Subterranean Kerouac: The Hidden Life of Jack Kerouac - Softcover

Amburn, Ellis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312206771 ISBN 13: 9780312206772

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin, 1999

Synopsis

Drawing upon original interviews and his own relationship with Kerouac, Ellis Amburn reveals an inner man who has not appeared in any previous biography-a man torn by his conflicting desires and beliefs. Subterranean Kerouac has been singled out as one of the most significant biographies to appear in years, and it shows how Kerouac struggled throughout his life with poverty, alcoholism, and his doubts about his own lifestyle of substance abuse, indolence, and promiscuity.

About this title

Review:

At the heart of Jack Kerouac's hidden life is the conflict between his "homoerotically inclined life and the blustering masculinity" he felt compelled to demonstrate. As a youth in Lowell, Massachusetts, Kerouac was a football hero, brash and rowdy, pursued by the local coeds. But his strongest emotions focused on an artistic high school friend, Sammy Sampas, whose physical advances Jack ultimately rejected and forever mourned. This failure to resolve his emotional and sexual identity set into motion Kerouac's two-headed monster of creativity and self-destruction.

Though his novels depict rampant sexual freedom and distinguish him as a stylistic innovator, Kerouac himself was reined in by the taboos and social constrictions of the 1930s and '40s. Friendships with Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, and other beat originals helped him indulge the homosexual side of his nature. Yet the internal conflicts raged, and running along with them were Kerouac's Benzedrine and alcohol addictions.

While Amburn's biography is rich with the salacious adventures of hipsterism (trysts with Ginsberg between parked trucks in Greenwich Village; the frenetic cross-country trips immortalized in On the Road; the Kerouac Sex List, which tells exactly with whom and how many times), he takes a serious look at the twisted Kerouac psyche. Amburn has a unique vantage point as Kerouac's last editor, and we benefit from their friendship with the confidential details Kerouac supplied during the editing process. Kerouac often insisted that "every word I write is true," but Amburn readers discover a man tortured by the dueling sides of his own divided nature. --Joan Urban

From the Publisher:

"Amburn has performed prodigious efforts at hunting down the slowly vanishing sources of oral history surrounding Kerouac....Amburn's harrowing study deserves applause. It faithfully mirrors the writer." --Gary Schmidgall, The Washington Post Book World

"Beyond sorting out Kerouac's tormented struggle, Amburn has written a work of generous advocacy, forgiving Kerouac's swift slide downward and crediting him with the lyric genius that Kerouac himself and Ginsberg claimed for him in their exalted moments." --Herbert Gold, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"An absorbing story, at once exhilarating and ineffably sad." --Morris Dickstein, The New York Times Book Review

"Amburn's crisply drawn and provocative portrait fully conveys the paradoxes of Kerouac's hunger for life, burning creativity, and tragic self-destructiveness." --Booklist (starred review)

"Amburn has captured more of the Kerouac essence than many other biographers." --Charleston Post & Courier

About this edition

• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0312206771
• ISBN 13: 9780312206772
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 448