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"I see the cross, it's silent, it stays a long time, my heart goes out to it.", 8. Dezember 2008
At the time "Big Sur" was published in 1962, a decade after Kerouac's eminent novel "On the Road," the author was internationally celebrated as the "King of the Beats," a title with which Kerouac himself was deeply uncomfortable.
"Big Sur" is hailed by many as his most powerful and honest novel. In it the hero Jack Duluoz experiences a crisis of mind and spirit; it is the crackup of the "bloody King of the Beatniks." Pursued by reporters, visitors, and hangers-on attracted by his fame and financial success, Duluoz knows he must "make one fast move or I'm gone." So he goes to Big Sur on the Pacific to be completely alone in a friend's cabin in a canyon at the edge of the sea. The move wasn't that original as it sounds, like other Hollywood greats, Orson Welles had built a house for himself and Rita Hayworth there, already in the 1940s. However, Rita didn't show up as often as Orson probably expected.
But back to our story: After a short happy time there, writing down the sounds of the Pacific, watching birds, feeding Alf the mule, Duluoz is overcome by a mood of horror, helplessness and despair and flees to San Francisco. Parties and people: beats, Buddha, booze and sex. Then Cody, his old buddy, introduces him to Billie and he lives with her and her little boy. Yet Duluoz feels stranger and stranger, encountering death everywhere - a dead otter floating in the sea, a dead mouse in the grass. More parties, more people, more jazz, big beautiful Romana, Billie's ex-con friend Perry. Even when they go back to Big Sur, Duluoz cannot sleep. "Sleep is death, death is everywhere." Duluoz not only knows that he is going crazy, but describes the onset of insanity so clearly that the reader feels it happening to himself.
Kerouac claimed in a letter to his Italian editor Nanda Pivano, that he'd finished "Big Sur" in ten days. It was a fictional account of his alcoholic crack-up the previous year. On megadoses of Benzedrine, he'd managed to cut through his hangovers long enough to turn out one of his most honest and shocking novels of his career, comparable in its unflinching depiction of alcoholism and insanity to Fitzgerald's "The Crack-Up." In style, it was a "plain tale in a smooth buttery literate run," he told the Paris Review, explaining that it combined the mystical aura of "Tristessa" and the confessional hysteria of "The Subterraneans." He typed the novel on a Teletype roll, single-spaced, at such fast clip that it probably contained less fiction he'd ever written, and would immediately be recognized as an autobiographic document with easily recognizable characters.
When "Big Sur" was published, many critics punished Kerouac for being an alcoholic, as if he'd willingly chosen the disease. In the sixties, years before First Lady Betty Ford and Elizabeth Taylor made the disease of alcoholism as respectable as cancer or tuberculosis, virtually no one admitted to being an alcoholic, and the subject was shrouded in shame and secrecy. Even Hunter Thompson refused to understand why someone as hip as Kerouac couldn't have a good time in Big Sur, and he wrote to a friend that he would give one of his testicles to trade places with Jack so he could drink and drug with the beatniks. And so "the beat goes on."
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Kerouac's most honest work, 1. Juni 2000
Big Sur was the third book by Jack Kerouac that I read (On the Road being the first and Satori in Paris being the second). I thought nothing would top On the Road, but this did. I tried explaining to a friend why I thought this book was better than On the Road, and I told him this book was so much more honest, and so much more grittier. Some of the descriptions Jack gives throughout this book, such as his description of what it's like to be an alcoholic towards the book's beginning, are wonderful. The ending of the book, with Jack returning home to be with his mother (whom he would hardly ever leave for the rest of his life) is truly heartbreaking, and the last line "there's no need to say another word" takes on even more significance when one realizes that this book marks the end of Jack's truly creative period. He continued writing after this, but the works he put out post Big Sur couldn't compare to earlier pieces like this (just read Satori in Paris if you want to see what I mean). I haven't read all of Kerouac's books yet (I'm in the middle of Visions of Gerard) but I would have to say that it's a toss up between this book or the Subterreans as to which is my favorite. Think about this: in the Subterreans, he merely lost a girl. In Big Sur, he lost himself.
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Kerouac's most honest and raw work, 24. Juni 2000
This novel marked the close end to Kerouac. Kerouac was controlled by alcohol and depression. He hopes to find peace in a cabin in the Big Sur(Which I went to just a few weeks and is very beautiful). There he is just tortured by his own thoughts from too much alcohol. In this time Kerouac looks back at his outgoing "On The Road" backpacking days and begs for mercy in his own misery. The main reason I love this novel besides Kerouac's honesty and splendid writing is the message it has on contemporey america. 10 years after "On The Road" and as the 60's unfold so does the destruction of friendly america. Kerouac can barley hitchike because of america's new fear of the hitchiker being a criminal. This is a very symbolic point of how friendly america was and now how everyone lives in fear. We also are re-visited with Kerouac's "On the Road" hero "Dean Moritatey", Who is still wild and hyper but with a family. Kerouac slowly starts to crack for a short while in Big Sur and we see some of Kerouac's most haunting writing ever. This novel also includes a poem Kerouac wrote called "Sea" which translates the sound of the ocean into speaking english. It is tedious yet fascinating at the same time. "Big Sur" remains a potrait of a troubled writer who struggles with society and alcohol addiction. This book should be read by all, However it is not a good to start as an intro to Kerouac( Atleast read "On The Road" first). This may be Kerouac's best work since "On The Road".
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