Jack Kerouac: Angel-Headed Hipster [Hardcover]

Steve Turner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1996

An illustrated biography draws on interviews with Kerouac's friends, conversations with Allen Ginsburg and William S. Burroughs, and the body of Kerouac scholarship to provide a definitive portrait of of the iconoclastic rebel. 30,000 first printing. $30,000 ad/promo.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; First Edition edition (October 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670870382
• ISBN-13: 978-0670870387
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 7.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,717,256 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Steve Turner is the author of Trouble Man: The Life and Death of Marvin Gaye, A Hard Day's, Write: The Stories Behind Every Beatles Song, Hungry for Heaven: Rock and Roll and the Search for Redemption, Jack Kerouac. Angelbeaded Hipster, and Van Morrison: Too Late to Stop Now. His articles have appeared in Rolling Stone, Mojo, Q, and the London Times. He lives in London with his wife and two children.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beat-ifully done, December 30, 2005

By 

Christina A. Rey (Long Island, New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Jack Kerouac: Angel-Headed Hipster (Hardcover)

As a passionate lover of Kerouac and the Beats I highly recommend this book. It is compiled in an artistic manner with a text style that is supposed to be reminiscent of Kerouac's Underwood typewriter where he banged out his infamous tales. The pictures and news clippings that correlate with the text are excellent and are rarely seen elsewhere. The text itself is easily readable and detailed enough to where you get a good feel for the `characters' without being overly bogged down with excruciating detail. By the end of the book you will feel as though you are familiar with the sequence of his life, his works, inspirational sources, and the people who played crucial roles in the shaping of his life.

I happened to dust this book off last night from my bookshelf after rereading Vanity of Dulouz for the first time in about 7 years. It was surprising to find out how much Kerouac bends the events of his life in his novels to make himself come out just a little bit sweeter. They are not as autobiographical as we all like to think. For example, Kerouac mentions in his book that his wife Johnnie (real name Frankie Edith or Edie) was unable to get pregnant due to fertility issues, and that was the reason they never had children. Turner, however, claims in A.H.H. that Edie got an abortion while Kerouac was shipped off to sea. There are a lot of other inconsistencies I found between this biography and the works of Kerouac but I am not going to bore the reader with them in this review and stick to the subject at hand. I highly recommend this book for both a Beat afficinado and a Beat beginner.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars it's the beat to keep, April 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Jack Kerouac: Angel-Headed Hipster (Hardcover)

The text of this thin book is dominated with dozens of pictures of Kerouac and his intimates. Don't skip the text! for there is plenty to be gained there, tempting as it may be to dig the photographs first. My favorite of the pictures is one showing a painting--a very Rockwellian one--done by Neal Cassady's wife, Carolyn, depicting all of Neal's railroad gear as he slung it over the back of a desk chair one day. Oh, and one of Jack unfurling one of his teletype rolls of manuscript, letting it reach to the floor. Anyway, if you've read any of Kerouac's books, or any biographical material on the man, and you have always wanted to know about what these people looked like, here they are, most all of them-- walking the streets, cavorting in bars, loving each other--captured forever and included in this wonderful book.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Pretty good for those new to Kerouac, May 29, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Jack Kerouac: Angel-Headed Hipster (Hardcover)

I first bought this books about a year ago when I hardly knew anything about Kerouac and so I found this book very helpful in telling me the basics of his life, it is also a good introduction to all the people who were his friends and were included in his books, (The info. at the back of the book telling you who was made into which character and also telling you where all the beats are now are helpful too.) However now that I have read other biographies on Kerouac such as those by Ann Charters and Gerald Nicosia's Memory babe I see how much is missed out in this relatively short book, not a lot of detail is given just basic facts, nothing about how Jack felt about things, for example his stuggle to become a writer, his feelings for his mother, his feelings of inadequacy and so on. Moving on from the writing it has to be said that the photos are superb, anyone who is into the beats should buy this book solely for the photographs, many not published before, there are excellent photos of Cassady, Ginsberg, Burroughs, the coolest photo of Herbert Huncke ever as well as ones of Jack and many others. So while I would only recommend this book for newcomers to Jack when it comes to the biography, the pictures make it a must for anyone.