Trainsong [Hardcover]

Jan Kerouac (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 1988

In this searing encore to "Baby Driver," Jan Kerouac continues her full-throttle journey of self-discovery. Haunted by her fahter's legend, Kerouac travels to Oregon, Casablanca, Tangier, London, New York, California, and Mexico as she collects lovers and husbands, indulges in drugs and drink, spends time in odd jobs and jail cells, and keeps the Beat flame alive.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This memoir continues the picaresque saga begun in Kerouac's first autobiographical novel, Baby Driver ( LJ 10/1/81). Like one of her father's characters, Jan travels across the globe exploring her sensations, searching for her identity, waiting for life's pearl to be handed to her. Behind all of her restlessness lies the ghost of Jack Kerouac, the father she never knew. Despite Kerouac's denial of paternity, Jan shows herself his daughter. Movement, time, freedomhis themes are now hers. She has a good ear and her prose is vivid, though it sometimes suffers from a profusion of metaphors. An interesting look into a child's heart as she searches for her father and herself, and a welcome event for all Kerouac fans. William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNY
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 210 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Co; 1st edition (February 1, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805005900
• ISBN-13: 978-0805005905
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,413,139 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bittersweet Reality, June 5, 2001

By 

John P Mcfaul (North Hollywood, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Trainsong (Paperback)

In the late seventies I worked for my next door neighbor (a friend I had known since birth), at his ceramic studio in the Hollywood Hills. We made ceramic coffee mugs in his garage (later moving into a studio in Burbank). Over the years he employed many colorful characters but no one compared to Jan Kerouac. She kept us amused and somewhat scepticle of her stories that she told about her life on the road and with John Lash. She was living in a room in a home above the Hollywood Bowl and later moved in with my friend. Although this must mean nothing to you as a reader, I can assure you after getting to know Jan that she wrote the truth as she lived it. I will remember her forever and possibly longer and think of her often and miss her daffy ways and silly high-jinks. She mentions her time at the ceramic studio but does not mention my friend (they lived together for about 1 year). As far as the title is concerned, while working at the studio I would bring in cassettes to listen to such as Bowie/Eno and Can and other electronic music .One song in particular was done by a friend of mine at UCSD who was a music major.The song was an ambient sort of tune with train like whistles that he called trainsong.Jan would often ask to here that song and I guess it left its mark. Those were the days....Anyway as far as this book is concerned Im no literary critic but I loved every page and I can say the same for Baby Driver.They sparkle with a bittersweat reality that few authors can bring to life. She influenced me in many ways and opened up a love of the ordinary and often mundane and certainly the absurd. I always looked up to Jan and will forever cherish her books as tatterd as they have become.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Walking in the beat shadow of a famous father., July 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Trainsong (Paperback)

This book is stunning. A far better read than "Baby Driver". Brutally and poetically honest. The reader finally gets a soulful look into the life of the daughter of Beat luminary Jack Kerouac--a father whom she hardly knew. By fate, she finds herself eternally walking in his shadow. By doing so she then becomes an entity unto herself. After many years of searching for this book, I was glad to see it was being reprinted again with the addition of previously unpublished interviews. In the beginning of the book there are also poems written by Jan in which it is not difficult to see that she had inherited her father's talent for extemporaneous wordplay. A must read for anyone interested in the Kerouac legacy.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars On the Road in Ellensburg, May 6, 2007

By 

J. Watson "the prospector" (Baker City, OR) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Trainsong (Paperback)

Ellensburg, Washington is famous for it's world-class rodeo, a mention in the song "I've Been Everywhere" and fortuitously, the memoirs of Jan Kerouac. I was there too in the early seventies, living out my Charlie Daniels fantasies when we met this girl who boldly proclaimed to be the only child of the famed beat writer. No one believed her. She gravitated towards two young runaways from New York City who operated a used bookstore downtown. We would bump into them at parties, bars and the other seedy affairs that punctuated our young lives back then. She was known as a "space case" and her life revolved around one near disaster after another. After reading this book, I believe Jan now. She portrays those times and the existence of "us" with the brutal honesty of very few. But unlike us, she failed to survive it and find solace in a normalcy that now comforts some knocking on retirement's door.