Big Sur

by Jack Kerouac

Overview

Big Sur is a humane, precise account of the extraordinary ravages of delirium tremens on Kerouac, a superior novelist who had the strength to complete his poetic narrative despite his affliction. Here we meet San Francisco’s poets and recognize Dean Moriarty, ten years after On the Road. At the peak of his suffering, Kerouac was able to write through it all, ending this book with a tribute to the hallucinatory sounds of the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur.

Kerouac’s autobiographical novel is the inspiration for a documentary about the late writer scheduled for release in the fall of 2009. Including numerous interviews with writers and artists who both knew and were inspired by Kerouac, the film uses his words from Big Sur to recount his later years. It also includes interviews with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Joyce Johnson, Tom Waits, Patti Smith, Sam Shepard, Carolyn Cassady, and Aram Saroyan.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798869208637
Publisher:	Nighthawk Books
Publication date:	02/23/2024
Pages:	250
Product dimensions:	5.06(w) x 7.81(h) x 0.53(d)

About the Author

Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1922, the youngest of three children in a Franco-American family. He attended local Catholic and public schools and won a scholarship to Columbia University in New York City, where he first met Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs. His first novel, The Town and the City, appeared in 1950, but it was On the Road, published in 1957 and memorializing his adventures with Neal Cassady, that epitomized to the world what became known as the “Beat generation” and made Kerouac one of the most best-known writers of his time. Publication of many other books followed, among them The Dharma Bums, The Subterraneans, and Big Sur. Kerouac considered all of his autobiographical fiction to be part of “one vast book,” The Duluoz Legend. He died in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1969, at the age of forty-seven.

Table of Contents

Contents

Author’s Note v

Big Sur 1

Character Key 178

Biographical Timeline 179

Editorial Reviews

"In many ways, particularly in the lyrical immediacy that is his distinctive glory, this is Kerouac's best book . . . certainly, he has never displayed more 'gentle sweetness.'"
—San Francisco Chronicle 

"Kerouac's grittiest novel to date and the one which will be read with most respect by those skeptical of all the Beat business in the first place."
—The New York Times Book Review 

"Big Sur is so devastatingly honest and painful and yet so beautifully written....He was sharing his pain and suffering with the reader in the same way Dostoyevsky did, with the idea of salvation through suffering."
—David Amram

From the Publisher

Ethan Hawke doesn't just give a stellar performance. He delivers a living embodiment of Kerouac's work, sustaining a quality that’s consistently startling. This is no small feat as Kerouac’s audiobook features his legendary free-flowing stream of consciousness, following no reliable path. Hawke's confident performance is an anchor. Kerouac, weary of constant attention after his earlier works helped inspire the Beat Generation spirit of the 1950s, seeks solitude in coastal California. However, his alcoholism can't be escaped. As the story progresses, we hear a shift in tone, possibly a form of paranoia. Hawke's skill here is to project this work as a kind of a sustained open mic—his highs and lows among and between the words are like waves crashing on the rocks. S.P.C. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2020 - AudioFile

Ethan Hawke doesn't just give a stellar performance. He delivers a living embodiment of Kerouac's work, sustaining a quality that’s consistently startling. This is no small feat as Kerouac’s audiobook features his legendary free-flowing stream of consciousness, following no reliable path. Hawke's confident performance is an anchor. Kerouac, weary of constant attention after his earlier works helped inspire the Beat Generation spirit of the 1950s, seeks solitude in coastal California. However, his alcoholism can't be escaped. As the story progresses, we hear a shift in tone, possibly a form of paranoia. Hawke's skill here is to project this work as a kind of a sustained open mic—his highs and lows among and between the words are like waves crashing on the rocks. S.P.C. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2020 - AudioFile