Customer Reviews

The Subterraneans

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

The Subterraneans is an autobigraphical novel based on a summer love affair between Kerouac and a young black woman in New York City in 1953. The setting of the story was moved to San Francisco at the behest of the publisher.

The book tells the story of the love, and its end, between Leo Percepied, the Kerouac character, and Mardou Fox. Mardou is half Cherokee and half black. She has grown up in poverty in Oakland and has suffered serious emotional breakdowns. She has gone from lover to lover among the Bohemia of San Fransisco until she meets up with Leo.

The book shows some of Kerouac's understanding of his own character. He describes himself (page 1) as both an "unself-confident man" and as an "egomaniac". A few pages later (page 3) he confesses that "I am crudely malely sexual and cannot help myself and have lecherous and so on propensities as almost all my male readers no doubt are the same."

The Subterraneans are a group of hipsters, aspiring artists, drop-outs, con men who inhabit that bars and streets of San Fransiscon graphically described in this book. The book is full of mean streets, cold water flats, alleys, run-down stores, cheap bars, late evenings, pushcarts, and sad mornings.

Leo is initally sexually attracted to Mardou. When he learns and listens to her he truly falls in love. She is indeed a lovable character. The picture of the love is convincing. Unfortunately Leo/Kerouac remained throughout his life a mother's boy. Mardou tells him, properly and sensibly "Leo, I don't think it good for you to live with your mother always" (p47) Leo nonetheless can't part from his mother. He also has doubts about his ability to commit to a black woman, particularly given the prejudice of his mother and sister. He dumps Mardou. It is his loss.

The book is written in long stringy sentences to imitate the "bop" improvisatory style of jazz riffs. I was put of by the style when I began the book but came away concluding it fit the subject matter. The apparent spontaneity and the sincerity of the narrative move the story along.

The book describes well the American hipster of the 1950s. It is ultimately a story of the need for love and the difficulty of commitment. It is a sad story and I think in the emphasis on the wildness of Bohemia can easily be misunderstood. Kerouac may have been somewhat wiser as a writer than he was as a man. He was able to take his inability to form a lasting relationship with a woman and describe it. He turned his experiences and personal difficulties into a poignant and lasting novel. Art in Kerouac as in so many writers becomes a way of understanding and transcending one's life.

Every couple of years, I feel compelled to pick up this book and re-read it just to experience again the beautiful, descriptive images of Kerouac's world of love captured and love relinquished. It's really interesting how he lets us follow the relationship he fosters with this young, hipster girl from its passionate genesis to its inevitable demise. All the time, we try to steer him in certain directions, try to coax him to say and do things that will continue the romance because he makes us want it to work. Nevertheless, we are swept up in the rhythm of the prose, hanging on every emotion, applying it to similar relationships in our lives. I'd say its absolutely essential reading for people who have just severed ties with another person. The locomotive rush of the writing style painfully captures the images and burns them into our minds, often difficult and obscure in certain areas, but we understand them on a far more unconscious level. I'll probably pick it up again in the not-so-distant future. It's a classic.

Anyone who has read more than one novel by Jack Kerouac knows that his style varies. In Dharma Bums, Kerouac writes with atypical lucidity. In Big Sur (what I think is his greatest novel), he goes an entire first chapter with the use of one period. Of the five books by Kerouac I have read (the fifth book being On The Road), Subterraneans reads the most like Tristessa. The style of each book is more fractured than in the others, making it sometimes more difficult to follow. But in each book Kerouac finds a stride and rhythm to his work that soon carries the reader away. In Subterraneans, Kerouac tells the story of a relationship with Mardou Fox, a part Native-American, part African-American, mentally barely stable, twenty-one year old woman. Though Kerouac is almost 10 years older, they seem a great match. As usual, Kerouac's tale takes him through bar- and apartment-hopping parties, intellectual upheavals, drunken sprawling adventures, and bitter hangover realizations. The thread of unity throughout is the experience of his evolving relationship with Mardou, his deep self-realizations, his anger, love, and pain. When I finished the book I knew Kerouac had once again found something true amid his temporary madnesses and put it on paper for me to read. I closed the book and felt I had read something beautiful. Kerouac, you did it again.

i've heard this book compared to the Dharma Bums by a number of people, but i don't like that comparisson. The entire mood and circumstances of this novel are quite different. Certainly The Subterraneans is an interesting and necessary read for Kerouac fans, but certainly not a book i would recommend to readers just getting into Kerouac. The book is perhaps a bit too realistic, too depressing and self depreciating, without the hopeful philosophic spirit of his most popular works. It contains a lot of passages that just make you cringe, and some awkward archaic language when talking about Mardou. But there is still a bit of transcendental magic hidden in this book. Kerouac's strength really lies in his ability to open up those small moments of every day, the existential dread and desire is always there, we are always trying to make ourselves in every moment. Here we find it all taking its toll hard on him.
It is definitely a quick read, however, and of course Kerouac's less than great books are still better than so many other books out there. I'd recommend taking it out of a library or getting it used, though.
It is a snapshot of three days in the life of Leo Percepied (Kerouac) and perhaps its greatest value lies in its demystification of beat culture. Kerouac isn't finding buddha here, he's finding his inadequacies. "this is the story of an unself-confident man"(page 1).

This is the best book I have ever read. The story, the characters, the mood, the language is all like a gray sunset morning on a dirty street in San Francisco. Kerouac is a poet and a story teller. His words are paranoiac but tender. He tells of his experience with a band of underground hipsters know as 'the subterraneans' in the context of a mad drunken love affair with Mardou Fox, an angst ridden angel of the city

This is an amazing book. Not only does it have a facinating plot and realistic characters, (mainly due to the fact they're based on real people), the writing style is a powerful lucid force that suits the content down to the ground. The rushing prose create a momentum that carries the story and portrays the frenzied reality of Kerouac in love. Jealousy and disillusionment are key to this story and you can observe how the heavy drinking Leo, the author and main character, and Mardou, his black, mental unstable girlfriends' relationship evolves. This is certainly not a book to be missed and its short too. It limits its scope to the events of a short period with the story unravelling through accounts of specific episodes that allow the characters to develop. The best book I have ever read is this slim tome and I urge you to read it - a love story with anguish and a unique writing style.

Almost limited (as with most Kerouac books) to his own experience. But he does manage to apply his experience to the rest of us in this one. What made Kerouac great was his ability to expose himself so completely in his writing. That takes guts and it shows in his work. And because of this The Subteraneans is so amazingly honest. It would be fair to say the most honest account of a love affair in modern American history - maybe. It's a unique little book and amazingly honest.

This is a great book, but difficult. I just want to warn people who are picking this up because they loved "On The Road" or "The Dharma Bums"-- this is a different kind of novel. This book is not so much a linear story as a mood. Kerouac wraps the reader into a bizarre world of lonely parties, flashbacks, and long conversations. Very little actually "happens". However, if you can push your way through the hyper sentences of random disconnected thoughts that run on for pages, you will be amply rewarded.

I liked "The Subterraneans" enough, even though it's not nearly on my list of best works by the author. But I'm hot penning these few sentances for peeps who have read this book. This is for the one's who are interested.

If you haven't read anything by Jack Kerouac before this is NOT the place to start. Though a good book with a good story, "The Subterraneans" is a hard read and not a great introduction to the author. Note I said hard in the previous sentance because this novel was written over three days and three nights and reads that way. Kerouac's prose is right on, as it usually is, but more dense this time, probably because the man was on speed when he penned it.

If you are new to this world of Kerouac then may I recomend to you the always popular "On the Road" or "The Dharma Bums" before this. They both show what Kerouac does best and are two of the best books he ever wrote. Poetry in the form of story.

"Subterraneans" is a good Kerouac book, not the best, not the worst, pretty much residing in the middle of his catalog, hence the three star rating(three to me means good, but there are better books out).

So there you go. You should read "Subterraneans" because again it is a good book. But I think it could, and probably would, turn off newbies to the Kerouac legend(there are always exceptions mind you), and it would be better to start off with one of the aforementioned titles first. Thanks.

My third exposure to Kerouac, though enjoyable and interesting, only rates four stars from me.

Having read Dharma Bums and On The Road prior, Subterraneans, which has a far more limited landscape than the aforementioned, also has a lesser 'growth' for the protagonist, who is a thinly veiled Kerouac.

The story centers on the brief love affair of novelist Leo Percepied with Mardou Fox, an African American beauty, ten years his junior. Taking place during the 1950's; one of the major obstacles in the relationship, from the outset, is the racial difference of the two characters.

But Percepied suffers from other self-imposed obstacles, being unable to fully admit his love of Mardou to himself, until she begins to pull away from him.

Barely over 100 pages in length, this novel, while rich in the same Beat-generation characteristics of his other works, shows far less of a 'voyage' for the protagonist than other novels. While you do gain some insight to the life and person of Jack Kerouac, it is limited.

But don't let that discourage you from giving this book a glance. It is easily digestable, and very enjoyable. Kerouac's Benzadrine-laced prose is, as always, a 'trip'...even in a story that doesn't go very far.