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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Deja vu all over again (well not quite), March 12, 2002
This review is from: Vanity of Duluoz: An Adventurous Education, 1935-46 (Paperback)
Thomas Wolfe served as a mentor to the young Jack Kerouac and greatly influenced Kerouac's first novel, "The Town and the City," in both scope and syle. And although Kerouac would soon develop his own unique vision and voice he could never tear himself completely from Wolfe's influence and the need to re-write or re-tell what had already been written or told. Just as Wolfe retold the story of Eugene Gant in his "The Web and the Rock" and "You Can't Go Home Again," Kerouac did the same with this novel. Readers of "The Town and the City," "Doctor Sax," and "Maggie Cassidy" will recognize the same characters (although under different names) and events that populate these other novels. What separates this novel from the others, however, is Kerouac's point of view. Gone is the childlike, wide-eyed enthusiasm that often drives Kerouac's writings (even in the depressing "Big Sur"); this is replaced with a middle aged cynicism and bitterness. This novel covers the events from 1935-46, and follows the author from his teen age years in Lowell, Mass. to New York City. It is a time of football, college at Columbia, stints in the merchant marine and the U.S. Navy, introduction to the bohemian lifestyles of Morningside Heights and Greenwich Village, experimentation with marriage, experimentation with drugs. William Burroughs, Alan Ginsberg and other writers and artists who would eventually comprise the Beat Generation are encountered and described in a more critical light than in other of Kerouac's writings. Ginsberg is described as "a Puerto Rican nonentity bus boy in a nowhere void," and Burroughs as a great writer, "a shadow hovering over western literature." The pivotal point of this novel is the events surrounding the manslaughter of David Kammerer by Lucien Carr, an event in which Kerouac was peripherally involved (having observed Carr dispose of the weapon and Kammerer's bloody eye glasses). This book was the last major work that Kerouac was to write. In 1967 he was living with his mother in a small house in Florida, politically conservative, grossly overweight, drinking heavily and strapped for cash. He had lived to see his own legend become irrelevant and see himself replaced by a new generation of writers like Ken Kesey, Tom Wolfe and the other Merry Pranksters. No wonder the vitriolic tone of some of the prose, especially when discussing hippies, LSD, and the attendant sixties culture. Many of the other reviewers of this book have stated that this is not a good book in which to be introduced to Kerouac. I agree totally. However, for those Kerouac fans and for those who want to experience the complete Duluoz Legend, this is required reading.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A weak novel from one of the greatest novelists ever, August 7, 2007
This review is from: Vanity of Duluoz: An Adventurous Education, 1935-46 (Paperback)
Unfortunately, even the stars in the heavens sometimes fall. This is what happened to Jack Kerouac in his final years, and this book is exhibit A.
Kerouac was never the "life is a thrill a minute joy-fest" guy that he's often mistaken for by young people who read "On The Road" and the others for the first time. (Myself included, many years ago) A rereading of his books later in life reveals how sad and confused a man he really was; his novels are a quest, they are not the answer. There are answers in them, but "hit the road and forget everything you were taught by your parents and your teachers" is not an answer he ever gave or intended to give. Kerouac was a profoundly lonely man, so lonely that he let many of his friends treat him like a dog (remember Dean abandoning him in Mexico in "Road") and not only came back for more but wrote some of the greatest books ever written about them.
But his loneliness and confusion truly came home to roost after he became famous. Fame made him bitter and forced him to drink and isolate himself ever more in order to deal with it. He wrote about this in "Big Sur," unquestionably one of his best books, and his power as a writer never left him...but in "Vanity of Duluoz" we see how far he's slipped from the great Journeyman he was two decades earlier. Particularly in the novel's early passages, he rails against modern society and moans over how much better things were when he was young, and it poisons his writing almost fatally. Of course, he is hardly the only writer to complain about the world; one of his greatest influences, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, practically made a career of it, but Celine made it FUNNY, and that makes all the difference. Nobody wants to hear an old man bitch about these kids today, if that's his only point. Celine used his kvetching as a counterpoint to whatever story he was telling, and the contrast comes on like an explosion of energy. Kerouac, sadly, only tells his story to show how much better times were back then than they are now. Worse, in the first sentence of the book he implies that "Vanity Of Duluoz" isn't even meant for us, his faithful readers: it's for his wife. (And judging from the way she kept so much of his writing out of the public eye for decades after he died, it's clear he was preaching to the choir)
I don't know what effect the novel had on the millions of kids who snapped it up in 1967, thinking they were getting another youth-affirming "On The Road" or "Desolation Angels" (another book I drastically misread as a kid) and discovering instead a man their parents' age, complaining about their long hair and their careless, hedonistic lifestyles and how they have used him as an excuse to become worthless bums. Their reaction couldn't have been too happy. It's too bad: a generation who felt he was their christ figure, the one who went out into the world and showed them the way, now finding their buddha telling them to clean up and get lost. And this book, detailing the years 1935 through the end of the War, should have been one of his most joyful, bombastic works: he leaves his hometown, discovers the wonders of Manhattan, meets his great circle of friends, and begins to discover himself as a man and a writer.
But it wasn't to be. He was simply too mired in depression and alcohol to muster the energy needed to give the subject the treatment it deserved. In a roundabout way he did, of course, tackle this time period in his first novel "The Town And The City," and although it lacks the characteristic Kerouac voice it's still an excellent novel, and highly recommended. But it's not the masterpiece that "Vanity" could have been, and that is all the more a tragedy. This book feels like a filler: he'd written about his childhood and his adulthood, now he needed to write about his young adulthood, so he could fill in the gaps in the Duluoz legend and say he finished it. That's just not a good enough reason to write a book. Even when you are---or were---as great a writer as Jack Kerouac.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The last of Kerouac, August 9, 2003
This review is from: Vanity of Duluoz: An Adventurous Education, 1935-46 (Paperback)
For all intents and purposes this is Kerouac's last real novel. With great fondness and honesty, he goes over a lot of the same themes and events as in his earlier works, but now he's tired, not feeling the need to prove anything and just barely holding on to hopes that things ever get better. This is a sincere, lovely, heartbreaking and haunting book of reflections at the end of a pained but adventurous life.
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