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Trainsong

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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.

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many years of searching for this book, I was glad to see it was being reprinted again with the addition of previously unpublished interviews.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.

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.

Jan shows why it is all in the family, when it comes to writing, roaming and living. Her lifestyle and writing style is similar to her father's, but shows what an "On the Road" life is like for a woman. This book is better than "Baby Driver" and reflects the maturity a writer and world travler who has experienced more. It is very much a female experience and was written long after "Baby Driver" - her first book. The feminist movement was in full swing when this book came out, but she is one of the most overlooked voices in the feminist movement. A great read for the Next Beat Generation and a feminist voice.

This picks up where Baby Driver left off, chronicling Jan's adult life. Here is a more mature Jan, writing this memoir later in life - she comes to grips with her lineage and the absent love of an absent father. That is basically what Jan's two books are about - they are very honest stories about a woman searching for love, acceptance, and approval from men because she never received it from her father. It's tragic that she died in her mid-forties with only two books published and one on the way - she was definitely on her way to defining her position in the literary world as a unique, original voice.