I like Kerouac and I thought it would be interesting to read a book of his early attempts at writing, but this book turned out to be a heap of garbage that would never have gotten published if there wasn't a famous name and picture on the cover. Even Kerouac himself said this stuff wasn't worth reading. I'm surprised they didn't print his grocery lists and the doodles he scribled on napkins. They must be saving that for the next book, "Things we collected from Kerouac's waste basket." This sort of thing happens all the time and its sad... Anyway, I gave this book an extra star because I seem to remember at least one or two of the pieces being at least mildly interesting. I don't recall which ones.

Jack Kerouac, with the printing of larger title books (On the Road, Dharma Bums, Desolation Angels...) gained a reputation as the "king" or "father" of the beatniks. A title and position that Kerouac never wanted or ever really accepted. Amidst the caucophenous roar of America in the night with drugs and sex and bachnallian carnality, Kerouac recieved a bad rap as the inventor or sponsor of such activities. While in his life Kerouac did partake in many such things, he was original and utterly different than the dull literary and social scene surrounding he and his friends. Atop an Underwood, I believe, takes us back to when Kerouac was at possibly the height of his burgeoning fascination with the world and those who inhabited it. With prose and poetry alike, Jack allows us into a younger and more lucid, albeit less experienced mind. This book lets us plainly see what Kerouac truly wanted for his life and what he deemed of great enough import to spend so many years perfecting. A very important collection for anyone serious about not only Kerouac the writer, but Kerouac the man.

Use Paul Marion's Jack Kerouac Atop An Underwood (88822-2, $24.95) as an accompanying volume surveying his early stories and other writings: this gathers over sixty previously unpublished pieces from Kerouac's personal files and represents a treasure trove for any avid Kerouac reader. Both are highly recommended, even essential picks for any Beat collection.

This book features works from across Kerouac's career and so, of course, has some good and some band. When he uses sentance stucture he is great (Good Blonde), when he does the free form thing, he is not (almost the rest of the book). Only pick this up if you want to own everything by Kerouace. If you are a casual fan, stear clear.

"Good Blonde" is the jewel of this collection, but I was quite pleased with the quality of Kerouac's sporting stories, specifically "Ronnie on the Mound." Some of the personal essays on the values and characteristics of the Beat Movement get a little redundant (although I did enjoy the one that differentiates between "talent" and "genius"), but overall this is a great read.

Good Blonde and Others offers a wonderful collection of short essays and newspaper columns on topics ranging from writing and the beat movement to sports and jazz. I have read many of Kerouac's novels and poetry collections but this was the first opportunity I had to see him try sports writing and science fiction. Although the former sparkles with his trademark enegergetic style the latter is more mundane and seems overly-influenced by Orwell's 1984 and the Lucas film THX1138. Nonetheless this book is a must-read for all fans of the beats.

I thought this book was a very readable overview of Jack Kerouac's life. It helped me gain some kind of overview which I had found elusive reading Gerald Nicosia's more detailed book. However what marred the book for me was Miles's intrusive and over-bearing judgements. Surely it's better to present the facts and let them speak for themselves? In chapter 8 (just over half way through the book) he launches into a tirade ....'How can a man deny his own child?... Where was Kerouac when he should have been reading his daughter bedtime stories, sharing with her his love for words?...' and so on. Unfortunately once he's in this mode he doesn't let up. I appreciate the sentiment and it's difficult not to judge Kerouac harshly over this - but I felt Miles should have made more of an effort to understand his subject. I almost felt I leant more about Barry Miles than Kerouac in this section of the book and it's commendable that Miles feels so strongly about family loyalties but is that really the issue here?

Miles does an incredible job of putting together the jaded intricate life of an insanely selfish man. Kerouac was an incredible writer, yes, because he scrounged off everyone around him to better his skill. Funny when our heros turn into humans and we begin to feel our own inspiration from it.

This biography is part of an unceasing flow of writings about Kerouac and about the Beat movement which he helped to inspire. Miles's book is valuable because it explains why people continue to read Kerouac and the beats and also focuses on the limitations of the movement, I think, through discussion of Kerouac as a person.

Kerouac was first and foremost a writer. Miles' book emphasizes this. It discusses virtually each of Kerouac's major works, and minor works as well, in the context of his life -- when, precisely, they were written, what they are about, and where each book fits, in Miles's usually well-considered opinion, in Kedrouac's work as a whole. Such writing is more the purview of literary criticism than biography but Miles does it well and it is needed in a consideration of Kerouac's life and work. He focuses on the spritual side of the beats, their quarrel with conformity, materialism, and repressed sexuality, and their emphasis on feeling and the expression of feeling. Miles properly places Kerouac in the romantic tradition of literature and within American Romanticism in particular as a follower, most immediately, of Thomas Wolfe.

Miles does not spare Kerouac the man, in a discussion that should discourage any tendendy to hero-worship or mystification. Kerouac was selfish and inconsiderate of others, adolescent at the core, unduly attached to his mother, on the far fringes of the American right (although he probably deserves to be praised for not adopting the hippie, ultra-left, anti United States attitude of his followers and colleagues), and lead a destructive life, to his own talents and to the lives of people who loved him and had a right to depend upon him, such as his daughter.

As a writer, Kerouac emerges in the book as a person of talent with a vision of American life that is valuable (though hardly unique, I think). He wrote well but too much and too carelessly and too much under the influence of drugs. He also, as Miles suggests was overly dogmatic and rigid in his use of spontaneous prose.

The beats were a unique literary movement and Kerouac was an integral part of it. His books, I think will continue to be read and valued not for the most part as literary masterpieces, but as expressing the mood of a generation. There is much in them that is worthwhile. Miles' portrait of Kerouac and his work is judicious. It also encourages the reader to explore Kerouac's writings for his or herself, which is the goal of any good biography or a writer.

Contains the outstanding 'Desolation Blues'. Otherwise unremarkable

this book has so many unique qualities to it, and they all focus so much on Kerouac's unusual lifestyle... the book, with it's so many chouruses is an inspiration!

Kerouac's Book of Blues is an important book for anyone interested in Kerouac's spontaneous style of writing. For those more familiar with his novels and prose Book of Blues will open a more pure and raw form of verse than even "On the Road". Kerouac was truly a poet at heart. To get the full effect of this book which reaaly needs to be read aloud to full experience I also highly recommend Kerouac's Blues & Haikus CD which contains him reading several of the poems in Book of Blues.

Although Kerouac was quite an interesting character, Charters gives little justice to this literary genius. She gives merely a string of events, adding no story to his life at all. In addition to that, Mrs. Charters does not describe some situations at all. The reader is left to wonder what truly happened in some instances, and this gives little justice to Jack's life. There were a few sentences were the author attempted to write in Jack's style, and fails miserably. I'm sorry to detract so much from Mrs. Charters, but she is no Jack Kerouac. Overall, the book isn't bad, and if you're really interested in Kerouac, it's not a bad place to start, but if you really want to dive into Kerouac's psyche and true genius, this is not the place to do it.

Ms. Charters did a commenable job putting together
this book. I would rate it right up there with
Nicosia's bio. The author certainly provided a lot
of background info and did a compelling job of
helping me get a better understanding of the social
climate which Kerouac & friends had to contend with
and conquer. My only complaint is that her writing style
sometimes lapses into a style a little too closely allied
with that of her subject, but given the subject matter, that is

understandable. I would recommend this book for those of
you who have found Kerouac's writings to be enjoyable.

While in college, I had to do a paper on "On The Road" and after reading it, I became absolutely fascinated with Jack Kerouac. I got this book out of the library one day. I think it is excellent. It documents Kerouac's whole life from birth to death and gives the reader a wonderul insight into the "real" Jack Kerouac. I literally could not put this down.

Kerouac's style is well adapted to the subject of dreams and his random testimonials that he wrote immmediately after waking up without giving himself time to think about what he was writing(more importantly no time to moralize or judge his dreams)are simple, scattered glimpses into the sleeping mind. This book inspired me to start keeping a dream journal in order to "fish out" my dreams before they disappeared from memory. A must read for any Kerouac fan.

You really have to be in the right mood to enjoy this book. It is a verbatim account of Kerouac's dreams (literally, his sleeping dreams). Many of his dreams reflect characters and events in his novels, so it is a good idea to read a couple of those to go along with this. Overall, I enjoyed reading it, but just for fun. I didn't get anything special out of it. Just open it to any page and read a dream. They'll remind you of your own.

Book Of Dreams is Jack Kerouac's written record of his dream life, a kind of parallel autobiography of his soul. A writer whose novels, beginning with On The Road, spoke for and to a whole generation of young men and women, Jack Kerouac was a man who, awake or asleep, struggled with the problems that beset all human relationships, and that makes his writings (and his dreams) as meaningful and compelling today as they were half a century ago. This new and expanded City Lights addition is the first full publication of the complete manuscript as Jack Kerouac intended it to be. The unabridged edition of Kerouac's Book Of Dreams is an essential addition for academic collections, and "must" reading for all Jack Kerouac fans and enthusiasts.

This collection is wonderfully edited. There are no major breaks in the plot and Ann Charters commentary provides a good context to understand the book (e.g. she provides a table that matches character names to actual people). However, since the books were written out of order, the immensely different writing styles of Kerouac's different novels do not mesh well at times. It is fine for somebody who has had previous exposure to Kerouac's writing and now wants a survey of all his different styles, but I would generally recommend buying the individual books.

For a true kerouac reader, i think it's worth it to work through this book. It's long, but a good part of it is the editor talking, a woman who has a true love of Kerouac. It's a little bit of everything, from his letters, to his ideas on buddhism(my personal fave) It's a good, but long, read

GRANTED that the selections are a mishmash of Kerouac styles, and at times misuse words with a kind of tender haughtiness and screw you if you don't like it but this is what I bruit. Bruit? But at his best Kerouac time and again tells us of that railroad earth and trains rolling under October skies and rushes up our noses with piney phrases that would raise gooseflesh on Thomas Wolfe. What's more, Ann Charters serves Jack nobly by inventively selecting along a timeline that captures the hero's age throughout, a superb bit of editing much like Malcolm Cowley's for The Portable Faulkner in which he patched together a groundbreaking picture of Yoknapatawpha County from Faulkner's many works. A Must-Have Kerouac volume that should break ground for new readers and give old admirers a bath in that old spontaneous prose he dreamed up nightly with candlelight on the kitchen table, booze, and weed. Some of it's mush, some visionary, and much of it just what writing should be: straight from the heart.

Basic overview of the author's relationship to Jan Kerouac - he interviewed her to do her biography, this went all right for a while and she decided she did not like him anymore. Seems to be no real reason for this but it happened anyway. Jones does not seem hurt by this and still sees Kerouac as an interesting and worthy subject.

I think this is an interesting area not tapped into very much, since Jan and Jack had no relationship whatsoever, though anyone who has read her books can tell that he had a major impact on her life. It is hard enough to have an absent father. Make that father Jack Kerouac and it gets even more difficult. What I found even more interesting is the interviews with Jack's nephew, who I have never seen anything written up on before this book, which is probably because he seems to be a pleasant and well adjusted fellow who had a good and healthy relationship with his uncle, but still interesting to read about here nonetheless. As for Jan, it is hard to take what she says at face value, since she seems to have forgotten a lot of what she says has happened to her or changes it from time to time. But I don't know how much of that might be because it didn't happen quite as she either remembered it at the time of interviewing or writing her books or whether it was just the effects of all she had done in her life. But overall that didn't really matter, the reader really gets the essence of who Jan Kerouac was in this book. She was far more rebellious than her father ever was and far more wild. Her mother couldn't control her and it doesn't sound as if she really tried. So whether small details are true or not seems unimportant when looking at her overall life. She was a tough lady who, sadly, had a lot of problems with drugs, alcohol, and men.

I had some issues with the author using this book as a way to make a case for the Sampas family. While I do agree that they take some unnecessary flack from people in general, the author uses having a book published on Jan Kerouac to go on and on about the politics surrounding Jan and the Sampas family. While I think this info. is definitely helpful, there really are two sides to every story and Jones goes on and on ad naseum about how wonderful and benevolent the Sampas family are and how they are really the victims while Gerald Nicosia is a big bad evil person exploiting Jan and her famous father. I am not saying he couldn't be right, only that, despite what the author suggests, both sides probably have good points. And I must admit that it bothers me that, in writing a book about how strong Jan Kerouac was in spite of those pesky human vulnerabilities, he makes her out to be a victim in the end. His book discusses how she would not allow men to take advantage of her and how she was overall a strong sort of person, and then, in taking up his crusade against Gerald Nicosia, he completely turns around and discusses how Nicosia manipulated her and turned her into a total victim. Hmmm. Mostly it just left me wondering at Jones's point - did he write the book to give insight into Jan's life, or to take sides in a legal battle?

well it certainly was an eye opener to greed and what a messed up family they were........ to bad to bad about alot of things huh ... but still a good book for any kerouac fanatic ... a good thing to have in your collection on kerouac

I hope to meet author at 12th annual Lowell Celebrates Jack Kerouac Days in Lowell---early October...discuss his forthcoming related title-

The Jack Kerouac Collection is a four-tape set from Rhino Records compiling recordings Kerouac made in 1958 and 1959. Here's an overview of what you'll find here:

Tape 1, Poetry For The Beat Generation, a recording of Kerouac reading his poetry accompanied by television personality Steve Allen on piano. This is probably the weakest tape in the set. Altough it contains a couple of Kerouac's better poems ("Charlie Parker" and "The Wheel Of the Quivering Meat Conception"), most of his other work here comes off as self-indulgent and pretentious. Allen's piano is workmanlike but dull.

Rating: **

Tape 2, Blues And Haikus, is a little better. Here, Kerouac's accompanied by Al Cohn on saxophone and piano and Zoot Sims on saxophone. The standout track here is "American Haikus", featuring Kerouac reading short snatches of often striking, imagistic poetry in between Cohn and Sims' riffing saxes. Suprise: "Hard Hearted Old Farmer", on which Kerouac sings (!).
Even Bigger Suprise: He's not too bad (!!). Crazy, man, crazy.

Rating: **1/2

Tape 3, Readings By Jack Kerouac On The Beat Generation, is easily the best one of the bunch. This concentrates more on Jack's prose pieces, which is its saving grace. Standout track: "Fantasy: The Early Years Of Bop", which, with the exception of Lester Bangs' essay on Van Morrison's Astral Weeks (collected in his excellent Psychotic Reactions And Carburetor Dung), is probably the best piece of music writing I've come across.

Rating: ****

Tape 4, The Last Word, consists of outtakes from the Blues And Haikus sessions; a speech entitled "Is There A Beat Generation?' from a Brandeis University lecture of the same name, and brief readings from Visions Of Cody and On The Road from a 1959 television appearance. These range from the embarrassingly bad (the Blues And Haikus outtakes, featuring on obviously drunk Kerouac) to the sublime (the '59 TV show readings), which makes the tape a fitting capper to the set.

Rating: **1/2

In sum - if you're a Kerouac fan, you'll probably want to check this out. If you're new to his work, you're probably better off starting with one of his novels - On The Road is probably his best.

If you are familiar with everything Jack Kerouac ever wrote, then this set is a great memory jogger. If you are new to his work it is a superb introduction. Or perhaps you've tried to read him but never got into his "flow of consciousness" style. Then, these recordings teach you how to hear him in your mind- as one long, sweet jazz riff. Just close your eyes and let him transport you to better times and better places. Of course, Kerouac's America is still out there, here and there, in forgotten corners, in special places and special people.
Kerouac was the soul of his age. Who else but Jack could go from commenting on Dostoeveky one minute, then switch to the Three Stooges without missing a beat? Or just as easily go from Sanskrit to skat. And it works. That is because a great soul can encompass entire worlds without contradiction....

Published over twenty years ago, Naked Angels still holds up as a thorough critical study of the works of Ginsberg, Burroughs, and Kerouac. The first section deals mainly in biography, but it seeks to explain why each of the writers explored certain topics and how their experiences shaped their styles. However, if you have studied these three in a biographical sense, the information presented here will not be new to you.

The second section covers the works of the three writers. While there is certainly a wealth of sources that give critical insights into Beat writing, this section brings them together into an often detailed, more often general study of Beat themes, styles, and voices. The Ginsberg section is particularly detailed in its analysis of Ginsberg's long lines and mysticism. Though Kerouac and Burroughs receive their share of treatment, the Burroughs section lacks the further illumination provided by Burroughs over the last twenty years of his life. And the Kerouac section hits only the high points, simply because it would be too difficult to cover every aspect of this prolific writer's work in a mere 70 pages.

This book is a solid overview of the core Beats and their seminal works. Its age shows at times, but it's worth a read as a well-written and well-thought treatment of Beat literature.

Tytell gives an excellent insight into the founding members of the Beat movement. He shows the backgrounds and the motivations of one of the most innovative literary movements in the 20th century. I would strongly recomend this for anyone , especially if they are just starting to explore this group of writers.