Jack Kerouac: King of The Beats - Softcover

Miles, Barry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0753500590 ISBN 13: 9780753500590

Publisher: Virgin Books, 2011

Synopsis

Barry Miles, friend and official biographer of Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, presents a provocative and intimate portrait of one of the 20th century's most influential writers Meticulously researched, this is a compelling exploration of the complex man and extraordinary writer whose creative mishmash of joyous incoherence, drug-induced ecstasy, genuine mysticism, and constant craving has persuaded so many to take to the road. In conformist 1950s America, Jack Kerouac's On the Road was greeted with both delirium and dismay. For his generation, he and the universe he created symbolized freedom. He identified the living pulse of America in jazz clubs and fast cars, and found vibrancy in hobos hopping freight cars and traveling the highways. In his hunt for the big experience and his longing for greatness, Kerouac has inspired each successive generation. He is now an icon, an image, an attitude, forever personifying "the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time." This candid biography reveals a man full of contradictions, rarely at peace with himself.

About this title

Review

Barry Miles, noted for Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now, also wrote biographies of Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs. This hatchet job on Kerouac lacks what makes his McCartney book great--total access to his subject--and it won't replace the more eloquent bios Kerouac and Memory Babe. But it is enriched by Miles's interviews with those in a position to debunk the legend. Was Kerouac a sweet saint, as his burgeoning congregation believes? "He cared more for his cat than for his own daughter," writes Miles, and the rich Kerouac did let his kid become a 13-year-old junkie prostitute. Was he a deep Buddhist? Buddhist poet Philip Whalen says Jack didn't quite get it. Jack couldn't drive, either--it was the idea he liked. Did he write On the Road in a burst of unedited inspiration on a 120-foot roll of paper? No, he revised the text. The last four feet of the scroll were chewed up by the dog belonging to Lucien Carr (the father of Caleb Carr, author of The Alienist), but the dog may have actually accomplished some helpful editing, as did Malcolm Cowley. The book's best line (about "the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk") was composed months later.

Kerouac was often monstrous, even before he became a KKK cross-burning kook locked in a bizarre relationship with his bigoted, alcoholic mother. For what's good about Kerouac, consult more sympathetic scholars. The best of him is in his own books. --Tim Appelo

About the Author

Barry Miles is the author of many seminal books on popular culture, including The Beatles: A Diary, The British Invasion, Charles Bukowski, Hippie, the official biography Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now, Peace: 50 Years of Protest, and Zappa: A Biography. In the 1960s he was co-owner of the Indica Gallery, the countercultural art gallery where John Lennon and Yoko Ono first met.

About this edition

• Publisher: Virgin Books
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0753500590
• ISBN 13: 9780753500590
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 396