The Portable Jack Kerouac (The Viking Portable Library) (Paperback)

by Jack Kerouac (Author), Ann Charters (Editor)
Key Phrases: golden eternity, railroad earth, spontaneous prose, New York, San Francisco, New Orleans (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Jack Kerouac produced a substantial body of writings in his mercurial career. His drug- and alcohol-inspired furious bursts on the typewriter created energetic and exciting prose, chronicling his experiences and impressions of the untapped restlessness of America in the 1950s. On the Road is certainly his most recognized and influential work, but among his other efforts are books and stories that range from inspired beauty and to sad desperation. Ann Charters, who wrote the first Kerouac biography in 1973 and worked with him in preparing his first bibliography, has assembled here a first-rate sample of some of his better work. The collection is a perfect way to sample Kerouac and necessary for those looking past On the Road. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly
Much as Viking's Portable William Faulkner rekindled interest in Faulkner because his editor, Malcolm Cowley, had the brainstorm of pulling together a map of Faulkner's epic Yoknapatawpha County series of novels and stories in order to give the work a new coherence, so Kerouac gains new stature as a result of labors by his biographer, Charters (Kerouac: A Biography). Here she chronologically excerpts the perhaps 16 volumes of the Legend of Duluoz to create a map of Kerouac's oeuvre, which, according to the publisher, he had planned before his death. She supports it not only with fat slices of Kerouac's best writing but also with an investigation into his bop prosody that gives his jazz-riff style a new currency. In fact, this volume may deal a fist in the face of the English sentence, because Kerouac's revamping of the sentence is so song-filled and emotion-ridden that its properties could well do for American prose what Whitman did for verse: give it new life. An alcoholic jamming by candlelight with scotch and pot on the kitchen table, he mixes jazz with Rimbaud's derangement of the senses to create a vehicle for his own anguish as he recollects his life on the run. The Portable shows Kerouac at his best as a riff artist but also gathers to stronger effect than any single Kerouac novel. Includes selections from his poetry and experimental novels.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 656 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (March 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140178198
• ISBN-13: 978-0140178197
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #619,895 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Well edited, but it has continuity issues, June 15, 1999

By	Matthew Blaschko (Columbia Unversity, New York) - See all my reviews

This collection is wonderfully edited. There are no major breaks in the plot and Ann Charters commentary provides a good context to understand the book (e.g. she provides a table that matches character names to actual people). However, since the books were written out of order, the immensely different writing styles of Kerouac's different novels do not mesh well at times. It is fine for somebody who has had previous exposure to Kerouac's writing and now wants a survey of all his different styles, but I would generally recommend buying the individual books.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars WILD, WEIRD, WONDERFUL--- AND WOOLLY AND WOOZY,, January 14, 2001

By	Donald A. Newlove (Greenwich Village) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

GRANTED that the selections are a mishmash of Kerouac styles, and at times misuse words with a kind of tender haughtiness and screw you if you don't like it but this is what I bruit. Bruit? But at his best Kerouac time and again tells us of that railroad earth and trains rolling under October skies and rushes up our noses with piney phrases that would raise gooseflesh on Thomas Wolfe. What's more, Ann Charters serves Jack nobly by inventively selecting along a timeline that captures the hero's age throughout, a superb bit of editing much like Malcolm Cowley's for The Portable Faulkner in which he patched together a groundbreaking picture of Yoknapatawpha County from Faulkner's many works. A Must-Have Kerouac volume that should break ground for new readers and give old admirers a bath in that old spontaneous prose he dreamed up nightly with candlelight on the kitchen table, booze, and weed. Some of it's mush, some visionary, and much of it just what writing should be: straight from the heart.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars almost confusing, February 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Portable Jack Kerouac (Hardcover)

For a true kerouac reader, i think it's worth it to work through this book. It's long, but a good part of it is the editor talking, a woman who has a true love of Kerouac. It's a little bit of everything, from his letters, to his ideas on buddhism(my personal fave) It's a good, but long, read