Old Angel Midnight

Seriously, Kerouac is one of my all-time favorites, so to honestly review this, is painful for me.
This book is just a hot mess. I honestly understood maybe 1/50th of what I read. I know, I know - it's called spontaneous prose, or automatic writing. Like I said, I'm a big fan of the man. But this? This is just gobblydee gook! And much like those two words, full of crazy misspellings and abbreviations that make it virtually unreadable. I was sad as I turned each page, and would have given up entirely if not for brevity of the material. Gee whiz, I could have gone to the grave without knowing this was out in the world. I truly believe that only a famous author could have stuff like this actually published. I might have to re-read "On the show more Road" for the umpteenth time to get this bad taste outta my brain! show less

Socalled stream-of-conscious "automatic writing" is prone to lead to disappointment in readers, and even in it's best form somewhat difficult to appreciate. It should be considered the "abstract" painting of prose style. Kerouac's novels include some interesting experiments with this approach to writing. However, Old Angel Midnight should not be counted among his successes with this style. It is a bit unfair, too, because the introductrion states that these short pieces of writings were experiments, try-outs for Kerouac to develop his ability and style. Apparently, they were not intended for publication, and the title was added later. A later editors made various decisions about the order of the material. It is, therefore, questionable show more whether this material should have been published at all, and dubious to publish it as poetry, even though the short pieces look like poetry in terms of form. The collection of fragments known as Old Angel Midnight is also included in Vol. 1 of the poetry of Jack Kerouac in the Library of America edition. show less