Book of Dreams (Paperback)

~ Jack Kerouac (Author) "OH! THE HORRIBLE VOYAGES I've had to take across the country and back with gloomy railroads and stations you never dreamed of---one of em a..." (more)
Key Phrases: haunted life, dont care, cant remember, New York, Mexico City, San Jose (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This new edition of the primary beat's private dream diaries presents the whole of Kerouac's original manuscript, including some 200-odd dreams not published in the initial selection (1961). More or less liberated from the requirements of the Beat swagger, Kerouac's writing is at times blissfully uncool, evoking an almost na ve and sentimental sensibility: " this kitty was an angel, and spoke the truth"; "nobody loves me 'cause there's no me." Correspondences between some dream characters and their counterparts in the novels are not accidental, and are correlated in a prologue (and by poet Robert Creeley, in an insightful introduction). But many facets of Kerouac's oeuvre appear here much less polished, and more naked and powerful: " My mother and I are arm in arm on the floor, I'm crying afraid to die, she's blissful and has one leg in pink sexually out between me, and I'm thinking 'Even on the verge of death women think of love & snaky affection' Women? who's dreaming this?" Lost love, madness, castration, cats that speak, cats in danger of their lives, people giving birth to cats, grade school classrooms, Mel Torme, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Tolstoy and Genet all make repeated appearances, lending the collection a repetitive, nonprogrammatic logic and exposing an unfamiliar sort of vulnerable beauty in Kerouac's iconic persona. One only wonders, in the end, whether anyone, even Jack Kerouac, really has such fantastic dreams. (June 30) Forecast: With memoir still a dominant beach-read genre, and with Kerouac still a Dean-like name, proper promotion and review attention could lead to significant sales. City Lights, still the premier publisher of Beatiana, will also bring out a collection of interviews, San Francisco Beat: Talking with the Poets (including Joanne Kyger, Kenneth Rexroth and Gary Snyder), in June ($19.95 paper 384p ISBN 0-87286-379-4).
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Description

Book of Dreams is Kerouac's record of his dreamlife, a parallel autobiography of the soul, the sleeper's On the Road: "I got my weary bones out of bed & through eyes swollen with sleep swiftly scribbled in pencil in my little dream notebook till I had exhausted every rememberable item...." In 1961 City Lights published excerpts from the manuscript. This new, expanded edition marks the first publication of the complete manuscript as Kerouac intended it.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 360 pages
• Publisher: City Lights Publishers; 1st edition (June 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0872863808
• ISBN-13: 978-0872863804
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #396,023 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting., May 7, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Book of Dreams (Paperback)

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.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars simple, uncompromising dream accounts, November 7, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Book of Dreams (Paperback)

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.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Some of Kerouac's best writing, March 13, 2005

By	Ant (Tokyo Japan) - See all my reviews

Don't be fooled. This is not Kerouac's plans, visions or hopes. These are no less than his actual unexpurgated nightly dreams written in classic Kerouac prose. His style flourishes in what you might label short fictions of the night. Long rambling structures uninhibited by standard literary conventions, Book of dreams could in fact be one of his purest works. Perfect for his long `stream of consciousness' writing that Kerouac adopted early to mid in his career, his dreams change from scene to disconnected scene filled with all the characters of his semi autobiographical works stretching from Carlo Marx & Cody right back to GJ & Scotty of his days in Doctor Sax. He also meets along the way W.C fields & someone who might be Marlene Dietrich! The uninhibited retelling of his dreams is often hilarious, sometimes raw, exposing Jacks vulnerabilities & always highly interesting. If there is any criticism I have, it is only that due to the nature of dreams, it is difficult at times to keep your focus on them, (I lost my bookmark half way through & couldn't remember what I had read!) so fluid & morphing are these dream experiences he writes about. Above all though, it is a chance to get `into his head' & find out a little more about Kerouac, however you find that his dreams & his life as lived vicariously through his books were not all that different. Book of dreams wouldn't have been half as fun had I not been acquainted with the collection of books that make up the Dolouz legend; therefore as a first Kerouac book I'd recommend reading something else, but a must for anybody who loves his work.