Customer Reviews

Vanity of Duluoz: An Adventurous Education, 1935-46

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Kerouac was obviously influenced by Thomas Wolfe a great deal. And this influence had a great impact on Kerouac's style and method. Even so, he found his own path and own way of telling a story. Kerouac's stories largely mimic conflict within his own life, and therefore, reading a story by Kerouac is to read a story of Kerouac. I feel this is what has appealed to me most...that I'm not receiving a story about a fantasy world, but a autobiography about a real person with real struggles. Written in the style of On the Road and Dharma Bums, the Vanity of Duluoz is a must read...

No, this isn't just for fanatics! If you want a history of good ol' Jack, then yes, it is just for fanatics. However, if you just want an exciting adventure, it's for anyone. This book has got something for everybody, seriously. It has crime, "romance", adventure on the high seas, everything and more.... and then there's always sport (now there's an obscure M. Python reference! Good thing it fits(:) Anyway, this book is a clasic, no matter what stuffy old lit scholars say. One of my favourite quotes comes from this one: "Insofar as nobody loves my dashes anyway, I'll use regular punctuation for the new illiterate generation." What's my favourite Jack quote? "Holy suffering cows!", that's what (:

This novel is a must-read for Kerouac fanatics, as it both illuminates the youthful source of his 1950s spirit and also highlights his unfortunate disenchantment with the 1960s. Reading his passion for life, for writing, for learning, for being is an inspiration to behold. Those who have not yet entered the frothy murk of Kerouac's splendid writing would be advised to start elsewhere; those who love Jean-Louise should jump on in.

"Where is he? Where am I? Where are you?" The forlorn words of a reminiscing soul. Vanity of Dulouz is a novel of reflection, tragedy, remorse, and the passing of time that not only gives insight into the perception of Jack Kerouac (legendary writer of On the Road) and his views on his youth but insight of the wisdom gained in age. A humorous and melancholy novel that transcends the boundaries of law and country into the realm of humanity and what it means to be human

All of Jack Kerouac's writings don't really fit into the category of novels. They are more in the form of the sentimental memories of Proust or a man looking back on his life as if he were already dead. The Vanity of Duluoz is no exception to this style. Of course, Kerouac takes the title for his work from the Bible verse in which it is said "all is vanity". Written just two years before his death, most of the book seems a Cliff's Notes to his entire body of work.

The book is subtitled "An Adventerous Education 1935-1945" and basically covers ground already seen in other works. Except in this one, he is writing a book for his wife, as if to fill in the story of his life to someone. The driving force behind this work is football and war. It follows Kerouac from early high school football games into college and then into the merchant marines and to the formative years of the beat movement.

Even though one of Kerouac's biographers, Barry Miles, said this book was written in his "fat Elvis period", I found the book quite good. Not among the best of his work, but he still had the spark of writing even in the midst of alcoholism.

Especially good are his experiences in entering Columbia University and the politics that got involved with his playing time. I didn't know that Jack pretty much decided to write because the coach of his team refused to let him start. So, basically, Kerouac just said "I have better things to do than take this. I'm gonna become a writer".

Something not really touched on in other novels but included in this one is Jack's service in the armed forces and the merchant marines. He wasn't afraid to serve in the military during World War II, he just couldn't take being ordered around. Back then, merchant ships crossing the Atlantic were in just as much danger from German u-boats as any battleship.

When the book starting to lose its power was when Jack met the other Beats, who really in the end were a bunch of losers. Kerouac was like Cool Hand Luke. His friends fed off him and on him, draining his energy and sapping his ideas. Kerouac makes up names that are so thinly artificial for his friends that you feel like you're reading a Dickens novel. When he concentrates on himself, he is a genius. When he writes about others, he becomes weak. He should have kept the radar squarely on himself.

This book is pretty good. Average for Kerouac. It is a paradox. It is a novel written about his a joyous youth by a man who sees himself in bitter old age.

Kerouac's last real novel, this gives you some idea of where he was coming from in the years before he sat down to write On the Road and the other books that would define the Beat Generation.

As a reader, I came at Kerouac back to front, coming across this as a teenager in the local library when it had just come out in 1969. I was a high school senior, a small town quarterback, a secretly aspiring writer, living in a Massachusetts mill town and struggling with the constraints of the Roman Catholic faith.

At one point in this book, the narrator tells his father he is leaving town because he doesn't want to rot in Lowell and his father tells him "You don't know it, but you're rotting in Lowell right now."

This book, maybe more than anything he wrote except On the Road, has always stayed with me. I never lost sight of where he was coming from with his rebellion.

In my opinion, contrary to some other reviews here, it is not a bad place to start with Jack.

Vanity of Duluoz is a novel of reflection. To many of us Kerouac fans, nothing "new" will be presented here. But the story is told from a new Kerouac - not the wild, hip, drunkard from On the Road and The Subterraneans vein, but the quiet, reserved, almost conservative Kerouac of his later years. The book is as easy to read as his other works, perhaps easier. Its Kerouac in a reflective mode, where his thoughts are laid-out for us on the pages as plain and simple as they have ever been.