Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954 [Hardcover]

Jack Kerouac (Author), Douglas Brinkley (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 7, 2004

Jack Kerouac is best known through the image he put forth in his autobiographical novels. Yet it is only his prolific journals, in which he set down the raw material of his life and thinking, that reveal to us the real Kerouac—his true, honest, deep, private, philosophical self.

In Windblown World, distinguished Americanist Douglas Brinkley has gathered a selection of journal entries from the most pivotal period of Kerouac’s life, 1947–1954. Here is Kerouac as a hungry young writer finishing his first novel, The Town and City, while forging crucial friendships with Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Neal Cassady. Truly a self-portrait of the artist as a young man, these journals show a sensitive soul charting his own progress as a writer and responding to his literary forebears. Finally and perhaps most appealing to Kerouac’s legion of fans, the journals tell of the events that would eventually be immortalized in On the Road, as Kerouac narrates two trips across the United States and Mexico and slowly cultivates his idea for a jazz novel. This unique and indispensable volume is sure to garner major critical attention and become an integral element of the Beat oeuvre.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Much of Kerouac's reputation rests on his first two novels, and these selections from a series of spiral notebooks into which the fledgling author constantly poured story ideas and private thoughts offer an intimate perspective on those novels' development. Anybody who's ever started a novel will grasp Kerouac's obsession with his daily word count and the periodic frustration and self-doubt. "I know that I should never have been a writer," Kerouac laments at one dark moment; in another, he wonders, "Why doesn't God appear to tell me I'm on the right track?" Historian Brinkley, author most recently of a book on John Kerry (Tour of Duty), addresses this religious devotion in an introduction that effectively establishes the historical context, clarifying, too, just how much time Kerouac really spent refining the allegedly spontaneous On the Road. Still, there's plenty of the familiar Kerouac on hand: all-night drunken conversations with other Beat writers, casual sexual encounters and a final notebook entitled "Rain and Rivers," filled with real-life episodes in an early version of the freewheeling style that transformed Kerouac from a promising young novelist to a literary legend. These journals are an essential resource for American literature scholars, but the force of Kerouac's personality makes them an engrossing read for lay admirers.
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From School Library Journal

Adult/High School–These entries cover Kerouac's mid-20s, when he was completing his first novel, The Town and the City, and beginning what were to become Dr. Sax and On the Road. Much of the book is devoted to issues of writing–character, plot, style–and a daily obsession with word count that any writer will appreciate. Discussions of favorite authors like Céline, Twain, and Dostoyevsky highlight some influences, and Kerouac shows his early iconoclastic tendencies through an almost rampant hatred of academics and the literary establishment. Anecdotes about partying with Allen Ginsburg and William S. Burroughs, the New York jazz world, and finding a girlfriend are peppered throughout. The final section is devoted to the cross-country trip made with Neal Cassady and others that inspired On the Road. These narratives of the landscapes of the U.S. and Mexico are hauntingly beautiful and contain hints of the quasi-spontaneous style that made both Kerouac and the Beat movement so different and so popular. The introduction, notations, and index are invaluable to those less familiar with the time period or Kerouac's life. But the real charm of this title is in his words; seeing this young, brilliant author develop and continually push himself toward greatness is gripping and astonishing. The reality of Kerouac proves far more moving and interesting than the bad-boy image.–Matthew L. Moffett, Northern Virginia Community College, Annandale

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; First Edition edition (October 7, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670033413
• ISBN-13: 978-0670033416
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #852,044 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Literary Miracle, October 15, 2004

By 

Kenneth M. Goodman (Cleveland, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954 (Hardcover)

It's beyond amazing that, after all these years, after all
Kerouac's work: novels, poetry, letters, etc. have long been
available...that suddenly a brand new book appears...and it's
beyond great. It's up there with anything he ever wrote.
If you love Kerouac, make getting this book #1 on your list.
If I may offer one brief quote (on page 12) on the subject
of maturity: "...the flashing exhilirated maddening discoveries
and truths of youth, the ones that turn young men into visionary
demons and make them unhappy and happier than ever all at once--
the truths later dropped with the condescension of "maturity"--
these truths come back in true maturity, maturity being nothing
less than disciplined earnestness--"
The book is LOADED with cool stuff like that.
Even though I'm not a Christian, all Kerouac's writing about
Jesus in these journals don't bother me, because he's writing from an ENLIGHTENED perspective. We are truly lucky that Jack Kerouac existed on Earth; and all those lunkhead critics who
dumped their ignorant bad reviews on him all those years ago
have been proven to be morons.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Comedown, Sorrow, and Truest Love, December 22, 2004

By 

Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954 (Hardcover)

Two of Kerouac's journals, published together and finally available for the lay reader to pick up and delve into. Editor Douglas Brinkley does a fine job putting this material into context, even if he makes overstated claims for it, and even if he seems so needlessly to kiss John Sampas' ass, even dedicating this book to him among others of his cohort. We learn a lot about Kerouac from these journals, a lot that's valuable and a lot that shows us just why so many fell in love with his mind and his thoughtful, sometimes halting way of proceeding, always trying to do the right thing despite innumerable obstacles. I think also he had a natural inclination to be sort of the bad boy, and then he had the spectre of his dead brother acting on him as a kind of good angel always steering him right. With utmost seriousness he tried to plot out his life and his course of spiritual action; of course, as we see, women, booze, guys, and wanderlust got in his way, caused him to stray from the path.

His very earnestness however is endearing: "This is why life is holy," he states on pg. 211 (think of the irony on top of which such a statement would be laden today by Kerouac's so-called successors), "Because it is not a lonely accident. Therefore, again, we must love and be reverent of one another, till the day when we are all angels looking back." He sounds an apocalyptic note: "Those who are not reverent now may be the most reverent then (in their other, electrical, spiritual form.) Will there be a Judgement Day? No need to judge the living or the dead: only the happy and the unhappy with tears of pity." Kerouac seems to have seen clearly what escapes all of us but the most enlightened, that we are all creatures of sorrow and of what he calls "electricity," the charge that makes us human.

But not all of WINDBLOWN WORLD is so solemn, there are some hilarious tidbits and routines, such as the curriculum JK develops in October 1949 (pp. 226-28) for a kind of "New College for Comedians," with imaginary courses that might be given by Burroughs "How to Play the Horses" and Huncke: "Modern Drugs." His own courses were more poetic: "Riddles and Roses" and "The Myth of the Rainy Night." The requirements to get into the school? "Sixty points in elementary realization, largesse, comedown, sorrow, and truest love."

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing publication after grandiose promises, September 9, 2006

By 

Pitoucat (UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954 (Mass Market Paperback)

Kerouac began keeping journals in 1936, and continued for the rest of his life. The journals survive and editor Brinkley, writing in The Atlantic Monthly in 1998, promised us publication of "a multi-volume edition." Now it seems that all we will be getting is this 370-page book, covering only some of the material from the years 1947 to 1950, and with just a few pages from 1954 thrown in as extra.

The parts that have been selected for inclusion are apparently aimed at demonstrating the development of Kerouac's first two major works, The Town & the City, and On the Road. Strange, then, that nothing from Kerouac's 1948-49 journal of work on the latter book is included, although some of it did appear as a taster in the extracts Brinkley selected for publication in The Atlantic Monthly in 1998. That must surely be one of the most relevant journals for those interested in the development of On the Road and its omission here is a mystery. (Note: Although not in the hardback edition, Kerouac's On the Road journal has been added as a "postscript" to the paperback edition of this book.) Other journal extracts published in Atlantic, and also in the New Yorker in 1998, are missing from the published book.

In his introduction, it seems to me that Brinkley places far too much emphasis on demolishing the "myth" that On the Road was frantically written in three weeks in April 1951, claiming that Kerouac had begun it much earlier. This may be news to Brinkley, but I'm sure that most Kerouac readers are already aware of that fact. They will have known it since Tim Hunt pointed out that Kerouac began working on the book in 1948, attempting at least five different versions over the next four years. Hunt published this information, with extracts from the earlier attempts, in his PhD thesis in 1975, and in his book, Kerouac's Crooked Road, in 1981.

There's no doubt that Kerouac DID write the version that eventually became the published On the Road in a three-week burst on a scroll of paper in April 1951. However, examination of the scroll reveals that it differs somewhat from the published version, with the insertion of material from his journals being added LATER, at a more leisurely pace, when Kerouac retyped it onto separate pages.

What we have in this volume makes fascinating reading, of course, and offers a little more insight into Kerouac's mind, and his working practices. Brinkley admits to editing the journals heavily in places, and also to mixing together parts from different journals, with no clear indication of the individual sources. The result of this can only be confusion.

This book has been six years in the making. I imagine that all Kerouac scholars and enthusiasts who have been waiting patiently for its appearance will need a copy, and will find the contents valuable. However, I do believe that an important opportunity has been missed to make this the truly outstanding work it could have been.