Customer Reviews

Visions of Cody

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1 star:		(2)

 

 

Most readers come to know Kerouac through On the Road. Those who develop a relationship with his work invariably point to Visions of Cody as the one that hooked them for life. While the plotting and structure aren't nearly as sound as On the Road, this isn't exactly a novel. More like a rambling, poetic love letter to a period in Kerouac's life that was quickly slipping away.

Incidentally, Kerouac did not intend for this to be a companion to On the Road. If the author had had it his way, this would have been the definitive version of On the Road.

Most readers agree that the first 150 pages is by far the best writing in this book. Read this section, even if you put the book down for good afterward. These 150 pages are pure, loose, and brilliant. Kerouac sketching unequaled by any other part of his oeuvre.

As with all Kerouac books, this one has its faults. The middle 200 pages are overwrought and self-indulgent. But that can be said of most of Kerouac's work. The tape transcripts are important reading if you want a first-hand account of the dynamic that existed between Jack and Neal. But this section could have been shortened substantially. Also, for every perfect sentence, there are ten that fall flat--examples of how the spontaneous prose technique had its drawbacks. But no writer is great all the time. And Kerouac's sporadic greatness more than makes up for the notes he doesn't quite hit.

For those new to Kerouac's work, you would be better off reading The Subterraneans first just to get acclamated to the spontaneous prose style. Even then, it will be tough going. But you read Kerouac for more than the storytelling. Faithful Kerouac readers cite the author's inventiveness, his fearlessness, and his unwavering devotion to the written word. Most writers go their entire lives without a sentence as good as, "So pull that skull cover back and smile." And that one is buried in a heep of perfectly constructed, evocative sentences.

For a more critical look at this book, try reading Kerouac's Crooked Road by Tim Hunt (with help from Ann Charters). It offers a thorough breakdown of Kerouac's techniques, while providing an insightful comparison between Visions of Cody and On the Road (two versions of the same idea).

Yes, at first I thought the tape transcripts were just a lot of useless padding to fill out Jack's book. Boy, was I wrong! Here's how to read them:

1. Get a couple of Charley Parker albums (Bird and Diz will do nicely.)

2. Procure a jug of red wine and a joint.

3. Put on Bird, pour a glass of wine, and just relax with the music for a while.

4. Take a few tokes. Drink more wine. Get a nice mellow buzz.

5. NOW, begin reading the tape transcripts, and voila! You are invited to the party!

You will be sitting there with Cassidy and Kerouac, digging the flow of music and conversation and experiencing a new comprehension of their friends, wives and lovers. The gossip, the stories, the subtle oneupmanship between them is a delicious fly-on-the wall experience. By recreating the set and setting of these long ago conversations, you will experience an intimacy that is uncanny. I've done this a few times and was amazed at the greater understanding I had of these two complicated men. I read and re-read the transcripts with delight and was sorry there wasn't more of them.

This is surely what Kerouac intended. It's like the modern day extras and behind the scenes specials you get on movie DVDs. I mourn their passing more than ever and the fact that there doesn't appear to be anyone out there to take their place.

Ever wonder why Hollywood depictions of the Beats are laughable failures? HERE'S why.

Go now...

The best parts of this book are poetic, sad, exhilarating, and rank with the best of Kerouac. The maddening parts are self-indulgent, repetitive, boring, and sexist. Most of the latter are in the long central section (pages 120-250 of a 400 page book)and consist of transcriptions of tape recordings mostly of Kerouac and Cassady, with a party scene and some other people at times. Some of it is interesting, and some of it is of historical interest, but the rest doesn't need to be there. The book itself is a tribute to Cassady (like much of On the Road) and a lot of the sadness can be attributed to the fact that when it was written, Cassady had settled down to the type of married-with-children-and-a-job life that was what much of Kerouac's writing and adventures on the road were rejecting. Another part of the sadness has to do with the gap between America's promise and America's reality. Kerouac was hardly the first writer to notice this, but there weren't many writers, besides his friends, during the post-war economic boom and the complacency of the McCarthy and Eisenhower 50's who were noticing this. And while many have tried, no one has captured his unique poetic voice and vision. The fact that much of the book is like a long prose poem makes it difficult to read, but in the end, well worth it.

I agree with many that say that the first 150 pages are really worth reading. They are beautiful and brilliant with images and gives you an inside seat as to how On the Road came about. Yet after that it is a tough read. The transcripts are long, go on forever and you wonder why they were included. The last half of the book is pretty good.

This is defiantly one of those books you will want to read when you have the time, skill to concentrate , and desire for a wild ride. It took the two years to read this book and I am not a slow reader. But I was glad I had read it.

Kerouac's best book, no doubt about. As Ginsberg says in the intro, it's an elegy for a fallen America that no longer exists, especially today, an America where innocence and kindness and joy has been replaced by paranoia and selfishness, with Kerouac using Cody as a symbol of all that is good and lost in America. For this reason it's probably the most pertinent of Kerouac's books for the modern era. Not only that, but it contains the most personal and heartbreaking prose Kerouac ever wrote, sentences filled with love for his fellow man ("I'm writing this book because we're all going to die") and the pain he saw at what was happening to his country ("America is what laid on Cody's soul the onus and the stigma - that in the form of a big plainclothesman beat the s//t out of him till he talked about something that isn't even important anymore - it's where cody learned that people arent good, they want to be bad - and nobody cares but the heart in the middle of the United States that will reappear when the salesmen all die.") There are sentences like that throughout the book, just absoloutely beautiful heartfelt writing, plus little things such as Kerouac wondering whether a girl in a restaurant would like him, or what his dead father would think of him, small things from his day-to-day life that add up to a tapestry of love and compassion and longing. "I'm a fool, I loved the blue dawns over racetracks and made a bet Ioway was sweet like its name, my heart went out to lonely sounds in the misty springtime night of wild sweet America in her powers, I stood on sandpiles with an open soul... Goodbye, Cody. Adios, you who watched the sun go down, at the rail, by my side, smiling - Adios, King." If writing like that doesn't break your heart, looking at the way the world is run nowadays, then this book probably isn't for you. But if you mourn for a lost America, buy the book and find a soulmate - or a couple.

"What they want has already crumbled in a rubbish heap - they want banks." - Cody Pomeray.

As much as I love Kerouac, this one is just too muddled to be of much use. That reviewer who said this hooked him on Kerouac for life scares the hell out of me.

There is only so much dope-addled rambling a person can take. When Jack and Cody start tossing nonsense at each other, just mumbling stuff, well, that's an interesting take on poetry for a page or two, but not for hundreds of pages.

Read everything else by Kerouac. If that's not enough, then give this a shot. You probably won't finish it anyway. Sure, there's a gem here and there, but it's hardly worth the hunt when there's so much other kick-butt Kerouac out there.

I remember when I read On the Road for the first time, I was simpley amazed by Keroauc's innovative, non-stop narative of criss-crossing America. After two readings of On the Road, I moved on to Visions of Cody, somewhat expecting a lot similiaralites between the two novels, I was wrong. Visions of Cody is abstract. Visions of Cody is highly experimental. It takes the conventions of novels and throws them out the window. Plot? Gone. Character? Gone. In a lot of ways it reminds me of Naked Lunch, although it had a steady, consistent narrator, which is not the case in Visions of Cody. But that does not mean that I did not enjoy this novel, because I loved it (well, maybe not loved it but I liked it very much.) The most worthwhile quality about the novel is how Keroauc redefines prose. As I said above, there is no consistent narrator, the voices change constantly, requiring a close read and a high degree of patience. This makes the novel deep and allows multiple views about one topic or situation. Although Visions of Cody may not be a page-turner, or have a story that engules you, it posses a value of ingenuity and experimentation that is priceless and worth your time. This is assuming you are a (pretty big) fan of Jack Keroacu.

read by Graham Parker.

Alan Ginsberg thought that Visions of Cody was Jack's best book but whether we agree with him or not, Visions is a long and often tedious free association jazz riff manuscript about Jack and Neal Cassady and friends that can be difficult for some to "get into." I agree with the previous reviewers who advise the reader to have a few drinks, put on some jazz and, if you get bored, read it out loud. The rhythms of post World War II American English will come alive.

Graham Parker does it for us with his reading. First of all, the reading is abridged into two cassettes and it helps to pare down this enormous, meandering manuscript to its high points. Second, Parker provides the music and the poetry with his magnificently expressive reading and added music. You might be put off, at first, by his English accent but I think you will be won over with his extraordinary vocal rendition of the essentials of Visions of Cody.

This is Kerouac at his most rambling, confused, rampant, unedited, and disturbing. No, I am not giving a bad review, this is the way Kerouac was meant to be read. One must read this book if ON THE ROAD interested them at all. It gives a complete look at both Kerouac and Cassady, and the relationship between the two. Also, this book gives insights into the origins of marijuanna in mainstream america. Kerouac immortalizes taped conversations between the two men when they are both high on Tea. The result is an exhilirating, often funny, sometimes unbelievably depressing, look into the lives of two cultural icons. Read it!

The first three paragraphs are taken from a previous review about Jack Kerouac and his leading role in establishing the literary ethos of the "beat" generation. Those comments aptly apply in reviewing "Visions Of Cody" as well:

"As I have explained in another entry in this space in reviewing the DVD of "The Life And Times Of Allen Ginsberg", recently I have been in a "beat" generation literary frame of mind. I mentioned there, as well, and I think it helps to set the mood for commenting on Jack Kerouac's seminal `travelogue', "On The Road", that it all started last summer when I happened to be in Lowell, Massachusetts on some personal business. Although I have more than a few old time connections with that now worn out mill town I had not been there for some time. While walking in the downtown area I found myself crossing a small park adjacent to the site of a well-known mill museum and restored textile factory space.

Needless to say, at least for any reader with a sense of literary history, at that park I found some very interesting memorial stones inscribed with excerpts from a number of his better known works dedicated to Lowell's "bad boy", the "king of the 1950s beat writers, Jack Kerouac. And, just as naturally, when one thinks of Kerouac then Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Neal Cassady and a whole ragtag assortment of poets, hangers-on, groupies and genuine madmen and madwomen come to mind. They all show up, one way or another (under fictional names of course), in this book. So that is why we today are under the sign of "On The Road".

To appreciate Kerouac and understand his mad drive for adventure and to write about it, speedily but precisely, you have to start with "On The Road". There have been a fair number of `searches' for the meaning of the American experience starting, I believe, with Whitman. However, each generation that takes on that task needs a spokesperson and Jack Kerouac, in the literary realm at least, filled that bill not only for his own generation that came of age in the immediate post World War II era, but mine as well that came of age in the 1960s (and, perhaps, later generations but I can only speculate on that idea here)."

That said, "Visions Of Cody" is an extension of that "On The Road" story line that made Kerouac famous, although "Visions" is more diffuse and much more concerned with literary imaginary than with the storyline developed in the earlier Kerouac/Paradise narrative. Here Jack as Dulouz and Neal Cassady as Cody Pomeray do more running around on the road, partying, reflecting on the nature of the universe, partying, speculating on the nature of the American experience, partying and... well, you get the drift. In some places the descriptive language is stronger than "On The Road", reflecting Kerouac's greater ease with his spontaneous writing style in the early 1950s when this was written (although not widely published until after his death.).

Additionally, included here is a long series of taped interviews between Jack and Neal over several days and, presumably, while both were on a running drug "high". These tapes reflect very nicely the very existential nature of 1950s "beat", or at least one interpretation of that term. They produce all the madness, genius, gaffs, gaps, whimsy and pure foolishness that come from an extended drug experience. Despite all reports to the contrary not everything observed until the "influence" comes out pure literary gold, and that is true here as well. But there is a lot of good stuff nevertheless, although here it could have been cut in half and we still would have go that "beat" beat.