Customer Reviews

Good Blonde

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though a very not-heard-of book, this is a very good book for any jack kerouac fan. it collects many articles written by him on the beat generation, himself, his writing principles. he discusses the beats and their origination. it is a very intersting book for any jack kerouac fan or anyone intersted in the beat generation, though he also talks about himself and looks back on old days of his life as a teen/young-adult. a very good book and i would definately recommend it.

This book gathers together some 44 individual pieces, the bulk of Kerouac's uncollected shorter prose, both fiction and non-fiction. The short stories, such as "Good Blonde" and "The Great Western Bus Ride" help fill in some gaps in the Duluoz Legend and are up to the usual high standard expected. But it is the factual pieces which, I suspect, will surprise many and cause a major re-evaluation of the writer's abilities.

Here the reader can find Kerouac's authoritative views on a whole range of different subjects, from Shakespeare to jazz, and from baseball to politics and Zen. One section contains Kerouac's three major essays, from the late '50s, on the Beat Generation, and these have to be the definitive statements on the subject. There are also sections on sport and writing, as well as the complete run of eleven "Last Word" columns that Jack contributed to Escapade magazine in 1959/60, covering his opinions on diverse matters. There's even Kerouac's short science fiction story "cityCityCITY", "On Céline," Jack's tribute to the French novelist, and a previously unpublished piece on his cat Tyke.

The book has a preface by fellow Massachusetts writer, Robert Creeley, whom Jack first met in San Francisco in 1956.

"Good Blonde & Others" is an invaluable collection of Kerouac's rarer, shorter pieces, and it is most useful to have them together and easily accessible between one set of covers for the first time.

This is all great writing and a great collection of articles that Kerouac has written, the only problem being that if your like me and own "The Portable Jack Kerouac" you really don't need this book.....and I swear on that, more than 75 percent of Good Blonde is in The Portable Jack Kerouac
BUT....if you dont own that Portable book than by all means, get this book, wonderful edition to Kerouacs writing, small stories, opinions, sports, and Nasferutu are all covered topics........Excellent so long as you dont already own it.......

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.

This book features works from across Kerouac's career and so, of course, has some good and some bad. When he uses sentance structure, 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 Kerouac. If you are a casual fan, stay away.