Customer Reviews

Maggie Cassidy (Flamingo Modern Classics)

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When Kerouac was good he was superb. This is young love in a glorious, mind-bending nutshell. Beautifully written and deeply felt.

When I was much younger and had experienced my first brutal betrayal in life, this novel was my greatest comfort. Kerouac had uncanny vision into the human heart, and was capable of expressing the awful paradox of young love, the joy and pain of it, it terms that were never sentimental, and often quietly heroic.

A poetic, lovely book.

If you are a fan of Kerouac then this is a must. It is more lyrical and poetic than ON THE ROAD, yet not as difficult to read as Lonesome Traveller. I enjoyed the first person narrative and was keen to see the switch to third person in the closing chapter as J.D. leaves adolescence behind. Kerouac artfully captures the feelings that accompany a burgeoning love affair even if the characters are only 17. I would highly recommend!

"There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love." (1 John 4:18)

Life is not sanitized and easy. Kerouac knew this from hard-bitten experience. The amazing thing about Jack was that when it was over, he could always sing about it in his books. he does so here in "Maggie Cassidy."

I have felt the kind of stuff Jack talks about in this book. The illusion of teen "love" is one of the most wretched feelings in all the world...its elation is too high...too painful. Its ending is wrenching of the soul...usually quickly followed by the joy of illusory freedom. Still, it sticks your head for years after like an annoying song that won't go away--Keroauc gets all this down in one hundred and ninety-four pages...amazing.

Get this book. I recommend it highly to all who've been stung by what they thought was love when they were young.

such a powerful tale of love. the story was constructed in retrospect with the purity of an artist, and in the end this purity amounted to common corruption. kerouac admitted to his weakness. brutal honesty . . . that is what gives "maggie cassidy" its power.

Whenever people talk of Kerouac, they're going to start talking about On the Road, The Dharma Bums or The Subterreaneans. You can't blame them, after all they are the best known of Kerouac's works, and they're all fine novels. Yet too often Kerouac's lesser works go unnoticed, such as Desolation Angels, Dr. Sax...and Maggie Cassidy. Out of all the Kerouac books I've read, I don't think one has ever made me feel so much, in this case it really took me back to my own adolescence. Much like Kerouac (here called Jack Dulouz) I had my own circle of friends in high school that I ran with on a regular basis and I saw many mirror images of them in Jack's group. And much like Dulouz, I hardly ever see them nowadays. And of course, I had my own Maggie Cassidy. It's amazing the similarity of how much Jack and Maggie's relationship ended and how mine and my girlfriend's ended. It was just a gradual end, we both lost interest in each other and our relationship end in spirit long before we ended it officially. We had both met other people and I had come to the realization that I was too young to be tied down to one person, which I think Dulouz realizes in the end also.

And then there are the descriptions that Kerouac gives. It's often been said that his books are poetry and that is most certainly true in this case. The way he describes the snowy New England nights is absolutely beautiful and the way he portrays Maggie you can tell he genuinely felt for her. There are always nuggets of wisdom to be found in Kerouac's book, some insight that he sticks in the middle of his prose/poetry, and there is one in here. He is watching the clock in his living room and what he says is amazing; I won't spoil it for you, you'll just have to read it yourself.

Another reviewer said skip On the Road and go straight for Maggie Cassidy. I don't know if I would go that far, but defintely read it afterwards. The narrative structure in both is pretty straightforward, and both make you feel the moment that Jack was living in at the time.

Kerouac had a real talent for capturing the dream of life in words. When I read his books the memories and images are almost palatable. He has the hypnotic effect that all writers dream about and aim for. The fact that he had to draw on his own life for inspiration is both his strength and his failing. Rather, it was a failing that he was able to turn into a strength. Early in his career Kerouac attempted to write normal fiction. His first book The Town & the City is an unfocused mess that lies somewhere between a novel and a memoir. By the time On the Road came scrolling out of his typewriter, Kerouac had figured out his method. Thereafter, he would write his memoirs but he would use a novelist's approach. Freeing himself from the task of inventing stories (which he never quite learned to do properly) he was able to concentrate on capturing the dramas and textures of his own life. Some of the books he subsequently produced by this method were merely self-indulgent meditations on memories that only Kerouac himself could have possibly have been interested in, but other books tell stories that have a more universal appeal and a touching drama at the heart of them. Maggie Cassidy is such a book. It tells the tale of the loss of first love. It takes an unconvential approach as love stories go. Kerouac includes all sorts of scenes and details that seem almost beside the point, and bare little connection to the main plot; the friends playing hookey, his eating crackers in the empty house, the blizzarding birthday party, the track meet. In the end, the book is less the story of a love affair, as it is a meditation on the time in his life when he was in love. It captures that sense of magic that being in love gives to everything around you. Kerouac has also taken a peculair approach to their characters and events in the story. Everything and everyone seems to be viewed from a distance and in soft focus, achieving a very haunting effect. The people don't seem to be present. They seem like ghosts fading away, and everything feels like it happened a long, long, time ago. You get the sense that Kerouac would like to change alot of how all this turned out, but it's all too far away, locked in the irretrievable past, and all he can do now is share with us his sadness and regret.

When thinking of Jack Kerouac the first think you think about is On The Road, or the Dharma Bums. Yet this is a story that has a very personal feel to it. In some ways more so than his other stories. The basic story line is love, love lost and love that got away, yet never forgotten. I'm over simplifying, but that is what it comes down to. Clocking in at just fewer than 200 pages. Kerouac fits a lot into a short novel. On almost every page you can get a feel of Kerouac have regret for losing Maggie Cassidy. The true beauty comes from the language that Kerouac uses to describe things and people. It is really something to read the final time Kerouac and Cassidy meet. It is sad and powerful in the descriptions and the visual images that he gives that give insight to Kerouac more as a person rather than a writer. This story can best be understood from someone who is "older" in years. I say that in terms of thinking rather than actual age. Because although I am 25, at the time of this review, I can relate to the story, yet I am sure that I will relate to the story more as I get older.

This is a wonderful story that we can all relate to in some way or fashion. It is wonderful piece lit that is better than some of the garbage I reading my junior year English class, when I was in high school.

Jack Kerouac, writer of many a romantic tale; stories set out wst on roads hitchhiking, listening to jazz till 4 a.m., and just living by the moment, but not this one. Although it is written in his similar romantic run-on sentenced style that captivates any lover od literature, it's a story about his teen years back home. Most of it revolving around his love with his girl Maggie Cassidy. Being a teenager you see connections and dumb teenage stereotypes, that are sad but true. Stories of drunken New Years with the boys, tales of the track and football team, and mostly that story of love, the "world revolves around us" love.
"The wild windows of other houses and Saturday night parties shining the spilling molen hot gold of real life." This quote was from Jack's 18th birthday party, where his whole world (family and friends) were all dancing, mingling, and basically having a great time. This quote describes some of the amazing weekends we have as high school kids, where the fun seems to keep coming at ya.
Stories of high school parties, buddies, girls, drama, and love are all packed into 194 pages; every page telling a new adventure. Whether it be Jack's short life as a prep school student on a football scholarship, or his first generation French-American parents, or even just his nights with the boys. Anyone who is or has been enrolled in high school and been involved in the complicated life of a teenager would love this book, so basically everyone. There's a chapter for everone and Kerouac's characters all have original and meaningful personalities. When you read it old friends from your town will be remembered, the dialogue and actions of the city kids of the 30's will take you back to the guys and gals you hung out with on weekends.

Kerouac's autobigraphical novel Maggie Cassidy is set in his hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts in 1939. It is the story of a high school romance. There are wonderful descriptive passages of winter in New England, of shabby urban tenements, of grizzled and failed adults, and of hope, love, and loss.

The book captures the yearnings of first love in its confusion and undirected passion. It talks about both how people change and how there are limits to the scope of their change. The perspective of the book is interesting and revealing. Kerouac, the grown writer, is recapturing something of the spirit of the first love of his youth. The story is mostly told in the first person in the voice of the adolescent. Then, abruptly at the end the voice shifts to the third person signalling, I think, the change from the perspective of youth to that of adulthood.

There is something poignant about the book in the description of a memory of pure love which doesn't fade, (think of the Buddy Holly song "Not fade away") and about the shift from innocence to overt sexuality. There is a deep conservatism in Kerouac for the familiar, the commonplace, and the local, something which is often overlooked by his critics and admirers alike. It comes through well in this book.

Many writers tend to become prisoners of their most famous books. In Kerouac's case, people frequently don't get past On the Road. Maggie Cassidy is a book on a smaller, perhaps more conventional scale. In its own way, it is precious.

In life, we can't always depend on a flower and "he loves me; he loves me not" games. This is what the two main characters in "Maggie Cassidy" grow to learn. They are put into a situation that ambushes their innocence and naivetee, and have an abrupt introduction with reality. Maggie and Jack are left with the regretful realization that no matter how great the story started off; it doesn't guarentee to end with, "And they lived happily ever after." Their relationship came to an end, but the "real life" had just begun. The book is hypnotizing.