Customer Reviews

Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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."

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.

Wow this book is really incredible. It's like diving into the soul of Kerouac before he decided he didn't want to have commas or periods. Mind you I like DR SAX and DESOLATION ANGELS and his other crazily spontaneous novels that had dashes instead of periods, but I gotta say, I enjoy ON THE ROAD and DHARMA BUMS, and this book is great because it's Kerouac writing in a style that is simple to read and you really get to see what a truly great writer and philosopher he was, and he shares a lot about the book he's writing TOWN AND THE CITY which is a masterpeice (a book that gets better the further you read). And how he is set apart from his friends. As talented as they were, including Ginsberg, in my opinion: Jack stood alone, and this book is all about that: standing alone.

This is one of the best books I've ever read. To read about Kerouac and his thoughts and his struggles as he tries to make it is thoroughly enjoyable. It's fun to listen as he ponders and have a look inside him as he tries to make a living writing. I couldn't put it down.

Turning the pages of this book is like seeing Kerouac's life in motion. Within, the reader finally gets a look at Kerouac's struggles becoming the writer he grew into. A combination of pain, lonliness and detachment molded his views and values, resulting in On the Road, Dharma Bums, etc. It's exciting to see how one of the truely original and great American writers approached life and writing. I would recommend this to any reader.

This book is what we have all been keenly waiting for. Kerouac's own words and thoughts and his own mad sad times in the prime of his life (25-32yo). One page he decribes going into NYC to see D. Gillespie at Bopcity then crosses the street to Birdland to see Miles Davis and Stan Getz all in the same night , other times he is hanging out with friends and late night breakfasts in the city (ham and eggs figures alot). Alot of writing on his favorite writers Twain , Balzac and especially his most favorite "old Dusty " (Doestevesky). The first part deals with his completion of Town and City and progresses to his beginning On The Road with anecdotes galore. Kerouac writes like an angel and this is the best book on or by Kerouac since the mid 1960s when he penned his last books. Buy it and keep on a special shelf. We NEED ALL his journals soon but it will be truly remarkable if any are at this level !!!

The book was received promptly, and came in great condition -- but at an even better price!!!! Thanks for making this experience unbelievable convenient, I searched around several sites and by far the best price and quality.

which leads me to think...am I Jack Kerouac incarnate???????

Well, when I read some of this incredible book, I am beginning to think so and am certain that Jack Kerouac and I are not very unlike. I love when Jack talks about his love for Dostoevsky, probably my idol novelist after finishing Crime and Punishment late last year. It's great how this book shows well that Jack was a very well read and intellegent philosophically minded man and how all this philosophizing distressed him. You really get the sense of being right there and witnessing the thought of a great mind.

Getting past that, Kerouac, in his journals gives us a view of the young struggling writer, agonizing over his work ethic finishing up his first published novel, The Town and the City. He even counts the words and you see entries near the beginning which start like, "2000 words in" and it really makes you think, was Jack trying to create a romanticized perception of himself for posterity, like Nietzsche? It certainly seems so.

Yet underneath all of that, these journals reveal Kerouac for what he was, a man. We see that when he is cut, he bleeds. I love his philosophical discourses on whatever is on his mind and his reasoning usually concludes with Christ so, of course you can't go wrong following that path.

The historical merit of this work is astounding, especially when it tells of events Kerouac would later fictionalize in On the Road and other novels.

If you've read On the Road, loved it like I have and would like to get a more personal understanding of the mind behind that timeless tale, check this one out. You will be very pleased you did.

I think this book changed me even further than On the Road.

Growing up as a "boomer" in the 50's and 60's as I did was as transforming an event as the transition from the 20's to the 30's for many, and Kerouac was one of those whose writings captured that transformation for me and millions of others with his "On the Road" best seller in 1957. He had his detractors like Capote who sniffed at him as just being "a typist" but millions loved his break from the suburban swamps and into the "beat" generation which he had named, doing drugs, experimenting with all kinds of sex, and just adding to the general adolescent rebellion that took form in the 60's in many ways. This book, in Kerouac's letters and other writings from his other friends, shows him to be a much different kind of person. A serious student of other writers in serious times, he was much more complex than "sex, drugs, and rock and roll".
He was almost completely paralyzed by self-doubt for most of his life, and his alcoholism obviously took a toll on his brain before it killed him at 47. This book in the form of Kerouac's writings is most revealing. The problem with this book is its author/editor, Brinkley. Brinkley leaves out any mention of the journal Kerouac completed which is at the U of Texas in Austin, or his tangle with the law with Ginsberg, and many other misquotes and factual errors. But what this book reveals most about Brinkley is that he is really not the historian he holds himself out to be; he is just another hired gun, willing to write incomplete and misleading hagiographies for the right price, as he did for John Kerry or Jimmy Carter, among others.
Hopefully someday the Kerouac estate will allow a real historian access to the material they have and not leave it to someone who is willing to shave the facts here and there to make a work of fiction instead of a real story about a real man.