Jack Kerouac

[Anonymous No.18436863]

I used to have a pretty big obsession with Kerouac in my early twenties and lately I've been hankering again to read him. I've read On the Road (many times), The Dharma Bums, Desolation Angels, and Sartori in Paris. What should I read next by him? Big Sur makes sense but I get the sense it's pretty boring and is mostly his thoughts and not much of a story, isn't it? Anyways I'm probably going to read OtR & Dharma Bums again but I want to read something by him that I haven't before. Any recs? I also haven't read much by the other Beats so I'm open to reading Burroughs and whoever.
By the way...what is "Beat"?

[Anonymous No.18436873]

>>18436863
Subterraneans is still my favourite. I've got a box set of his Steve Allen duet stuff somewhere.
>It's the beat generation... It's the begát... It's the beat to keep. It's the beat in the heart. It's being beat and down in the world and like old time low down. And like an ancient civilization, the slave boatman rowing galleys to a beat.

[Anonymous No.18436969]

>>18436863
It's American realism stylistically focused on appearing off the cuff and taking vagrant hedonism as its subject. If you read R.Brautigam you can see it merge seamlessly into hippiedom and shit philosophy, where it started out as booze and trains.

[Anonymous No.18436974]

On the Road was one of the least favorite reads. We wouldn't get along IRL.

[Anonymous No.18437025]

>>18436863
check out vanity of duluoz, maggie cassidy, and doctor sax. "beat" is short for "beatific" and referred to young americans born during the depression who were seeking a true vision of the nation amidst the opiate consumer conformity of the truman/eisenhower eras

[Anonymous No.18437030]

>>18436974
>t.midwit

[Anonymous No.18437033]

>>18437030
Liking the beats is peak midwit.

[Anonymous No.18437107]

>>18436863
Big Sur is, in my opinion, his best novel

[Anonymous No.18437124]

I actually really like a lot of his postry. There are some great readings done by Steve Allen on Spotify. I particularly like “October in the Railroad Earth”.

[Anonymous No.18437156]

>>18437025
I know what beat means, I more like, meant, what does it mean to you, maaaan? I've lived poor, and there's a certain wholesomeness of living as a NEET, with only a radio & CDs/LPs for entertainment, without even a landline phone nevermind a mobile cell, or TV or internet and going to the food bank and subsisting off of coffee & cheap, basic food, for many months or even years at a time. At my lowest I was even smoking resin & keeping warm in the winter without turning the heat on and going days with sleep for dinners. Yet somehow it was good, very humbling & yet I still managed to get up to no good with friends and such; so it was good and I was truly living like the doggone Beats. Doing that in this modern era, is truly beat, in my opinion.
>>18437107
That's good to hear. I'll read it someday for sure, but I think the next Kerouac I'll read will be The Sea Is My Brother. I have so much to read, man!

[Anonymous No.18437244]

Every fucking dude I’ve ever met who worships this bozo has had trench foot from never changing their socks in their soggy 10 year old doc Martin boots, smashed a beer bottle over their head and passed out from too much ketamine. On the road sucks it just teaches already stupid dudes that none of their actions have consequences and then they fucking roam around from 22-35 doing bullshit and trying to seem smart and interesting

[Anonymous No.18437313]

>>18437033
checked. kerouac is boring pseud shit

[Anonymous No.18437352]

I would never read the Beats again, because I feel they keep you childish. They set the ground for the Hippies, and I think worshipped their own childishness (as "innocence") even more then their successors.

Personally, I'm still a casual fan of Ginsberg, but I have a side of hatred for these pedo druggies.

It's no coincidence Kerouac died a fat fuck drunk at 47. Love your youth too much, and you never grow up.

[Anonymous No.18438834]

>>18436863
Maybe check out Doctor Sax? I haven't read it myself, but I've seen it recced a couple of times around here before.

>>18436974
>Thinking you can't be friends with someone over a difference in taste.

[Anonymous No.18438895]

god the beatniks are so gay and lame

[Anonymous No.18438920]

>>18437244
>On the road sucks it just teaches already stupid dudes that none of their actions have consequences and then they fucking roam around from 22-35 doing bullshit and trying to seem smart and interesting
sounds pretty based

[Anonymous No.18438929]

>>18437352
I'm sure your literary heroes were absolutely perfect in every way too.

[Anonymous No.18439368]

This book sheds light on how pathetic the beats lifestyle really was. Still trying to runaway from rehab at 50+ years old

[Anonymous No.18439376]

>>18436969
Booze and trains rock

[Anonymous No.18439383]

Big sur was the only Kerouac I really loved. There isn't much of a plot but it's very beautiful and sincere. Go for it anon

[Anonymous No.18439396]

>>18438929
The beats are different because they practiced and preached total degeneracy and died/became boyfuckers because of it

[Anonymous No.18439492]

>>18436863
I feel you OtR use to be my bible, backpacking around USA in the 40's-50's sound like so much fun, also it's so crazy to think that these two were absolute chads but they didn't give a single fuck about anything, sucha crazy life.

[Anonymous No.18439501]

>>18436974
you probably suck

[Anonymous No.18439569]

>>18436863
Reminder that all Beat literature started with this man. Henry Miller imitated him first then the rest of the beats followed his lead 20 years later

[Anonymous No.18441102]

>>18436863
Did Neal Cassady actually write anything? I want to learn more about him, he seems like the most 'esoteric' of the beats.

[Anonymous No.18442199]

The Town and the City is pretty comfy desu, but Big Sur I find to be a more interesting read

[Anonymous No.18442212]

>>18436863
maggie cassidy

[Anonymous No.18443227]

>>18441102
He wrote an autobiographical book called The First Third and some of his letters to Kerouac and Ginsberg have been published, long letters that inspired Kerouac’s prose style.

[Anonymous No.18443253]

>>18436863
Who?

[Anonymous No.18443336]

>>18439376
sure, but you still end up dying young (RIP Stobe the Hobo)

[Anonymous No.18443367]

>>18437156
it's seeking the true vision. poverty helps to be beat but doesn't make you beat, most poor people spend all their time worrying about money and thinking about the stuff they'd buy if they had more of it. zhuangzi sums it up better than i can

[Anonymous No.18443377]

>>18437352
>ginsberg lived to 71
>borroughs lived to 83
>snyder is still alive
wow yeah really shortens your life

[Anonymous No.18443384]

>>18439569
kerouac was primarily inspired by thomas hardy

[Anonymous No.18443439]

>>18436974
Same for me. One of the two books I never finished.

[Anonymous No.18443466]

Listen to King Crimson’s Beat

[Anonymous No.18443568]

>>18443377
Burroughs was hardly a beat.

[Anonymous No.18443606]

>>18436863
>In the seven years between “leaving” the Navy and writing On the Road, Kerouac is supposed to have become “beat,” as in beaten down by the big world. So we are supposed to believe that this privileged young man, coming out of Horace Mann Prep and Columbia, and having enough money and time to write and travel about the country and buy dope, living sometimes with his parents in Ozone Park, had,between the ages of 21 and 28, not only become nearly used up by world weariness, seeing rightist politics on TV, and multiple spiritual quests, but had learned enough by the ripe age of 28 to transcend this shattering weltschmerz and become “the voice of a new generation.” To do this he only had to ramble on for 320 pages over a couple of weeks, never stopping to change his paper or his underwear.Although On the Road is sold as a counter-culture response to rightist politics of the 1950s, including—explicitly—McCarthyism, Kerouac was a vocal supporter of McCarthy. Again, you can confirm thiswith almost no effort, since Wikipedia sells On the Road as a response to McCarthyism on one page,then admits on the next that Kerouac “watched the 1954 Senate McCarthy hearings smoking cannabis and rooting for the anti-communist crusader, Senator Joe McCarthy.” So, as they say, somethin' ain't right here.

[Anonymous No.18443633]

>>18443466
Based King Crimson poster

[Anonymous No.18443779]

>>18436863
>Jack Kerouac
Literally who.

[Anonymous No.18443924]

>>18436863
Maggie Cassidy is an underrated one I reckon. It combines his usual style with something of a more 'sweet' story. I love the way the ending sets up the later chapters of his life too, it's not the type of ending I was expecting from a bildungsroman-esque novel and I guess that's because it's based off real life and real life ain't pretty.

>>18437025
>vanity of duluoz
Vanity of Duluoz is good once you get passed the first third which is just him recounting high school football games lmao. I'm a sports fan but reading play by plays of games from almost 90 years ago is quite tedious.

[Anonymous No.18443929]

>>18443384
and Walt Whitman

[Anonymous No.18443985]

I'm increasingly thinking of quitting my job in a couple of months and driving down south where I live and working as a bartender, because I know there's a big hospo shortage down there at the moment. The only thing stopping me is that I'm a bit too chickenshit to go through with it. But I feel like if I don't I'll end up at the end of my life never having done anything risky and what a way to live is that?

[Anonymous No.18444933]

>>18443606
Kerouac was a reactionary in many ways, a working class French Canadian football player who gained access to an elite world only through his athletic ability. His early writing was influenced by Thomas Wolfe and always showed a longing for a fading simpler America. All the dope, jazz and Buddhism obscures his real self and as he got older and drunker his reactionary nature resurfaced, most notably in this classic interview with William F. Buckley.
https://youtu.be/R0KluIXx6fI

[Anonymous No.18444952]

>>18437352
The beats were superior to the hippies in every way tho. They `actually lived' and didn't just seek an escape

[Anonymous No.18445358]

>>18436974
It was interesting but it was also hard to shake the feeling that, no matter these talents, most of the people in the novel were absolute cunts.