Customer Reviews

Book of Sketches (Poets, Penguin)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

At first you may not take this book seriously...ANOTHER "new" book by Jack Kerouac...released so that Kerouac lovers (like me) HAVE to buy it no matter how useless it might be; but then you start reading it...and it starts to get interesting...more and more interesting...Kerouac revealing incredible thoughts, brutally honest about himself, women and their body parts, America itself... the whole book is over 400 pages...and by the time you get to page 172 or so...you begin to realize...THIS BOOK IS GREAT...and then after that it doesn't let you down...it continues to be GREAT. FYI, the majority of "Sketches" was written between The Town And The City and On The Road. I absolutely give this book my highest recommendation.

After completing his scroll version of On the Road in April 1951, Kerouac was still unsatisfied and wanted to break away from its "conventional narrative survey of road trips etc." In October his architect student friend Ed White suggested to Jack: "Why don't you just sketch in the streets like a painter but with words?" Kerouac tried it, and was gripped by the power of the new technique which lent a new form of spontaneity to his writing. He began straight away, enthusiastically rewriting his Road book in this new fashion. The first 36 pages of Visions of Cody are pure sketches, recorded in the streets, subways and diners of New York in the fall of 1951. This new publication, Book of Sketches, contains over 400 more pages of sketches, typed up by Jack in 1959 from the original small breast-pocket notebooks in which they were recorded. They begin with sketches of life at his sister's home in Rocky Mount, North Carolina in August 1952, just after Jack had returned there from Mexico City where he had completed work on Doctor Sax. Jack describes his work on the North Carolina railroad just before taking off on the road once more on a mammoth hitch-hike to California, via Denver, and the new Cassady home in San Jose. Then follow sketches of Mexico from December 1952, and one on an airplane flying from St Louis to New York, a previously unknown trip taking Jack back home in time for Christmas.

In the following year Jack sketched while on a visit to Montreal in March 1953, and during his railroad work at San Luis Obispo, California that April, before taking off by sea for New York and a meeting with "Mardou" during the summer of the Subterraneans. Sketches of Jack's work on the Long Island railroad in October are also included , as well as more descriptions of the streets of Manhattan and Long Island that fall. The book comes to a close with a glimpse of life in San Francisco in early 1954, and tagged onto the end are a few sketches recorded during Jack's big overseas trip of Spring 1957, to Tangiers, France, and England.

The writing is superb throughout, and particularly the description of what must have been Kerouac's longest ever hitch-hike, 3000 miles from North Carolina to California in late August 1952, via Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada, a trip not previously mentioned in his other writings. Jack lists each town he passed through and describes practically every lift he obtained on the way. Reaching Denver, Jack spent a whole day sketching Neal's old haunts, including Zaza's barbershop, the Glenarm poolhall, and Pederson's. But as well as sketching the scenes before him, Kerouac also explored philosophical topics, such as his Spengler-inspired sympathy with the Fellaheen, in his "Notes on the Millennium of the Hip Fellaheen, Oct. 1952, California" and planned his future with them -- "Go among the People, the Fellaheen not the American Bourgeois Middle-class World of neurosis nor the Catholic French Canadian European World -- the People -- Indians, Arabs, the Fellaheen in country, village, of City slums -- an essential World Dostoevsky."

This has to be one of the most important pieces of Kerouac's writing to have been released in several decades. As well as providing further examples of Kerouac's innovative sketch-writing, it also fills some gaps in the Duluoz Legend. It will become an essential part of the Kerouac canon. The marketing of the book raises some queries, however, since it is described on the back cover as a collection of "poems" and is published in the Penguin Poets series. Kerouac always seemed quite clear that his sketches were not poems but prose. In his definition of a sketch (in Some of the Dharma) he notes that "A sketch is a prose description of a scene before the eyes," and on the title page of his typescript wrote: "Book of Sketches -- Proving that sketches ain't verse." It is clear, though, that sketching led to Kerouac's development of the spontaneous poems he called Blues, which he began in 1954 with San Francisco Blues, continuing with his classic Mexico City Blues the following year. Whatever, it's the content of the book that matters, and this is quite simply outstanding, and essential for any Kerouac enthusiast.

I know this was an accumulation of Kerouac's observations from the early 1950's until 1957 written in little notebooks...writings that capture the detail of the world (mostly America) as he mentally photographed it and transcribed it ( as a writer's exercise or batting practice)...and I know that he took all these observations and typed them up as a manuscript titled book of sketches...But upon reading this...this stands as the greatest poem ever written about America...

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Sketches of `Sketches'

Jack Kerouac's 'Book of Sketches' is beautifully
descriptive - I want to keep quoting passages
for you.... Kerouac sees & then meditates on
what he sees but all in an instant while watching
it.

Incredibly perceptive, Jack puts into words
what you suspected yourself but hadn't noted.
He invents words & re-spells words all the time
when he sees the limitations of language. If
somebody says something to him in a local
accent he spells it the same as the person says
it, not original among writers it's true, but a
a mark of Kerouac's accurate honesty to the
subject. And this conveys the full feeling of
the moment to us without it being distorted by
convention.

Most women wouldn't like this book (as generally
women don't like Kerouac's writing). Women
like plot and a dialog, you'll find neither of
those here.

Kerouac, more than any other writer I know, is
a pleasure to read. Someone once said he had
a hypnotic quality and true enough reading Book
of Sketches in bed - it's one book I don't want
to leave my bed for, for the bathroom.

Jack has learned the immediacy of writing "on the
job" - actually describing the scene as you see it -
so that descriptions of everyday street life appear
vivid.
But Kerouac goes further his thoughts melt with
what he see's so that as the great Scottish Beat
James Morton say's it becomes a journey of the
mind.

Physically a chunky little book, printed on that
sort of imitation old parchment with ragged
edges. Jack types out the lines short like American
poetry, which reads like prose, (unlike Jack's prose
which reads like poetry) - so it can be assimilated
in bite-sized chunks. A deceptively small book
though, Kerouac fans will be delighted to know
that there's a lot of text in there - I found it a long
read that went right to the back of the mind.
So, a far longer book than it's appearance would
suggest. I would say it will take two days solid
reading to get through it (that's if you're going
to take it all in).

Jack's thought is so natural you can often read the
last line of a passage and `know' the theme of the
previous lines.

The truth is we see nothing without feeling an
attendant emotion. Kerouac's genius is in noting
the emotion with the observation, but his economy
with language is such that where with most
writers this would slow the passage down with
Kerouac it's just a glimpse and the text rolls on
un-interrupted.
But I think I've said that already, so I'd better
wrap this small review up...

The piece that sticks in my mind is the description
of the sunken boat with the seagulls sheltering in it
(about 2/3 of the way through), probably because I
come from the seaside.

The nearest comparison I can think of to Kerouac
when he's in this descriptive mood is the writing
of Katherine Mansfield. Jack may be the last
great writer because in this day of television, and
instant visual art through computers and eight
screen cinemas, no one these days is immersed in
books for their fantasies the way they were pre-
the nineteen sixties. Therefore nobody develops
the ability to write the way they did back when.

I should think Kerouac kept a diary back in 1953
at the height of his writing powers - and this is it.

Hail, Oh genius!

In the Kerouac canon Book of Sketches is as
important and artistic a book as Dr.Sax.

I first read Kerouac when I was a teenager in Hopatcong High School in Hopatcong, NJ. My father had gotten me The Dharma Bums for one of my early teen birthdays, possibly fourteen but I am not really sure now. Well I was taken on this new style of writing that I up to that point had never seen before. I read a few more of his books but it wasn't until I left NJ on a bus heading for Denver, CO on February the 13th, 1996 that Kerouac changed my life. Before this I was trying to learn how to write with little to no success but then it all changed for me. I got what was to be my very last slice of NY pizza being I am now a diabetic and I saw some street peddler selling "On the Road" by Kerouac. I bought it and devoured it with someone else I met on the trip all the way to St. Louis ,MO.

I was in fact reading the same trip Jack took all those years ago and now I come to the "Book of Sketches." I have always liked jacks poetry and this is a great example of vigilance to write. All of these came from a notebook he carried around where ever he went. I used to be that vigilant when I was homeless so I understand where he is comming from. Anyone that likes Jack or poetry should read this amazing book. I emplore you to, and you will not be dissapointed I promise.

I wouldn't say it is the greatest sketches/poetry about America as was stated by another reviewer. I have found Charles Erskin Scott Wood and John Muir to be a couple of the most descriptive writers American has ever known, however Muir's writings where not poetic, although they are so pure and eloquent, that they come off as such. Wood's 'The Poet in the Desert' is a nothing short of a looking glass, but his is once again poetry describing land and nature as where Kerouac was describing people places and things in such a low even rhythm that you not only see it, but you can smell it. Really, I love so many of the great poets, and Kerouac is way up there...in more ways than one, I suppose. This is one for your library folks...worth ever red cent.

This reminds me of the things I write in notebooks when I'm hammered. I just don't get Jack Kerouac. If you're a fan, this may be for you. I took a course on him and bought a ton of his books expecting to love his style, but.. I don't get it. His point of view irritates me.

Being a Kerouac-aholic, I bought this without really reading the description. I already owned a book of Kerouac's actual artwork and I assumed (judging by the cover) that this would be a book of actual drawings by him. Once it arrived I realized it was just writing.

The writing is of course great because Kerouac is great, so still 5 stars, but I wish it would've had drawings haha.

This book arrived with the following on the cover: ADVANCED UNCORRECTED PROOF. NOT FOR SALE!
There may be publisher's typos in this copy, and it seems that selling it is not legal. Therefore, I am skeptical
about the honesty of this seller. I do not remember seeing this included in the description when I chose to buy
this particular book.