves best to the carnival feel of Kerouac’s writing are the late-night, not entirely sober party scenes. These are vibrant and cacophonous and we can see how easy it is to get swept up in the enthusiasm of this group of people and their wild migrations from home to a bar to a virtual stranger’s house, everyone talking and yelling over each other and chasing some big idea to the next stop.

Plot in a nutshell: Boy (Leo) meets girl (Mardou), boy crushes on girl, boy and girl date/hook up/get a little soulmate-y, boy flakes on girl and gets jealous of her flirting with other boys, boy decides he’s done with girl then decides he’s not, girl breaks up with boy. It’s sweeter than this, of course, and more frustrating, and somewhat more complex once all the secondary characters are added into the mix, but this is the jist of it. Leo pines for Mardou early on in the book, mentioning his great pain frequently and desire to die occasionally. It feels a little indulgent, all the moping, kind of a prod for us to start a Leo pity party that makes me glad when they do get together, because he steps away from the pathetic for a while when he’s with her.
I think I would label this one of the truest love stories I’ve ever read. It’s not the fairy tale, happily ever after variety, but Leo and Mardou’s relationship feels real. They get together in a lopsided, fumbly sort of way (she takes a while to warm up to him), make grand statements and promises in the rush of a new relationship, and then fail each other in small ways until the magic fades. There is no final reunion scene, or red-roses apologetic gesture, just the sadness of something ending that could maybe have been better than it was. In many ways, I like this better than I would a fluffy happy ending. By the end, I’m also more inclined to indulge Leo in his mopey sadness, because I’ve seen his ambivalence in action (want the girl, but jealousy and wanting other girls and a certain amount of self-sabotage get in the way), and it makes me a little sad, too.
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Jun 25, 2008

Andy rated it:

(review of isbn 0802131867)

bookshelves: jazznbeats

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.

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1 comment

Jun 14, 2009

Jennifer rated it:

(review of isbn 0802131867)

Kerouac's stream of consciousness style is perfect for narrating a jumbled, tangled, thorny love affair with a woman he can't pull himself together enough to keep but nonetheless mourned enough to write a book about, documenting their passionate flame/flame out. Subterraneans was written in three days/nights, and its pacing reflects the rush of ideas Kerouac was having at the time--about this dark skinned woman, about drinking, about jealousy, about the ways these pieces all tore at one another....more

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Dec 05, 2006

Elizabeth rated it:

(review of isbn 0141184892)

bookshelves: california, fiction

Read in April, 2009

A profoundly sad novel. I fall in and out of love with Kerouac's prose, but his story rips your heart out. It was recommended to me by a colleague who told me that this book is about "people who make decisions by not making any choices."

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Oct 14, 2008

Christine rated it:

(review of isbn 0141184892)

Read in November, 2008

recommends it for: Those who enjoy Kerouac or are into that sort of ideal.

I really loved this book. Jack Kerouac, for all his iconic writing and cliche beatnick status, still manages to capture the life and thoughts of the younger generation who were simply looking for any sort of adventure. That is, they have their own dreams and attempt to reach them. Kerouac shows their growth and takes his readers through the realization that things aren't like they expected them to be. Somehow, though, even though this sort of melancholic epiphany seems to be common for his endin...more

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Jun 19, 2008

Hagermeister rated it:

(review of isbn 0802131867)

The closest thing to a pure love story Jack wrote.

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3 comments

Oct 29, 2009

jean lice rated it:

(review of isbn 0141184892)

Owns a copy — Read in February, 2010

The Subterraneans is one hell of a crazy ride. Kerouac's stream of consciousness flows endlessly over the pages, without giving you any break to stop for a minute. It just goes on and on and on, without a lot of periods but instead with whole passages and paragraphs in brackets. Thus making it sometimes very hard to follow the detailed and at some places obscure descriptions, other times letting you really go with the flow and find the most remarkable phrases and the most beautiful words of love...more

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Apr 16, 2009

Atomicplayboy rated it:

(review of isbn 0802131867)

An honest to good story from Jack Kerouac, of love and loss from a beat perspective anxious on both accounts, The Subterraneans is Kerouac's passionate, fevered attempt to relay a soured relationship to the reader (I think he was supposed to have written it in a few days), which shows through the text both good and bad. The narrative is emotional with a wonderful, almost whimsical stream of consciousness, making it a joy to read; Mardou (the love interest) and Leo (Kerouac) have a number of grea...more

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Apr 12, 2008

Brett rated it:

(review of isbn 0802131867)

bookshelves: classy-fiction

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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Feb 11, 2008

Vincent rated it:

(review of isbn 0802131867)

bookshelves: fiction

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 it...more

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Nov 22, 2007

Aditi rated it:

(review of isbn 0802131867)

bookshelves: fiction-written-in-the-last-century

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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Sep 26, 2007

Chris rated it:

(review of isbn 0802131867)

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 th...more

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Aug 18, 2007

Author-Poet rated it:

(review of isbn 0802131867)

bookshelves: fiction

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 ...more

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Aug 14, 2007

Eli rated it:

(review of isbn 0802131867)

bookshelves: fiction-general

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-away they...more

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Jul 26, 2007

Gabrielle rated it:

(review of isbn 0802131867)

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 racis...more

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Mar 04, 2008

Lara rated it:

(review of isbn 0802131867)

bookshelves: life-changing

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 wo...more

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Mar 24, 2007

James rated it:

(review of isbn 0141184892)

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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Oct 23, 2009

Autumn Doerr rated it:

(review of isbn 0802131867)

Read in January, 1985

You have to be in the mood to read Kerouac. But when you are, it's like your having a lucid high. I mean your mind is clear but in another world. This was an important book for a dyslexic girl like me. You must pay attention to where he's meandering, but it's worth the trip. Don't mean to imply that this is a difficult book - just challenging for someone who mixes words up in their minds.

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Jan 08, 2008

Erin rated it:

(review of isbn 0802131867)

bookshelves: autobiographical-fiction, favorites, fiction

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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Feb 20, 2009

Vincent rated it:

(review of isbn 0802131867)

Read in January, 1984

My favorite of the Kerouac I've read. I really like the Bop-beat-never-ending-sentence opening and it seems to have been rewritten to perfection unlike his __On the Road__ which supposedly came out of the typewriter as is and onto a roll of teletype-paper. I have this particularly interesting cover art original paperback pictured here as well. I think it was also a big influence on my own writing and style.

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