Josh's review
Big Sur by Jack Kerouac
Kerouac is a paradox. He's simultaneously over-rated and under-rated. His worst books (particularly On the Road) are iconic and uncritically adored by teenagers and hippy-dippy morons, while his best works are overlooked.
Big Sur ranks among his best. It's Kerouac at his lowest, having been devoured by fame and digested by the vast chasm that lies between the saint he's imagined to be and the bitter, depressed, exiled, alcoholic that he really is.
Kerouac's is astoundingly frank in describing his desperate attempt to deal with what he's become and to somehow reconnect with the wonder that inspired him a mere decade earlier. It's a picture of a man at odds with his iconic status. It's in direct opposition to so much of his early work that sees holiness and bliss lurking everywhere, including the gutter. And the ending, an onamonapoetic ode to the roaring coast of Big Sur, is a vision of destruction and restoration rolled into one.
Big Sur ranks among his best. It's Kerouac at his lowest, having been devoured by fame and digested by the vast chasm that lies between the saint he's imagined to be and the bitter, depressed, exiled, alcoholic that he really is.
Kerouac's is astoundingly frank in describing his desperate attempt to deal with what he's become and to somehow reconnect with the wonder that inspired him a mere decade earlier. It's a picture of a man at odds with his iconic status. It's in direct opposition to so much of his early work that sees holiness and bliss lurking everywhere, including the gutter. And the ending, an onamonapoetic ode to the roaring coast of Big Sur, is a vision of destruction and restoration rolled into one.
