Customer Reviews

Orpheus Emerged

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

 

 

Let me start off by saying that I'm a Kerouac junky. I have read every book by and about the man. Now, having said that I would like to turn my attention to Orpheus Emerged. As an early Kerouac novel it is fascinating to see how far he advanced. Even the leap from this book to The Town and the City (his first published novel) is pretty amazing. But this book is a failed attempt as a novel. The characters are boring and painfully one dimensional, and the dialogue is flat and uninspired. Many a page is dedicated to long conversations about art, philosophy, etc. that lead nowhere and do nothing to service or advance the story.
Speaking of which, the story centers around a group of young college guys, their girlfriends, and their screwed up lives. That's pretty much the gist of it. There's no real drama, conflict, or anything else to move the story forward. The only conflict that does arise leaves you scratching your head, as it is never explained. It was probably as big a mystery to the author as it is to the reader.
There is no discernable plot as far as I can tell, which leads me to believe that the young Kerouac (who then signed his name John Kerouac) didn't plan out the novel beforehand. Some journal excerpts printed in the back of the book show brief breakdowns of the first four chapters but they're very vague and deal more with what the characters are going to do rather than plot out the narrative.
All in all it's a very disappointing novel. I know that Kerouac was only twenty-three when he wrote this and that I should cut him some slack. But look at the Rum Diary, a novel that Hunter S. Thompson started when he was twenty-two, and you'll find a much more mature, developed novel (though it too has its problems, by no means am I calling that one a masterpiece).
If you're an aspiring writer or a Kerouac junky I'd suggest picking this up so you can track his growth as a writer. If you're a moderate Kerouac fan or just a fan of literature in general, I'd have to suggest the town and the city. His real first novel.

A literary artefact that is intriguing as it reveals a writer at the beginning of his career, concerned with topics and issues that Kerouac would explore for the rest of his life. Although not in the familiar `spontaneous prose' style and endless stream of consciousness, often taken as difficult to follow and understand by some readers, this novella is written in the third person and well structured. As it is a short piece, the characters are not fleshed-out as they could be, which is really only possible in a full-length novel. That said, however, the two lead characters, Michael and Paul, are developed enough to sustain the plot. Overall, Orpheus is an absorbing tale about the nature of the artist or poet in their search for truth and purity of artistic vision.

Kerouac's Orpheus is the merging of two types of individuals, archetypes if you will: Michael is the tortured genius, with an imagination conducive to writing poetry, however, he is so serious and self absorbed, single minded, that he is incapable of being happy. A young man with a fine-tuned conscience, when he transgresses, he feels tremendous guilt and wallows in self-pity. Michael's relationships with the older woman, Maureen, lacks spark, and his affaire with Maria, falls flat because Michael cannot feel true love for himself or anybody else.

Paul is Michael's opposite, a roving poet-vagabond, in love with knowledge and life. Kerouac characterizes him as a genius of love and life. Paul's actions are spontaneous, humorous and driven by a devil-may-care attitude to just about everything. One day, after an altercation with Michael, he disappears for a week, and tells his friend's that he has been "Lying on the wet grass eating only fruit", which personifies the carefree, romantic wandering poet.

Written during that early time at Columbia University, when the young Kerouac first meets Alan Ginsberg and William Burroughs, we can perceive these men in some of the characters in Orpheus: enthusiastic bohemian types, learning philosophy, writing poetry and prose, listening to Brahms and drinking copious amounts of wine.

The novel ultimately is about the artist/man in search of a genuine aesthetic vision a `new vision' and the attainment of wholeness as the artist/man - there is a merging of types, and the success of this goal is the attainment of `wholeness plus vision' the `ideal' of the true artist.

This novella was by no means a disappointment, because, although a young work, Kerouac and his life long concerns are all included here.

Recommended to all Kerouac readers and students.

Sadly, it's been over a year since I read any Kerouac. Whenever I walk into a new library or used book store I judge them on how much Kerouac they carry. This tells me how intelligent they are. If there is a boatload of Kerouac on the shelves, every novel they could possibly have ordered, I know the people running the show know what is going on. If there are a few random books on the shelf, for instance, one copy of Good Blonde and one copy of On the Road, I know they are bordering on clueless.

The latter would be why I picked up this book, which is no reflection on the book, but to be honest I may not have chosen this one if they had some others I was itching for on the shelves. There were about three to chose from, and this is what I brought home.

"Orpheus Emerged" was written when he was in college, having just met some of his closest friends and starting to really discover himself and the art/music/words that surrounded him. It has the same undertones as his other books...fast paced dialogue, incoherent interactions at parties, hard pressed obsession towards poetry and its territory.

Although the women pose as ornaments, just as in his other novels, they seem to take on more importance in the way of having effect on the men they are involved with and the lives they are a part of. You don't learn much about them, as usual, but their effects are easily outlined.

I hesitate to say that Jack would fall short of much but this book might be one of the few examples of a lack of prose. The dialogue is purely colloquial while the story has more premeditation than would otherwise be expected. It's a short, enjoyable read and it is fun to see the beginning of his progress. I would say this book is more for someone who has already declared their love, rather than a first time reader. You can sense the potential in it, like the foundation for what is to come.

"Those books!", a character named Paul exclaims, "If only I had time to read them, and more. This morning, after I lost my job, I went to the University Library itself, and do you know, there were hundreds of thousands of books there I honestly felt I should read! And the ideas that rush through my mind. The impatience I feel! The time running off like sand. Ah...."

Yeah, Paul....I know what you mean. My thoughts, on paper, written by the genius himself. When his talent was just a seed planted in the soil of this novella.

But more for the possibility of what else may turn up. I would really love to see "The Sea is My Brother" appear out of nowhere, but sadly that is unlikely to happen. But its just really great to see NEW publications by Jack so long after he left this world. That something so marginal as work like this should be worthy of publication, just because it is Jack, and he was special, and still loved, is a testiment to him as a man. It certainly has to beat all the later whinney self absorbed stuff he wrote during his disintegrating part of his life i.e. Big Sur and Vanity of Duluoz, as we still have the young hopeful voice. Besides, whoever said that this was meant to be a novel in the traditional sense, it is more an effort to captutre essense of life, which doesnt have plots or always make sense. Thats the secret to Kerouac, trying to say something about life. If you dont enjoy it, get it, fine. Just because the stuff in On the Road was about sex n drugs n bebop, doesnt mean that this is any less a truthful mirror than that monumental book.

I would consider myself a Kerouac junkie, but I dont think that matters to anyone. I personally dont find the need to break down Kerouac in such a way that it all turns into semantics and academia. To me, Kerouac wrote beautifully, and in such a way that to break it down as such, devalues any of the intent or meaning given to the book. I also dont agree that his later works were 'whiney'. That is part of the beauty of Jack Kerouacs works. They are the timeline of his life and adventures. I'm pleased that he was honest and wrote what he felt, not what he may have thought a reader would want to read. I could care less if this was written when he was 22 or 42. Most of his works are not comparable, they just shine on their own, in their own way. This, like his other books, is just another exciting opportunity to glimpse into his life.

I dont know, I think I just find humor in the fact that there are people over analyzing this book and talking and talking, especially when Kerouac was smoking pot and doing crazy fun mind opening, and even spiritual things. His soul searching, and the way he wrote about his traveling mean a lot more to me than the people who critisize it. Those are the folks who really dont have a clue.

I've heard it said by a writer that she `writes out' all her ego & mind junk in pages of burnable crap before sitting down to attempt a real book. I think this also applies to beginning a life as a writer. This novella is the product of such mind junk which should have been treated as such & burned at completion. Unfortunately for Kerouac it wasn't & if he's not blissfully unaware of it being flogged on the public market I'm sure he's squirming in his Golden Eternity as people read this laughable pretentious little book. But to be fair, he was only 23 when he wrote it & I'd give him points for at least structuring words into a story. The writing is awkward & uncomfortable; the characters affected, witless & embarrassing espousing pompous philosophies that make little sense; their movements & expressions unnatural; the plot transparent from the beginning. In a way all this makes for a very entertaining read. I could see it in my minds eye as a really bad movie played out by B grade actors. Fortunately Kerouac learnt from his mistakes & removed all these flaws from his later writing.

The Digital version is worth having. The story is the same but the medium is interesting; in fact one of the most interesting digital books I've seen. Each page is laid out differently, often with varied fonts & background pictures & includes hyperlinks to information about the books his characters pretentiously refer to. It's quite entertaining to read. It includes a fun interactive timeline & biographical bits & pieces about him & the beats. A let down was the fact that the multimedia hyperlinks promising audio & video of Kerouac via the internet led to dead pages.
Can the digital CD save the book? It depends on what you value. If you're looking for a good Kerouac story or looking to find your first book by the man, forget it. If you're aiming at completing your Kerouac collection, & filling out the `missing years', then it's a must. It'll make you feel better as a budding writer too. As Robert Creeley said in his introduction, "There will never be a moment like this one". If he means `another' moment like this one, then we can all be thankful.

Orpheus Emerged is not the Jack Kerouac that you and I know. I could be wrong but I believe this was written around the same time(probably before)as his first published novel The Town and the City. What you get here is a short story dealing with the actions of a few young students. You can almost pick out whose who by way of Kerouac's descriptions. Like Ginsberg, and Burroughs. This is not going to knock you off your feet, but if you are a true Kerouac fan it is very cool to own.

"Orpheus Emerged" is, like the bulk of Jack Kerouac's work, about a bunch of "bohemians" getting really trashed all the time
and beating the hell out of each other to prove how passionate they are. The other reviewers who claim that Jack Kerouac advanced somehow or became a better writer are simply wrong. "Orpheus Emerged" is all one needs to read to understand Jack's ever present "on the edge" mentality. And I found it enjoyable. One character (we might as well call him Burroughs, since that's who he was) stands out among this seriously jaded crowd of people as the only one with guts enough to adhere to his somewhat loopy and wild notions of life. He constantly quotes Rimbaud among the most dismal scenes, which I found inspiring and pretentious at the same time. The women in Kerouac's works are exceptionally strong and, paradoxically put up with the worst kind of men imaginable. This is exhilarating in the same way as "Fight Club" is exhilarating: so over the top and doe eyed rebellious that one has to love it. Anyone who doesn't wax nostalgic while reading this never had a good time. Kick back, get your beret and black coffee, and crack it open.

Orpheus Emerged is set on a college campus where most of the main characters are more interested in their own reading curriculum and writing their own works than attending class. The main character, Paul, is not even a student, but just goes and sits in classes that interest him. The bad thing is that he's so passionate about his own self-importance that he's willing to interrupt class and badger the professor about the correctness or incorrectness of what he is teaching. Not a smart move. The characters prance around the book, spouting philosophical theories about life and God and writing bad poetry, thinking they are some sort of closet Shakespeares. Gabbing, drinking, sleeping with each others girlfriends or wives seems to be the their main pasttimes along with making cryptic comments about other characters.

This book is far from the "Lost Classic" status hyped on its back. It almost reads like Jack Kerouac fan fiction, like some 15-year-old tried to write a Kerouac imitation novel for his creative writing class. That's how bad it is. You can almost see a thin shadow of later Jack, but I would classify this work as pretty much worthless. None of the characters are memorable except Paul and even he is not fleshed out that well. The others are just names that you can never solidly picture in your mind. It's obvious that Kerouac didn't try that hard to use his imagination to give the work more art so it comes off almost as a diary instead of a novel. Or maybe at this point, Jack wasn't even capable of doing better than this. In his best works, the yearnings and conflicts of his characters were better defined and more easily identified with. All the characters of Orpheus Emerged come off as pretentious jerks you would definitely steer away from in real life. Should only be read as a very minor footnote to Kerouac's major works.

It's been years since I've read something by Kerouac, but I was excited when I first learned of this new book, a previously unpublished novella written in 1944; I did not expect it to be a work of high literature, but it was what I had hoped for: a represenation of Kerouac's literary early development. Over all, the writing is somewhat awkward, the plot and premise vague and esotiric, yet at the same time it exudes some of the freshness and intensity that would make his later works--On the Road, in particular--so popular. Naturally it is a must read for any Kerouac junkie, but those not so familiar with his writing will find it interesting as well.