Reading the 20th Century discussion

Strange to say, we don't have a thread for Jack Kerouac despite having had a fruitful buddy read of his iconic On the Road.

So here's a space to talk Kerouac and all things Beat.

What have you read, what would you recommend? How do you deal with the apparent disregard for women at the heart of the movement?

I'm keen to read more Kerouac and picked up The Dharma Bums at the bookshop as well as Maggie Cassidy.

There are some interesting books written by Beat women though they seem to be out of print.

Who else is a Kerouac fan here?

You know I love a bit of JK 🤠


I haven't actually read that much beyond On The Road so am interested in what you make of your two new acquisitions

I'm also interested to hear about any good Beat women books

Another author I’ve never managed to read.

Female Beat writers I'd like to get to:

Memoirs of a Beatnik by Diane di Prima

Minor Characters: A Beat Memoir by Joyce Johnson

I've read Johnson's In the Night Cafe which blends the glamour with the disillusion and self-destruction of Beat men.

I'm feeling a mini obsession coming on!

Embrace that mini obsession and report back leaving out no detail, no matter how seemingly insignificant

So, On the Road is just an episode in Kerouac's long project of writing his life, taking inspiration from... Proust!

Here's an old Guardian article on the flow: https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...

I'm so tempted to start at the beginning but can I find the time?

That's a great article and, as you suggest, very inspiring

Yesterday I got Visions of Gerard, the first in Kerouac's cycle - only 130 pages and sounds like an important read. Plus, wonderful covers!

Splendid news RC


Please keep us posted

I read Visions of Gerard, the first in the Duluoz Legend books that recalls Kerouac's childhood and his older brother:

www.goodreads.com/review/show/7446782826

Maggie Cassidy is next for me.

Splendid - glad it's working so well for you so far

My favorite novel by Kerouac has always been Big Sur. Of course part of the reason for this is that the setting is one of my favorite places on earth. Makes a good dual read with A Confederate General from Big Sur by Richard Brautigan


Photo by DAVID ILIFF. License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...

The Dharma Bums is Kerouac’s best work by some way in my opinion. Captures the raw emotion of OTR but with a focus on his connection with nature and his longing for a peaceful life and yet… and yet our lives are so moulded by those we allow in, whether for better or for worse.

There’s a beautiful audiobook version read by Ethan Hawke available on Spotify Premium for anyone that has access.

Thanks Sam and Richard - I love hearing about others' favourite Kerouacs. On the Road has had the most attention in the UK, I think, so I'm looking forward to reading more widely.

Baby Driver: A Story About Myself by Jan Kerouac, Jack's daughter, has been reissued and is available on NetGalley.

Given the theme of lost fathers and abandoned children in On the Road, it's interesting to see this picked up in the next generation:

Just as Jack Kerouac captured the beat of the '50s, his daughter captured the rhythm of the generation that followed. With a graceful, often disturbing detachment and a spellbinding gift for descriptive imagery, Jan Kerouac explores the tortured, freewheeling soul of a woman on her own road. From an adolescence of LSD, detention homes, probation, pregnancy, and a stillbirth in the Mexican tropics at age 15; to the peace movement in Haight-Ashbury and Washington state; to traveling by bus through Central America with a madman for a lover, Baby Driver moves with the force of a tropical storm.

That looks amazing RC - thanks so much


Needless to say I have snapped Baby Driver up and will get to it ASAP

Published by Dead Ink who are an interesting looking outfit....

https://deadinkbooks.com/

https://deadinkbooks.com/product/baby...

Nigeyb wrote: "That looks amazing RC - thanks so much"

It really does - I didn't know Kerouac had a daughter who wrote. I'll also be getting to this soon, maybe after I finish the James Baldwin. It definitely feels like this is in dialogue with On the Road.

Ah, oddly, from the James Baldwin biography, he met a young Kerouac and Ginsberg in Greenwich Village in the early 1940s.

Here's the Guardian on Jan Kerouac and her estranged relationship with her father:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...

Very interesting


Thanks RC

I'll be interested in comments about this.
I like Beat literature but am not a fan of their behaviors.

Jan Kerouac was in a girl band with Bibbe Hansen, a Warhol Factory girl and later Beck's mother. Below is a recording of their single though it's poor sound quality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9t-b...

Sam wrote: "I'll be interested in comments about this.
I like Beat literature but am not a fan of their behaviors."

I love Beat literature and adore Kerouac's writing. For me, On the Road itself contemplates those issues around Beat ethics: for all the bromance and spiritual quest, it also makes clear that Sal and Dean Moriarty are boy-men who are searching for their lost fathers and a sense of home, even while they duplicate this toxic behaviour in their own lives, abandoning women and children as they go. I don't think the book validates this.

It's particularly interesting that Jan Kerouac's gives us another story of an abandoned child, but this time a daughter.

It's also striking that Kerouac's own family life was warm and loving based on his Visions of Gerard.

It's this ambivalence and the sense of being torn between extremes that make Kerouac's books and writing so exciting for me.

The other week I saw a movie about Kerouac and his wife and Cassidy. Heart Beat. It was with Sissy Spacek and Nick Nolte. It was kind of interesting.

I'd love to see that, Jan. And thanks for that information, Sam.

Thanks for The Whippets tune Sam - another rabbit hole to jump down


Great point about the lost fathers RC

I'll look out for Heart Beat Jan - Spacek and Nolte is a winning combo

I’m starting Baby Driver


I always feel compelled to prioritise Netgalley books. Partly why I read them so infrequently

I'll be starting later today too.

The introduction suggests she lead a tumutuous, wild, uninhibited, rootless and dangerous life, and is completely frank about all that happened.

The first section is a vignette of a relatively settled period in her life.

I am already feeling trepidatious about what is to come

I’ve just taken the first detour back into Jan’s childhood which is very entertaining. Don sounds awful. Their escape is very heartening.

Jan’s book is full of eye popping content. I’ve just got to Deirdre and Nardoun’s most bitter marital dispute. Crazy stuff

Ooh, I didn't realize Baby Driver: A Story About Myself doesn't come out here until 11/11.

I'm so looking forward to joining you, Nigeyb, bit distracted at the moment...

I’ll be fascinated by your reaction as and when


It’s a real period piece but also a frank account of an increasingly free spirit

I wonder how much is Jan feeling that she has to live up to her father‘s reputation, and how much is just the apple not falling far from the tree

Nigeyb wrote: "I wonder how much is Jan feeling that she has to live up to her father‘s reputation, and how much is just the apple not falling far from the tree"

I wondered the same just from the blurb. They both had that interesting dynamic of an absent father and On the Road, in one sense, is a perpetual search for a father and home.

I'm keen to see how Jan's gender plays into this. We've talked before about masculinity in On the Road and all the women (and children) left behind.

Yes, I’m keeping an eye out for that

The casual drift into prostitution is a bit disquieting. Smack keeping the whole experience at a remove. Still Jan doesn't seem remotely phased by any of it.

And didn’t she put her poor Mother through the wringer?


I’m into the last quarter now and finding it all a bit unrelenting.

Finished


I feel so sorry for Jan’s mother. What an ordeal

Overall this is a much darker version of her Dad’s romanticised "On the Road” showing the dangers the road exposes, especially for a woman.

Here's my review Baby Driver by Jan Kerouac (daughter of Jack)....


https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

4/5

Ah, I'm back on internet, finally - but commuting to London today so will catch up soon.

Hurrah

What an opening chapter! It reads as quite spontaneous and artless but actually there's a careful structure culminating in that end of chapter revelation of her age. Far more thought through and formed than it at first appears.

Which makes the connection with her father's writing all the more intriguing: was she deliberately following in his stylistic footsteps, I wonder?

Wonderful review, by the way.

This book is making me think about how all our technology, rather than freeing us, ties us to stuff: could we go off grid like Jan now when we need our bank cards to work and can't do anything without authentication on our phones?

It’s certainly more challenging these days but I think still doable

This is interesting:

'We had been twin hermits for a year in Haight-Ashbury, remaining intentionally apart from the social tumult of the '60s.'

Yams and lentil patties sound very hippy/flower power to me. (I love lentils!) But is Kerouac looking back to her father's Beat generation or is she not thinking in terms of eras?

Very hard to say


Either way it sounds incongruous

How are you getting on with it RC?

Not far in as you can see but so far I'm loving it. You know when you just click with a book? That happened with this one.

Excellent

I have this but probably won't get to it until I have finished other commitments.