Big Sur
by Jack Kerouac 
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Coming down from his carefree youth and unwanted fame, Jack Kerouac undertakes a mature confrontation of some of his most troubling emotional issues: a burgeoning problem with alcoholism, addiction, fear, and insecurity. He dutifully records his ever-changing states of consciousness, which culminate in a powerful religious experience. Big Sur was written some time after Jack Kerouac's best-known works, following a visit to northern California and the first feelings of midlife crisis. Kerouac show more stayed for several weeks in a cabin in Big Sur, California, and with friends in San Francisco. Upon returning home, he wrote this account in a two-week period. Critic Richard Meltzer referred to Big Sur as Kerouac's 'masterpiece, and one of the great, great works of the English language.' show lessTags
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This is a worn down and haggard Jack, fighting to keep some of that idealism and spark alive, but well aware that he can't outrun fame, addiction, or myriad other demons eating away at his body and spirit.
For joyous, crackling prose, I prefer "Dharma Bums", but for a character study of what happens when a guy who delights in the simple joys gets caught up in the heat and confusion of being deigned king of an entire cultural movement, "Big Sur" is mighty compelling.
For joyous, crackling prose, I prefer "Dharma Bums", but for a character study of what happens when a guy who delights in the simple joys gets caught up in the heat and confusion of being deigned king of an entire cultural movement, "Big Sur" is mighty compelling.
It’s funny reading the accolades on the cover of the 1963 Bantam paperback edition. When people realized that Kerouac could make them money, all the mainstream papers and critics elbowed each other to award the most hyperbolic, sensational, scandalous praise possible to a book that is NOT so different from his previous works, the glaring red teaser on the back notwithstanding. Take the alcoholism, psychological contortions, existential torment, Catholic guilt and hyperconsciousness of The Subterraneans and dial it up five notches. Take the yearning, desire and scatterbrained chaos of On the Road; the mystical communion with Nature of The Dharma Bums; add an interesting “King of the Beatniks tells all” Hollywood scandal vibe; throw show more in a heaping pile of Kurt Cobain-style horror at success (“teenage angst has paid off well”) and then kill Jack’s cat and you’ve got a pretty good feel for Big Sur. If Big Sur truly is “His most powerful novel“ (big red teaser on back cover again), it isn’t because the writing is that much better or the story is ground-breaking, it’s because we’ve been following Kerouac all over the U.S. and Mexico for years and it hurts like hell to see him tormented by the hyperconsciousness and alcoholism that in large part fueled his early works. Kerouac’s drinking killed him about 7 years after Big Sur was published and if the book is any indication of his real condition, it’s amazing he lasted that long. The shroud of his imminent death covers the work as soon as the thin veneer of fictionalized names is pulled away. Kerouac’s beat poetry fills the pages and he includes his lengthy work “Sea” at the end. show less
A heart-breaking story and not for the first-time Kerouac reader. All of the elements of what make him great are here: honesty, kindness, a love of nature, and poetic philosophy -- but the backdrop is Kerouac's addiction to alcohol, which is killing him.
As Aram Saroyan says at the end of the introduction, "Above all, he was a tender writer. It would be hard to find a mean-spirited word about anybody in all his writing." As Kerouac himself says in Big Sur: "It's hard to explain and best thing to do is not be false."
While reading it it's hard not to wish that someone had saved Kerouac from himself. He suffers episodes of DT's and paranoia, and one of the lasting images is "trying to squeeze the last red drop out of the rancid port show more bottle" when there is no alcohol left. The people around him are good at heart (with the exception of a frightening pedophile), but they indulge Kerouac and in the full spirit of the 60s believe in things like making love in front of the kids. Kerouac is at his best and at peace when he's at one with nature in Big Sur; unfortunately he cannot resist returning to parties in the City and his self-destructive ways.
Kerouac was a great spirit and it's a shame that he died in 1969 at age 47. I found myself thinking about him for weeks after reading this book, wishing he was still in this world, seeing what I was seeing, and writing more of The Duluoz Legend. It's a hard read and I don't know that I would recommend it to anyone other than a Kerouac fan, but I give it four stars for the emotional staying power it had with me.
Quotes:
On nature and man:
"Even the first frightening night on the beach in the fog with my notebook and pencil, sitting there crosslegged in the sand facing all the Pacific fury flashing on rocks that rise like gloomy sea shroud towers out of the cove, the bingbang cove with its seas booming inside caves and slapping out, the cities of seaweed floating up and down you can even see their dark leer in the phosphorescent seabeach moonlight - That first night I sit there and all I know, as I look up, is the kitchen light is on, on the cliff, to the right, where somebody's just built a cabin overlooking all the horrible Sur..."
"...who cant sleep like a log in a solitary cabin in the woods, you wake up in the late morning so refreshed and realizing the universe namelessly: the universe is an Angel..."
On being kind:
"There's the poor little mouse eating her nightly supper in the humble corner where I've put out a little delight-plate full of cheese and chocolate candy (for my days of killing mice are over)...'
On the important things in life:
"On my deathbed I could be remembering that creek day and forgetting the day MGM bought my book, I could be remembering the old lost green dump T-shirt and forgetting the sapphired robes - Mebbe the best way to get into heaven."
On the transience of life:
"And as far as I can see the world is too old for us to talk about it with our new words - We will pass just as quietly through life (passing through, passing through) as the 10th century people of this valley only with a little more noise and a few bridges and dams and bombs that wont even last a million years..."
On lamenting changes in what is now Silicon Valley:
"Soon we're set straight and pointed head on down beautiful fourlane Bayshore Highway to that lovely Santa Clara Valley - But I'm amazed that after only a few years the damn thing no longer has prune fields and vast beet fields like at Lawrence when I was a brakeman on the Southern Pacific and even after, it's one long row of houses right down the line 50 miles to San Jose like a great monstrous Los Angeles beginning to grow south of Frisco."
On driving the Pacific coast:
"When Cody comes to a narrow tight curve with all our death staring us in the face down that hole he just swerves the curve saying 'The way to drive in the mountains is, boy, no fiddling around, these roads dont move, you're the one that moves' - And we come out on the highway and go right battin up to Monterey in the Big Sur dusk where down there on the faint gloamy frothing rocks you can hear the seals cry."
On love:
"It always makes me proud to love the world somehow - Hate's so easy compared..."
On corruption:
"Not so much that I'm a drunkard that I feel guilty about but that others who occupy this plane of 'life on earth' with me dont feel guilty at all - Crooked judges shaving and smiling in the morning on the way to their heinous indifferences, respectable generals ordering soldiers by telephone to go die or drop dead, pickpockets nodding in cells saying 'I never hurt anybody,'....
On optimism in spite of it all:
"On soft Spring nights I'll stand in the yard under the stars - Something good will come out of all things yet - And it will be golden and eternal just like that - There's no need to say another word." show less
As Aram Saroyan says at the end of the introduction, "Above all, he was a tender writer. It would be hard to find a mean-spirited word about anybody in all his writing." As Kerouac himself says in Big Sur: "It's hard to explain and best thing to do is not be false."
While reading it it's hard not to wish that someone had saved Kerouac from himself. He suffers episodes of DT's and paranoia, and one of the lasting images is "trying to squeeze the last red drop out of the rancid port show more bottle" when there is no alcohol left. The people around him are good at heart (with the exception of a frightening pedophile), but they indulge Kerouac and in the full spirit of the 60s believe in things like making love in front of the kids. Kerouac is at his best and at peace when he's at one with nature in Big Sur; unfortunately he cannot resist returning to parties in the City and his self-destructive ways.
Kerouac was a great spirit and it's a shame that he died in 1969 at age 47. I found myself thinking about him for weeks after reading this book, wishing he was still in this world, seeing what I was seeing, and writing more of The Duluoz Legend. It's a hard read and I don't know that I would recommend it to anyone other than a Kerouac fan, but I give it four stars for the emotional staying power it had with me.
Quotes:
On nature and man:
"Even the first frightening night on the beach in the fog with my notebook and pencil, sitting there crosslegged in the sand facing all the Pacific fury flashing on rocks that rise like gloomy sea shroud towers out of the cove, the bingbang cove with its seas booming inside caves and slapping out, the cities of seaweed floating up and down you can even see their dark leer in the phosphorescent seabeach moonlight - That first night I sit there and all I know, as I look up, is the kitchen light is on, on the cliff, to the right, where somebody's just built a cabin overlooking all the horrible Sur..."
"...who cant sleep like a log in a solitary cabin in the woods, you wake up in the late morning so refreshed and realizing the universe namelessly: the universe is an Angel..."
On being kind:
"There's the poor little mouse eating her nightly supper in the humble corner where I've put out a little delight-plate full of cheese and chocolate candy (for my days of killing mice are over)...'
On the important things in life:
"On my deathbed I could be remembering that creek day and forgetting the day MGM bought my book, I could be remembering the old lost green dump T-shirt and forgetting the sapphired robes - Mebbe the best way to get into heaven."
On the transience of life:
"And as far as I can see the world is too old for us to talk about it with our new words - We will pass just as quietly through life (passing through, passing through) as the 10th century people of this valley only with a little more noise and a few bridges and dams and bombs that wont even last a million years..."
On lamenting changes in what is now Silicon Valley:
"Soon we're set straight and pointed head on down beautiful fourlane Bayshore Highway to that lovely Santa Clara Valley - But I'm amazed that after only a few years the damn thing no longer has prune fields and vast beet fields like at Lawrence when I was a brakeman on the Southern Pacific and even after, it's one long row of houses right down the line 50 miles to San Jose like a great monstrous Los Angeles beginning to grow south of Frisco."
On driving the Pacific coast:
"When Cody comes to a narrow tight curve with all our death staring us in the face down that hole he just swerves the curve saying 'The way to drive in the mountains is, boy, no fiddling around, these roads dont move, you're the one that moves' - And we come out on the highway and go right battin up to Monterey in the Big Sur dusk where down there on the faint gloamy frothing rocks you can hear the seals cry."
On love:
"It always makes me proud to love the world somehow - Hate's so easy compared..."
On corruption:
"Not so much that I'm a drunkard that I feel guilty about but that others who occupy this plane of 'life on earth' with me dont feel guilty at all - Crooked judges shaving and smiling in the morning on the way to their heinous indifferences, respectable generals ordering soldiers by telephone to go die or drop dead, pickpockets nodding in cells saying 'I never hurt anybody,'....
On optimism in spite of it all:
"On soft Spring nights I'll stand in the yard under the stars - Something good will come out of all things yet - And it will be golden and eternal just like that - There's no need to say another word." show less
Kerouac is a paradox. He's simultaneously over-rated and under-rated. His worst books (particularly [b:On the Road|6288|The Road|Cormac McCarthy|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1266449195s/6288.jpg|3355573]) 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 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 show more 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. show less
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 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 show more 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. show less
Drunk, strung out, and famous. Haunting when you know the end is near, six or so years in the future, puking up his liver in his mom's bathroom. Hard for a parent to read for various reasons I won't go into but will be immediately apparent if you've read the book. Goddamit Jack.
I preferred this to on the road. It is like the hangover after on the road and all the Catholic guilt is rising to the surface
I didn't love this as much as I loved On the Road, maybe because Big Sur truly reveals Kerouacs's serious affliction and has less of a youthful quality, obviously due to the fact that it was written in later years. Yet I love the dream-like approach of the rant, with disjointed sentence structure, brilliant characterization and his edgy signature style. His "free form" approach is to me, a combination of Hemingway and William Burroughs, with direct homage to the latter.
In this revealing account written at the peak of his suffering, Kerouac shares with us the poets and beatniks of San Francisco, and of course, more Dean Moriarty. The seamless quality lets us drift along with profound insight into the more serious side of Kerouac's show more alcoholism. It's a very moving, introspective read. show less
In this revealing account written at the peak of his suffering, Kerouac shares with us the poets and beatniks of San Francisco, and of course, more Dean Moriarty. The seamless quality lets us drift along with profound insight into the more serious side of Kerouac's show more alcoholism. It's a very moving, introspective read. show less
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Author Information
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Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1922. His first novel, The Town and the City, was published in 1950. He considered all of his "true story novels," including On the Road, to be chapters of "one vast book," his autobiographical Legend of Duluoz. He died in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1969 at the age of forty-seven. (Publisher show more Provided) show less
Jack Kerouac has a Legacy Library. Legacy libraries are the personal libraries of famous readers, entered by LibraryThing members from the Legacy Libraries group.
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- Big Sur
- Original publication date
- 1963
- Important places
- Big Sur, California, USA
- Related movies
- One Fast Move or I'm Gone: Kerouac's Big Sur (2008 | IMDb); Big Sur (2013 | IMDb)
- First words
- The church is blowing a sad windblown 'Kathleen' on the bells in the skid row slums as I wake up all woebegone and goopy, groaning from another drinking bout and groaning most of all because I'd ruined my 'secret return' to S... (show all)an Francisco by getting silly drunk while hiding in the alleys with bums and then marching forth into North Beach to see everybody altho Lorenz Monsanto and I'd exchanged huge letters outlining how I would sneak in quietly, call him on the phone using a code name lie Adam Yulch or Lalagy Pulvertaft (also writers) and then he would secretly drive me to his cabin in the Big Sur woods where I would be alone and undisturbed for six weeks just chopping wood, drawing water, writing, sleeping, hiking, etc., etc.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)There's no need to say another word.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Didja ever tell him / about water meeting water -- ? / O go back to otter--- / Term -- Term -- Klerm / Kerm -- Kurn -- Cow -- Kow--- / Cash -- Cac'h -- Cluck--- / Clock -- Gomeat sea need / de deep I see you / Enoc'h / soon anarf / in Old Brittany
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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