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Vanity of Duluoz
The tale of Kerouac's alter-ego, Vanity of Duluoz presents Jack Duluoz's high school experiences as a sporting jock in Massachusetts and his time at Columbia University on a football scholarship. Just as Jack's glamorous new adult life begins, so does World War II, and he joins the US Navy to travel the world. As Jack experiences more, he realizes the limits of his former plans and returns to New York at the start of the Beat movement, to a riot of drugs, sex and writing. Vanity of Duluoz was Kerouac's final work published before his death in 1969.
276 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1967
62 people are currently reading
1688 people want to read
About the author
Jack Kerouac
359 books11.6k followersJean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac, known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation.
Of French-Canadian ancestry, Kerouac was raised in a French-speaking home in Lowell, Massachusetts. He "learned English at age six and spoke with a marked accent into his late teens." During World War II, he served in the United States Merchant Marine; he completed his first novel at the time, which was published more than 40 years after his death. His first published book was The Town and the City (1950), and he achieved widespread fame and notoriety with his second, On the Road, in 1957. It made him a beat icon, and he went on to publish 12 more novels and numerous poetry volumes.
Kerouac is recognized for his style of stream of consciousness spontaneous prose. Thematically, his work covers topics such as his Catholic spirituality, jazz, travel, promiscuity, life in New York City, Buddhism, drugs, and poverty. He became an underground celebrity and, with other Beats, a progenitor of the hippie movement, although he remained antagonistic toward some of its politically radical elements. He has a lasting legacy, greatly influencing many of the cultural icons of the 1960s, including Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Jerry Garcia and The Doors.
In 1969, at the age of 47, Kerouac died from an abdominal hemorrhage caused by a lifetime of heavy drinking. Since then, his literary prestige has grown, and several previously unseen works have been published.
Of French-Canadian ancestry, Kerouac was raised in a French-speaking home in Lowell, Massachusetts. He "learned English at age six and spoke with a marked accent into his late teens." During World War II, he served in the United States Merchant Marine; he completed his first novel at the time, which was published more than 40 years after his death. His first published book was The Town and the City (1950), and he achieved widespread fame and notoriety with his second, On the Road, in 1957. It made him a beat icon, and he went on to publish 12 more novels and numerous poetry volumes.
Kerouac is recognized for his style of stream of consciousness spontaneous prose. Thematically, his work covers topics such as his Catholic spirituality, jazz, travel, promiscuity, life in New York City, Buddhism, drugs, and poverty. He became an underground celebrity and, with other Beats, a progenitor of the hippie movement, although he remained antagonistic toward some of its politically radical elements. He has a lasting legacy, greatly influencing many of the cultural icons of the 1960s, including Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Jerry Garcia and The Doors.
In 1969, at the age of 47, Kerouac died from an abdominal hemorrhage caused by a lifetime of heavy drinking. Since then, his literary prestige has grown, and several previously unseen works have been published.
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June 14, 2009
A- My first Kerouac
My cousin was hitchhiking across the country. "He read Jack Kerouac's On the Road and now he is not wearing a coat but a blanket and thumbing," my aunt told my parents worriedly.
"Can I go to the library?" I asked.
"Why?" my mom responded.
"I want to get a book by Jack Keriowac."
"No, I am not taking you for that!"
I rode my bike, found out how to spell Kerouac, and On the Road was not in--that's one of the most stolen books from libraries and bookstores. Instead, V of D was in. I got it.
Shortly after, I fell in love with another Beat fan. Kerouac glued us together. How could he not?
My cousin was hitchhiking across the country. "He read Jack Kerouac's On the Road and now he is not wearing a coat but a blanket and thumbing," my aunt told my parents worriedly.
"Can I go to the library?" I asked.
"Why?" my mom responded.
"I want to get a book by Jack Keriowac."
"No, I am not taking you for that!"
I rode my bike, found out how to spell Kerouac, and On the Road was not in--that's one of the most stolen books from libraries and bookstores. Instead, V of D was in. I got it.
Shortly after, I fell in love with another Beat fan. Kerouac glued us together. How could he not?
June 9, 2008
An old man writes of his younger days...
Surprisingly to most people, this is my favorite Kerouac volume. I've probably read it at least four or five times now; I'm now deliberately spacing my readings out to where I can forget parts and revisit the ways it's made me felt.
The big difference here with Vanity is that Kerouac's explosive writing from the late '40s onward was now at something of an impasse: by the mid-'60s, he had told most of his life story and was running out material. The arch of the entire "mythologization" stems from "On the Road" into "Dharma Bums" and begins to seriously crest and break with "Big Sur" (the most depressing): with "Vanity" he was able to go back to his days in high school (with little of the "Maggie Cassidy" stuff) and to his days just after the war when he started doing benzendrine and getting really "beat".
The result, while nostalgic, has a definite joi de vivre, an element the later books tend to cloud over with alcoholic melancholy and "Buddhist/Catholic" lamentations. Instead, the adventures of young Kerouac breath new life into the beat myth once again for anyone who felt something with "On the Road": Horace Mann school, football at Columbia, his involvement with Lucien Carr's killing of David Kammerer, his family falling apart, his days and eventual discharge in the military on psychiatric grounds, and hanging around and eating steaks and ice cream and feeling the possibility of everything.
Surprisingly to most people, this is my favorite Kerouac volume. I've probably read it at least four or five times now; I'm now deliberately spacing my readings out to where I can forget parts and revisit the ways it's made me felt.
The big difference here with Vanity is that Kerouac's explosive writing from the late '40s onward was now at something of an impasse: by the mid-'60s, he had told most of his life story and was running out material. The arch of the entire "mythologization" stems from "On the Road" into "Dharma Bums" and begins to seriously crest and break with "Big Sur" (the most depressing): with "Vanity" he was able to go back to his days in high school (with little of the "Maggie Cassidy" stuff) and to his days just after the war when he started doing benzendrine and getting really "beat".
The result, while nostalgic, has a definite joi de vivre, an element the later books tend to cloud over with alcoholic melancholy and "Buddhist/Catholic" lamentations. Instead, the adventures of young Kerouac breath new life into the beat myth once again for anyone who felt something with "On the Road": Horace Mann school, football at Columbia, his involvement with Lucien Carr's killing of David Kammerer, his family falling apart, his days and eventual discharge in the military on psychiatric grounds, and hanging around and eating steaks and ice cream and feeling the possibility of everything.
November 17, 2019
Con questo si chiude il mio personale cerchio con La Leggenda di Duluoz. Ultimo libro da leggere, ultimo libro acquistato e cercato per anni, forse perché mai ristampato. Ma si sa che quando si desidera a lungo qualcosa si rischia poi di andare incontro ad una mezza delusione.
Sapevo che si trattava di un romanzo di reminiscenze risalenti al priodo di formazione alla Horace Mann, quasi totalmente incentrato sulla sua carriera sportiva. Ecco è prorio e solo questo a frenare il mio entusiarmo iniziale, già so poco o niente del calcio, figuriamoci del football americano. Tolti i brani dedicati alle cronache sportive, nulla da dire sul resto.
Poi il racconto prosegue con le sue esperienze in mare, con i primi importanti incontri a NY, con l'omicidio Kammerer.
È un'appendice del suo primo grande romanzo La Città e la Metropoli, stessi temi ma sviluppati in modo diverso.
...i miei passati successi atletici, i miei stessi diari e i libercoli pubblicati, e tutto, non è per niente reale e vero, ma bell'e buona menzogna, e non solo, ma che anche i miei propri privati sogni sognati di notte nel buio sonno non sono affatto sogni ma invenzioni della mia immaginazione nella veglia, e che io non sono quell' "Io sono" ma solo e soltanto una spia nel corpo di qualcuno che pretende io sia un elefante vagante per Istanbul con degli indigeni fra le zampe.
Sapevo che si trattava di un romanzo di reminiscenze risalenti al priodo di formazione alla Horace Mann, quasi totalmente incentrato sulla sua carriera sportiva. Ecco è prorio e solo questo a frenare il mio entusiarmo iniziale, già so poco o niente del calcio, figuriamoci del football americano. Tolti i brani dedicati alle cronache sportive, nulla da dire sul resto.
Poi il racconto prosegue con le sue esperienze in mare, con i primi importanti incontri a NY, con l'omicidio Kammerer.
È un'appendice del suo primo grande romanzo La Città e la Metropoli, stessi temi ma sviluppati in modo diverso.
...i miei passati successi atletici, i miei stessi diari e i libercoli pubblicati, e tutto, non è per niente reale e vero, ma bell'e buona menzogna, e non solo, ma che anche i miei propri privati sogni sognati di notte nel buio sonno non sono affatto sogni ma invenzioni della mia immaginazione nella veglia, e che io non sono quell' "Io sono" ma solo e soltanto una spia nel corpo di qualcuno che pretende io sia un elefante vagante per Istanbul con degli indigeni fra le zampe.
September 16, 2017
I can't give Jack (Kerouac) less than 5 stars (even though I find myself being very confused while reading his works, for his -sometimes - too vague and abstract language - 'too' for me), simply because ever since I read 'On the Road', I've noticed that he somehow makes me see the beauty of the world, be aware of it, view it similarly as Jack's protagonists do. This doesn't mean 'copying' them, it means just being influenced and inspired by the words Kerouac said and wanted the world to know, if for the sake of merely getting it out of himself or actually trying to say and teach others something, that I don't know, but for me the important things's that he ALWAYS has some kind of impact on me, smaller or bigger. And so when he made me feel like that once, that just sticks with me, and my admiration for his mind can be reflected in my ratings. Recently, thanks to him, I'm trying to be more specific in my speech, so I can convey my thoughts to words more accurately, thus avoiding, even to a small extent, confusion and misunderstanding. Also, he got me interested in American writers of the first half of the 20th century.
December 11, 2012
After reading On the Road last month I decided I needed to read everything that Kerouac wrote. This was the next thing I was able to find by him. It was listed as the book about "football, war and murder" and while I'm no big fan of football I figured what the hell and decided to read it anyway. It was written 15 years after On the Road and covers most of Kerouac's life up to that point. He's definitely an older and more bitter writer but he still writes very well and I found I did enjoy it a great deal, though I also did skip through most of the football parts! I felt it was a bit too choppy in places, he seemed to be skimming through his descriptions and all the scenes were too short. I felt like it did get much better once the beats showed up and enjoyed the last third the most, and not just because there was a murder. I have to say the politics around the murder were kind of terrifying. The justice system's whole argument seemed to be, well if a queer hits on you and you ain't queer it's totally acceptable to kill him if he tries it on. Rather terrifying, I think it did come across in the book though that it wasn't because he was a queer but because he was crazy and unstable that he was killed. I did enjoy it, and I'm looking forward to finding more Kerouac in the library and reading that too!
April 15, 2018
This book picks up significantly after getting through the play-by-play football game breakdowns. Kerouac's time on different navy ships during WWII is very interesting, and of course the introduction of the other Beats into his world. Quite a charming book.
May 11, 2023
Jack Kerouac is one of those authors whom I admire, but whom I cannot recommend without qualification to my friends. I am attracted to him because of the sincerity of his quest for freedom and enlightenment -- yet I am appalled by his self-destructiveness in the use of alcohol and drugs, which led to his death at age 47. Still, I give Vanity Of Duluoz five stars because I think it is the best roman à clef by a 20th century American author.
The subtitle of the book is An Adventurous Education 1935-46. And so it is. It begins with Jack's life of promise as a bright student and sports star -- Jack Duluoz is in fact Jack Kerouac -- and follows his life through his student days at Columbia and wartime adventures in the Navy and Merchant Marine. Although we know of his success as a writer, such success left a bitter taste in his mouth:
The subtitle of the book is An Adventurous Education 1935-46. And so it is. It begins with Jack's life of promise as a bright student and sports star -- Jack Duluoz is in fact Jack Kerouac -- and follows his life through his student days at Columbia and wartime adventures in the Navy and Merchant Marine. Although we know of his success as a writer, such success left a bitter taste in his mouth:
For after all what is success? You kill yourself and a few others to get to the top of your profession, so to speak, so that when you reach middle age or a little later you can stay home and cultivate your own garden in bliss: but by that time, because you've invented some kind of better mousetrap, mobs come rushing across your garden and trampling all your flowers. What's with this?What, indeed! Kerouac completed this book a scant two years before dying of a diseased liver while living in St Petersburg, Florida.
December 1, 2014
Это роман «про футбол и войну». Понятно, преувеличение и кокетство автора, потому что он еще и про знаменитое убийство Каммерера, и про начала «битников», и про много что другое. Но первая треть — действительно почти исключительно про футбол и стоны о том, как нашего героя недооценивали на поле. Более нелепого идиотизма мне читать, наверное, не доводилось, это действительно, видимо, худшее из им написанного. Но стоит продраться сквозь эту первую треть — и дальше все будет хорошо, а под конец и вовсе прекрасно.
И трогает здесь (ок, даже в первой трети) в первую очередь то, что Керуак (о чем как-то не очень много говорят даже специалисты), и был, и навсегда остался писателем иммигрантским. Его восторг перед Америкой — это восторг чужака, аутсайдера, пришельца. И спорт в его жизни — в значительной мере от того, что «так принято» в чужой стране, что у спортсмена больше шансов выбиться из низов «в люди», срастить себе образование и уважение окружающих, старших и преуспевающих, стать «как все». Так было всегда. И в регистрации этого нехитрого факта — большая ценность этого литературно-исторического документа.
И трогает здесь (ок, даже в первой трети) в первую очередь то, что Керуак (о чем как-то не очень много говорят даже специалисты), и был, и навсегда остался писателем иммигрантским. Его восторг перед Америкой — это восторг чужака, аутсайдера, пришельца. И спорт в его жизни — в значительной мере от того, что «так принято» в чужой стране, что у спортсмена больше шансов выбиться из низов «в люди», срастить себе образование и уважение окружающих, старших и преуспевающих, стать «как все». Так было всегда. И в регистрации этого нехитрого факта — большая ценность этого литературно-исторического документа.
October 4, 2010
This is the bitter old Jack, gone all nostalgic. My personal favorite. "Go droppeth a turd," indeed.
September 23, 2022
minus one star for the amount of granie w piłe, however, i love my boy jackie and his besties
May 24, 2021
Underrated/under read? Really liked this personal Kerouac. Doing a read/reread of a handful of Jack. Stay tuned…
April 21, 2025
nonsense.
July 4, 2022
Having set out to read every single one of Kerouac's principal prose works I decided to leave this one till last. This was mostly because I had assumed, given the date of its writing, that it would have been as drink sodden and as loosely coherent as Satori in Paris. He was after all near the sad end of his tragic drink fuelled decline when he wrote it. But actually Kerouac is very reigned in here. That's not to say he never indulges in any characteristic flights of poetic fancy (even if they're never as extended as in Doctor Sax or Maggie Cassidy). Or that Kerouac's reactionary lamentations against the state of hippie youth (peppered throughout the length of the book) don't read as utterly cringeworthy (although it's surprising to see Kerouac mention the Beatles at one point, I had expected him to disdain the mere mention). All in all though the book turns out to be actually very readable. On the flip slide, the writing in Vanity is sort of prosaic or at least it never really sparkles like Kerouac's earlier stuff. Nevertheless for anyone interested in the whole trajectory of the man's life and the Duluoz mythos, that epic feat of American (semi-)auto-biography which constituted his life work, this is an essential piece of the puzzle.
Vanity fills in many of the details of Kerouac's youthful career as a star athlete, navy recruit (very briefly), merchant marine and finally budding debauche. The novel is also interesting for its description of his incipient relationship with the other Beats (Ginsberg is mentioned a few times but in a dismissive way; the tenderness of Kerouac's description of Burroughs on the other hand is actually quite surprising). Ultimately, Vanity of Duluoz feels like Kerouac attempting to set the record straight on his failure to make it as a college athelete and the underwhelming state of his war record, from the perspective of a remorseful middle aged conservative for whom these things had taken on greatly enhanced value (while the bohemian, literary lifestyle which he was then being lauded had clearly become a source of painful regret). Understandably, there is a deep tone of melancholy and grief running through Vanity of Duluoz. There's one very revealing moment in the book that hints at what might have been behind Kerouac's suicidal relationship with alcohol. Kerouac recounts how quiet he had been on one of his sea voyages, having exchanged a handful of words to the rest of the crew throughout the trip, until that is, "we all get paid in little brown envelopes and I unloose about a hundred thousand words on all those poor shipmates of mine because somebody's brought beer aboard and I'm drunk and they complain 'That goddam Du Louse aint said ten words on the whole trip now listen to him!'"
Vanity fills in many of the details of Kerouac's youthful career as a star athlete, navy recruit (very briefly), merchant marine and finally budding debauche. The novel is also interesting for its description of his incipient relationship with the other Beats (Ginsberg is mentioned a few times but in a dismissive way; the tenderness of Kerouac's description of Burroughs on the other hand is actually quite surprising). Ultimately, Vanity of Duluoz feels like Kerouac attempting to set the record straight on his failure to make it as a college athelete and the underwhelming state of his war record, from the perspective of a remorseful middle aged conservative for whom these things had taken on greatly enhanced value (while the bohemian, literary lifestyle which he was then being lauded had clearly become a source of painful regret). Understandably, there is a deep tone of melancholy and grief running through Vanity of Duluoz. There's one very revealing moment in the book that hints at what might have been behind Kerouac's suicidal relationship with alcohol. Kerouac recounts how quiet he had been on one of his sea voyages, having exchanged a handful of words to the rest of the crew throughout the trip, until that is, "we all get paid in little brown envelopes and I unloose about a hundred thousand words on all those poor shipmates of mine because somebody's brought beer aboard and I'm drunk and they complain 'That goddam Du Louse aint said ten words on the whole trip now listen to him!'"
May 24, 2013
You've read On the Road, right? Vanity of Duluoz is like its little brother, the last novel that Kerouac released before he died in 1969, due to an internal hemorrhage caused by cirrhosis (from a lifetime of heavy, heavy drinking) along with complications caused by an untreated hernia and a bar fight that he'd been in. What a lad.
Oh, and in case you're wondering, it's pronounced to rhyme with 'to lose' - took me a while to figure that one out. Jack Duluoz is Kerouac's alter ego, and he's used as a vehicle to convey Kerouac's high school experiences in Lowell, Massachussets, and his subsequent education and early life.
From Lowell, Kerouac heads to Columbia University, playing American Football along the way. In 1939, the Second World War breaks out, and in December 1941, the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor and the United States of America joins the war.
This draws Duluoz to the U.S. Navy, where he serves on various vessels while discovering his passion for language. Oh, and there's a murder, too - but I'm not going to give you any spoilers.
And, as a bonus, you'll meet a whole host of the beatnik elite, hidden behind alter egos - William Burroughs is Will Hubbard, Lucian Carr is Claude de Maubris, and Allen Ginsberg is Irwin Garden. I didn't realise that until after I'd finished reading it, but it didn't really matter - as the title suggests, this is all about Kerouac.
Oh, and in case you're wondering, it's pronounced to rhyme with 'to lose' - took me a while to figure that one out. Jack Duluoz is Kerouac's alter ego, and he's used as a vehicle to convey Kerouac's high school experiences in Lowell, Massachussets, and his subsequent education and early life.
From Lowell, Kerouac heads to Columbia University, playing American Football along the way. In 1939, the Second World War breaks out, and in December 1941, the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor and the United States of America joins the war.
This draws Duluoz to the U.S. Navy, where he serves on various vessels while discovering his passion for language. Oh, and there's a murder, too - but I'm not going to give you any spoilers.
And, as a bonus, you'll meet a whole host of the beatnik elite, hidden behind alter egos - William Burroughs is Will Hubbard, Lucian Carr is Claude de Maubris, and Allen Ginsberg is Irwin Garden. I didn't realise that until after I'd finished reading it, but it didn't really matter - as the title suggests, this is all about Kerouac.
July 24, 2007
Having written up Exley's Fan's Notes, I thought I'd add another book I'd consider more heroic than successful. I believe this was the last novel Kerouac published during his lifetime, and he had drunk much of his talent away, as well as turned his back on the counterculture that he did much to inspire. Yet his entire sense of self is based in the fact that he's a writer, so he pushes on, delving into archives and memory, dredging up his years at Columbia and the Lucien Carr/David Kammerer stabbing (possibly cribbed from And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks?), willing a book into being. It's very moving and, despite its flaws, there's some great stuff in here.
February 5, 2012
A painful, bitter account of Kerouac's early years in New York City. Unlike some of Kerouac's work where things don't quite snap into place unless you know the principles behind his gallery of fictional stand-ins, Vanity of Duluoz overcomes that deficiency through the sheer power of Kerouac's garrelous, weary voice. Written near the end of his life as he slipped into the final stages of alcoholism, the book is better than it has any right to be.
December 11, 2014
Не могу я объяснить гипнотический эффект, который оказывает на меня Керуак. Тут до кучи и разговорность, и детскость, и безалаберность, и... бабочка письма, не знаю, извините.
ПСС Керуака следовало бы назвать "Восемнадцать способов рассказать, как я прожил, прочуял, разглядел и выпил эту вашу так называемую жизнь".
Это любовь.
ПСС Керуака следовало бы назвать "Восемнадцать способов рассказать, как я прожил, прочуял, разглядел и выпил эту вашу так называемую жизнь".
Это любовь.
Read
February 15, 2025Mostly Kerouac on autopilot, wandering loose monologue from your drunk all-American uncle, complete with grumbles about youth of today (1967) and revisionist slights on former friends (Ginsberg). Flashes of effortless genius, last book he ever wrote and real end of the road cosmic nihilism last few pages, very moving
October 29, 2020
Pure Duluoz spirit
April 23, 2021
Kerouac è Kerouac.
Che ve lo dico a fare.
Che ve lo dico a fare.
September 30, 2024
Kerouac can be one of the most enervating writers who ever lived when he's on his game, and one of the most patience-testing ever when he is at his most self-indulgent. In Vanity of Duluoz, we are mostly getting the good version of Kerouac, looking back on his younger self with more experienced eyes.
The catch with these stories is that if you have read a lot of Kerouac's prior work, we are covering ground that has already been worked over for story material at least once. If you've read the Town and City or Maggie Cassidy or other works from that era, you will find that much of Vanity of Duluoz is familiar, though now being "recollected in tranquility" (as Wordsworth would have it). If these stories lack the urgency of Kerouac's earlier writing, it's been replaced with a melancholic reverie that can also have a resonance with those of us that have moved past our prime years.
There's a lot of football material, stories from his time in the merchant marine, and a rather alarming story revolving around the killing of an acquaintance in which Jack plays an ancillary role. Like most of us, Jack had come to feel estranged from the changing culture, and these reflections represent the time in his life before he was the great author Jack Kerouac, and before the cultural started to move past people of his age. As Kerouac's life was nearing its end, this book is a kind of capstone; an old man remembering childhood innocence.
The catch with these stories is that if you have read a lot of Kerouac's prior work, we are covering ground that has already been worked over for story material at least once. If you've read the Town and City or Maggie Cassidy or other works from that era, you will find that much of Vanity of Duluoz is familiar, though now being "recollected in tranquility" (as Wordsworth would have it). If these stories lack the urgency of Kerouac's earlier writing, it's been replaced with a melancholic reverie that can also have a resonance with those of us that have moved past our prime years.
There's a lot of football material, stories from his time in the merchant marine, and a rather alarming story revolving around the killing of an acquaintance in which Jack plays an ancillary role. Like most of us, Jack had come to feel estranged from the changing culture, and these reflections represent the time in his life before he was the great author Jack Kerouac, and before the cultural started to move past people of his age. As Kerouac's life was nearing its end, this book is a kind of capstone; an old man remembering childhood innocence.
January 4, 2024
I'm not sure why the story of Kerouac's high school, college and WWII years has such a hold on me, especially since I'm not a fan of his '50s prose style (ecstatic poetry to some, purple to me) and since he'd already told it 17 years earlier, in the excellent "The Town and the City." This time around the memories are more detailed (hope you like reading about football X's and O's) and, I assume, even more thinly fictionalized, to the point where he occasionally refers to himself by his real name and mentions that some of the friends and relatives he's writing about also turned up in his novel "Maggie Cassidy."
There are vivid accounts of Lucien Carr's killing of David Kammerer (a pivotal event for the group that became the core of the Beats) and Kerouc's time in the Merchant Marine, more informative than in "The Town and the City," and a couple of old-mannish rants against hippies and the left.
And it's almost all done in conversational English -- "Insofar as nobody loves my dashes anyway," he announces on page 1, "I'll use regular punctuatuion for the new illiterate generation." It was a return to his pre-"On the Road" style, which makes "Vanity of Duluoz" a bit of a high-wire act: Can he successfully (re)tell the story while abandoning the kind of writing that made him famous? He does, and for some reason I'm a sucker for the legend he spent his career building out of his life story.
**UPDATE** Just finished "And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks," his and William Burroughs' fiction-ish record of their lives in 1944. I can feel the hero worship ebbing as I type this.
There are vivid accounts of Lucien Carr's killing of David Kammerer (a pivotal event for the group that became the core of the Beats) and Kerouc's time in the Merchant Marine, more informative than in "The Town and the City," and a couple of old-mannish rants against hippies and the left.
And it's almost all done in conversational English -- "Insofar as nobody loves my dashes anyway," he announces on page 1, "I'll use regular punctuatuion for the new illiterate generation." It was a return to his pre-"On the Road" style, which makes "Vanity of Duluoz" a bit of a high-wire act: Can he successfully (re)tell the story while abandoning the kind of writing that made him famous? He does, and for some reason I'm a sucker for the legend he spent his career building out of his life story.
**UPDATE** Just finished "And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks," his and William Burroughs' fiction-ish record of their lives in 1944. I can feel the hero worship ebbing as I type this.
December 6, 2025
Choice in the world is really a sham.
September 23, 2024
More like 3.5 stars
June 1, 2020
So much more about American football than I remember from my first read, perhaps because I now understand what he is talking about!
November 17, 2015
"Everybody who comes from New Orleans in that group is marked with tragedy."
i remember the fever of youth in Jack Kerouac. i remember the carelessness of college days. the hormones acting up and us saying, hey we're so much better than that. i remember breaking out of the box and letting the inner kid in us rule. our endless wanderings. our proclivities to art. our love for reading books. i remember shouting at the top of my lungs when me and my friends get drunk. or eating chocolate sundae fudge on free days. also, i remember our failings and our darknesses as eighteen, nineteen year-olds.
this autobiography takes us back to our own youth. it lays out a nostalgic look of our faraway boyhood dreams.
what i like about Jack Kerouac is his soul. this total reckless hobo punk who never gave a flying fuck.
On The Road is just one colorful fragment of Jack Kerouac's mad life, his endless and inspirational hitch hiking across his beloved America. Vanity Of Duluoz however encapsulates the whole coming of age and relentless badassery of his early adult life. his rise to stardom and ironically, boredom as a football superstar in Columbia University until he suffered this 'void' which made him enlist as a marine and did all this absurdity on board The Dorschester amidst the severity of World War II. until he went back to New York city and the blossoming era of the beat generation. here he was an integral part of a hip clique, with all its energy directed at being recklessly free and intelligent and individualistic. it was also the perfect time to pursue his passion and give up 'rock-ribbing football to turn to Wolfean novels'. and then the drawbacks of freedom and wild abandonment, when all of his friends were caught up in sex and drugs, took its toll as Jack 'Duluoz' Kerouac was involved in the Lucien Carr-David Kammerer murder case which was wildly founded on homosexuality.
in so many levels, this is a hipster book with deep philosophy buried in it. it's got everything. verve. hype. soul. heart.
i remember the fever of youth in Jack Kerouac. i remember the carelessness of college days. the hormones acting up and us saying, hey we're so much better than that. i remember breaking out of the box and letting the inner kid in us rule. our endless wanderings. our proclivities to art. our love for reading books. i remember shouting at the top of my lungs when me and my friends get drunk. or eating chocolate sundae fudge on free days. also, i remember our failings and our darknesses as eighteen, nineteen year-olds.
this autobiography takes us back to our own youth. it lays out a nostalgic look of our faraway boyhood dreams.
what i like about Jack Kerouac is his soul. this total reckless hobo punk who never gave a flying fuck.
On The Road is just one colorful fragment of Jack Kerouac's mad life, his endless and inspirational hitch hiking across his beloved America. Vanity Of Duluoz however encapsulates the whole coming of age and relentless badassery of his early adult life. his rise to stardom and ironically, boredom as a football superstar in Columbia University until he suffered this 'void' which made him enlist as a marine and did all this absurdity on board The Dorschester amidst the severity of World War II. until he went back to New York city and the blossoming era of the beat generation. here he was an integral part of a hip clique, with all its energy directed at being recklessly free and intelligent and individualistic. it was also the perfect time to pursue his passion and give up 'rock-ribbing football to turn to Wolfean novels'. and then the drawbacks of freedom and wild abandonment, when all of his friends were caught up in sex and drugs, took its toll as Jack 'Duluoz' Kerouac was involved in the Lucien Carr-David Kammerer murder case which was wildly founded on homosexuality.
in so many levels, this is a hipster book with deep philosophy buried in it. it's got everything. verve. hype. soul. heart.
June 8, 2020
I read this 17 years back.
Enjoyed it way more this time around.
I am 46 now, about Kerouac's age when he wrote it in 1967.
It is definitely written to entertain the reader; I laughed throughout.
William S. Burroughs once told Kerouac "You really are very funny Jack."
And, Kerouac draws on that talent much more in this than I remember from his other works (besides his poems). I lucked into listening to: 'And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks' by Burroughs/Kerouac, 'Junky' by Burroughs, and started listening to 'The Sea is My Brother' by Kerouac (hoopla app via library), all at the same time. These books all cover material from the same time periods. So, I was able to see a lot of overlap.
Especially with the Carr/Kammerer murder the 'Hippos' book centers around, and that the 'Vanity' book focuses about 20% on. Yet, Junky also shows Burroughs just after returning to N.Y. following the murder. And, 'The Sea' book was written during Kerouac's voyaging of the same time period.
I felt like I was taking a class in this 'beat' period.
At the least, I recommend reading/listening to 'Vanity' and 'Hippos' together.
'Hippos' alternates between Burroughs' and Kerouac's writing (chapter by chapter).
'Hippos' gives you a taste for Burroughs' writing in 'Junky', which follows it (also a heavy drug period for Kerouac, taking benzedrine, while living with Burroughs for part of that time).
Kerouac really opens himself up in 'Vanity of Duluoz', showing not only his actions and thoughts, yet also his opinions on: politics, death, and other friends/figures of the time.
While this book may not have the ground breaking stuff that made his other works hits, it greatly makes up for it with maturity and wit.
Kerouac seems to be done proving himself to anybody, and is just being who he is at this stage of his life, take it or leave it.
Enjoyed it way more this time around.
I am 46 now, about Kerouac's age when he wrote it in 1967.
It is definitely written to entertain the reader; I laughed throughout.
William S. Burroughs once told Kerouac "You really are very funny Jack."
And, Kerouac draws on that talent much more in this than I remember from his other works (besides his poems). I lucked into listening to: 'And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks' by Burroughs/Kerouac, 'Junky' by Burroughs, and started listening to 'The Sea is My Brother' by Kerouac (hoopla app via library), all at the same time. These books all cover material from the same time periods. So, I was able to see a lot of overlap.
Especially with the Carr/Kammerer murder the 'Hippos' book centers around, and that the 'Vanity' book focuses about 20% on. Yet, Junky also shows Burroughs just after returning to N.Y. following the murder. And, 'The Sea' book was written during Kerouac's voyaging of the same time period.
I felt like I was taking a class in this 'beat' period.
At the least, I recommend reading/listening to 'Vanity' and 'Hippos' together.
'Hippos' alternates between Burroughs' and Kerouac's writing (chapter by chapter).
'Hippos' gives you a taste for Burroughs' writing in 'Junky', which follows it (also a heavy drug period for Kerouac, taking benzedrine, while living with Burroughs for part of that time).
Kerouac really opens himself up in 'Vanity of Duluoz', showing not only his actions and thoughts, yet also his opinions on: politics, death, and other friends/figures of the time.
While this book may not have the ground breaking stuff that made his other works hits, it greatly makes up for it with maturity and wit.
Kerouac seems to be done proving himself to anybody, and is just being who he is at this stage of his life, take it or leave it.
December 20, 2020
I'll always give Jack Kerouac, a hero of my youth and a writer whose maturer work continues to inspire me, due credit for his honesty. And the word 'vanity' in this title, applied to the thinly-fictionalised biography of his alter-ego Jack Duluoz, is apposite. Sometimes Kerouac's imitation of the Stream of Consciousness, applied to his personal reminiscences, simply doesn't work because he tries *too* hard to be disingenuous.
One of the reasons Kerouac's great books, like "On the Road"or "Desolation Angels", work is because you know that there is a wiser man standing aside and observing - indeed, composing - the expression of a less-disciplined, more recklessly spontaneous youth. Here, however, the supposed spontaneity has a kind of arrogance and unchecked-ness that is either the result of laziness in editing, or the euphoria of the amphetamine-use mentioned toward the end of the text, without any sense of the need for selectivity or the condensation of imagery or narrative.
Jack Kerouac was a prolific and, at his best, uniquely brilliant innovator. I think he can be forgiven the odd misfire, but this book is certainly one such.
One of the reasons Kerouac's great books, like "On the Road"or "Desolation Angels", work is because you know that there is a wiser man standing aside and observing - indeed, composing - the expression of a less-disciplined, more recklessly spontaneous youth. Here, however, the supposed spontaneity has a kind of arrogance and unchecked-ness that is either the result of laziness in editing, or the euphoria of the amphetamine-use mentioned toward the end of the text, without any sense of the need for selectivity or the condensation of imagery or narrative.
Jack Kerouac was a prolific and, at his best, uniquely brilliant innovator. I think he can be forgiven the odd misfire, but this book is certainly one such.
August 17, 2020
If you're interested in The Duluoz Legend, this is the place to start. This covers what is probably the most pivotal time in Kerouac's life. It covers most of the events that are most famous in his life, it introduces many of the most essential characters who will appear in almost every novel that takes place after this (the big exception is he hadn't met Neal Cassady yet,) and it tell about how he became an author and created the Duluoz series itself. There are a lot of back-and-forth perspectives where he breaks the 4th wall and shifts back and forth between fiction and real life describing the fiction.
To me, this is one of the fastest moving and, you might say, action packed books he ever wrote. Everything is essential and there is a lot less of the "bop prosidy" stream of consciousness that many people have trouble with.
If anyone is interested in the overall Duluoz Legend but not sure if they want to read the whole thing, I would recommend starting with this book, then read, in order- "On the Road", "Dharma Bums", "Big Sur". That will give you a really good feel for the feel and arc of the series, after which you can expand out and fill in the blanks.
To me, this is one of the fastest moving and, you might say, action packed books he ever wrote. Everything is essential and there is a lot less of the "bop prosidy" stream of consciousness that many people have trouble with.
If anyone is interested in the overall Duluoz Legend but not sure if they want to read the whole thing, I would recommend starting with this book, then read, in order- "On the Road", "Dharma Bums", "Big Sur". That will give you a really good feel for the feel and arc of the series, after which you can expand out and fill in the blanks.
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