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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50140.Big_Sur?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Big Sur" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1170367306m/50140.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50140.Big_Sur?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Big Sur</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1742.Jack_Kerouac">Jack Kerouac</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/26989391?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 5 of 5 stars Big Sur is one of those Kerouac books I'd long avoided, as by the time you get to Big Sur you've likely read about 3-6 of his other books -- On the Road, The Dharma Bums, and The Subterraneans come first, and should, they are all indispensible. Thereafter, there are gems but you have to look for them; also, each person has to do her own looking. For me, the next great Kerouac book is Visions of Gerard, the one about Kerouac's brother who died in childhood (when JK was 4) and haunted Kerouac's whole life; it may well be why he stuck to his mother so, why he drank, why he embraced only a particularly annihilitative sense of Buddhism, i.e., his constant emphasis in interviews and the like that nothing exists. Vantiy of Duluoz is also surprisingly good, although it's the latest, with many moments of sloppy alcoholic prose. But it reminds you that Kerouac had a very interesting life even before he met Ginsberg and Burroughs, and it only got more interesting after. Lonesome Blonde then is terrific, a collection of travel pieces, compellingly readable; then Mexico City Blues, poems which you have to give some space to, but if you're willing, really reward you, all sorts of moments of wonder and pleasure and insight. OK. Et cetera. Big Sur, for someone who had thought he'd found all in Kerouac there is to find, is a revelation. There's something unexpectedly gained by spontaneous method for a writer (and person) like Kerouac, who could be so alcoholically HEAVY as a person during the same time as he was writing a book like Bug Sur. His prose here is exceptionally LIGHT -- and that makes a big difference to someone scared off "minor" Kerouac by a bad trip on Desolation Angels or Visions of Cody. I really despise Kerouac's self-indulgent books. He compared himself to Joyce a lot, but these are the same types of things that one dislikes in Joyce, the moments when the authorial eminence gets so full of itself that the book you're reading becomes suddenly only "theoretically" interesting. Big Sur is built with short chapters -- indeed, it anticipates Kurt Vonnegut's experiments in this regard. The chapters average 5 pages in length. 39 chapters leaves Kerouac free to do multiple riffs, to digress, to return from his digression, to introduce multiple characters, to do frequent "routines." Eventually, we get into a painfully honest engagement with the author's own alcoholism (yes, it's fiction, but by this point just barely; this is another genius of Kerouac, one I wonder to what extent he was even aware of, to push the fictive form into a dialectical realtionship with representation where we know that it's revealing actual moments in time experienced by the thinly disguised "real people" of the story but at the same time can't vouch entirely for what we're reading as an affirmation of something historical, actual. A destabilization of history in its acknowledgment as always constructed in language, narrative. But enough about such postmodernisms -- I also came upon a great summertime DRINK as a result of reading Big Sur. On pg. 78 of the Penguin edition, I came upon a reference to a "Pernod Martini." I quickly ran to my drink mix guidebooks; none of them listed such a drink. I am a big fan of both Pernod and Martinis. I experimented... and my faith was rewarded!! Here is the recipe for the best Pernod Martini, or, as I now call it, a "BIG SUR": 3 oz. chilled vodka; 1/2 oz. dry vermouth; 1/2 oz. Pernod Ice required glasses. Put vermouth in shaker w/ ice; shake, and pour out vermouth, as with a regular martini, leaving ice in shaker. Pour in vodka & shake. Pour into glass. Once martini vodka is in the glass, add Pernod. Adding it at this stage will allow the drink to maintain a clear green color. If you shake the Pernod with the vodka, the drink will be cloudier, not as pretty. Think pine treed mountains up against the coastline, and make sure the glass is cold when your pour in the vodka, up. Don't drink these every day -- you want to engage Big Sur on your own terms.
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/767445?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Ted's review
rating:

Big Sur is one of those Kerouac books I'd long avoided, as by the time you get to Big Sur you've likely read about 3-6 of his other books -- On the Road, The Dharma Bums, and The Subterraneans come first, and should, they are all indispensible. Thereafter, there are gems but you have to look for them; also, each person has to do her own looking. For me, the next great Kerouac book is Visions of Gerard, the one about Kerouac's brother who died in childhood (when JK was 4) and haunted Kerouac's whole life; it may well be why he stuck to his mother so, why he drank, why he embraced only a particularly annihilitative sense of Buddhism, i.e., his constant emphasis in interviews and the like that nothing exists. Vantiy of Duluoz is also surprisingly good, although it's the latest, with many moments of sloppy alcoholic prose. But it reminds you that Kerouac had a very interesting life even before he met Ginsberg and Burroughs, and it only got more interesting after. Lonesome Blonde then...more Big Sur is one of those Kerouac books I'd long avoided, as by the time you get to Big Sur you've likely read about 3-6 of his other books -- On the Road, The Dharma Bums, and The Subterraneans come first, and should, they are all indispensible. Thereafter, there are gems but you have to look for them; also, each person has to do her own looking. For me, the next great Kerouac book is Visions of Gerard, the one about Kerouac's brother who died in childhood (when JK was 4) and haunted Kerouac's whole life; it may well be why he stuck to his mother so, why he drank, why he embraced only a particularly annihilitative sense of Buddhism, i.e., his constant emphasis in interviews and the like that nothing exists. Vantiy of Duluoz is also surprisingly good, although it's the latest, with many moments of sloppy alcoholic prose. But it reminds you that Kerouac had a very interesting life even before he met Ginsberg and Burroughs, and it only got more interesting after. Lonesome Blonde then is terrific, a collection of travel pieces, compellingly readable; then Mexico City Blues, poems which you have to give some space to, but if you're willing, really reward you, all sorts of moments of wonder and pleasure and insight. OK. Et cetera. Big Sur, for someone who had thought he'd found all in Kerouac there is to find, is a revelation. There's something unexpectedly gained by spontaneous method for a writer (and person) like Kerouac, who could be so alcoholically HEAVY as a person during the same time as he was writing a book like Bug Sur. His prose here is exceptionally LIGHT -- and that makes a big difference to someone scared off "minor" Kerouac by a bad trip on Desolation Angels or Visions of Cody. I really despise Kerouac's self-indulgent books. He compared himself to Joyce a lot, but these are the same types of things that one dislikes in Joyce, the moments when the authorial eminence gets so full of itself that the book you're reading becomes suddenly only "theoretically" interesting. Big Sur is built with short chapters -- indeed, it anticipates Kurt Vonnegut's experiments in this regard. The chapters average 5 pages in length. 39 chapters leaves Kerouac free to do multiple riffs, to digress, to return from his digression, to introduce multiple characters, to do frequent "routines." Eventually, we get into a painfully honest engagement with the author's own alcoholism (yes, it's fiction, but by this point just barely; this is another genius of Kerouac, one I wonder to what extent he was even aware of, to push the fictive form into a dialectical realtionship with representation where we know that it's revealing actual moments in time experienced by the thinly disguised "real people" of the story but at the same time can't vouch entirely for what we're reading as an affirmation of something historical, actual. A destabilization of history in its acknowledgment as always constructed in language, narrative. But enough about such postmodernisms -- I also came upon a great summertime DRINK as a result of reading Big Sur. On pg. 78 of the Penguin edition, I came upon a reference to a "Pernod Martini." I quickly ran to my drink mix guidebooks; none of them listed such a drink. I am a big fan of both Pernod and Martinis. I experimented... and my faith was rewarded!! Here is the recipe for the best Pernod Martini, or, as I now call it, a "BIG SUR":

3 oz. chilled vodka; 1/2 oz. dry vermouth; 1/2 oz. Pernod

Ice required glasses.

Put vermouth in shaker w/ ice; shake, and pour out vermouth, as with a regular martini, leaving ice in shaker. Pour in vodka & shake. Pour into glass.

Once martini vodka is in the glass, add Pernod. Adding it at this stage will allow the drink to maintain a clear green color. If you shake the Pernod with the vodka, the drink will be cloudier, not as pretty. Think pine treed mountains up against the coastline, and make sure the glass is cold when your pour in the vodka, up.

Don't drink these every day -- you want to engage Big Sur on your own terms....less

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message 1: by Rebecca

07/12/2008 02:36PM

funny, i just read this too - an old edition from the philly free library - because i'm trying to catch up on all the kerouac i haven't read (this and desolation angels were the first ones). my copy had the poem "sea" at the end.

you can tell this novel is near the end of his life - it's a little sloppy, rambling, nonsensical. but in the moments where it soars above the mountain tops and clouds, it is lyrical and poetic and painfully real. you feel how much he hates the fame, how the drink is slowly dissolving and destroying everything inside him. that last frenetic paragraph of the book is so uncomfortable and beautiful, i could hear jack's baritone racing through those words, and i stopped breathing until i finished.

"-- And as far as I can see the world is too old for us to talk about it with our new words --"