Desolation Angels

by Jack Kerouac

The classic autobiographical novel by Jack Kerouac featuring "one of the most true, comic, and grizzly journeys in American literature" ( Time )—now in a new edition

Originally published in 1965, this autobiographical novel covers a key year in Jack Kerouac's life—the period that led up to the publication of On the Road in September of 1957. After spending two months in the summer of 1956 as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak in the North Cascade Mountains of Washington, Kerouac's fictional self Jack Duluoz comes down from the isolated mountains to the wild excitement of the bars, jazz clubs, and parties of San Francisco, before traveling on to Mexico City, New York, Tangiers, Paris, and London. Duluoz attempts to extricate himself from the world but fails, for one must "live, travel, adventure, bless, and don't be sorry." Desolation Angels is quintessential Kerouac.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Literature, Novels, American, Travel, 20th Century

409 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1958

About the author

Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac, known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation.

Of French-Canadian ancestry, Kerouac was raised in a French-speaking home in Lowell, Massachusetts. He "learned English at age six and spoke with a marked accent into his late teens." During World War II, he served in the United States Merchant Marine; he completed his first novel at the time, which was published more than 40 years after his death. His first published book was The Town and the City (1950), and he achieved widespread fame and notoriety with his second, On the Road, in 1957. It made him a beat icon, and he went on to publish 12 more novels and numerous poetry volumes.
Kerouac is recognized for his style of stream of consciousness spontaneous prose. Thematically, his work covers topics such as his Catholic spirituality, jazz, travel, promiscuity, life in New York City, Buddhism, drugs, and poverty. He became an underground celebrity and, with other Beats, a progenitor of the hippie movement, although he remained antagonistic toward some of its politically radical elements. He has a lasting legacy, greatly influencing many of the cultural icons of the 1960s, including Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Jerry Garcia and The Doors.
In 1969, at the age of 47, Kerouac died from an abdominal hemorrhage caused by a lifetime of heavy drinking. Since then, his literary prestige has grown, and several previously unseen works have been published.

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is the best reason I can think of for anyone ever learning to read. I've spent most of it with my mouth - metaphorically - hanging open, and my heart perpetually glowing and breaking along with Kerouac's various and numerous highs and lows. Can you be in love with someone who died years before you were even a twinkle in the eye of the universe? I think so.

This is not On the Road, and On the Road is nothing by comparison. That is, if there can be any other piece of writing that could even come close to being comparable with Desolation Angels. Of course, from somewhere and someone there will be, but with the same kind of sincerity and authenticity that Kerouac delivers? I seriously doubt it. The things he sees and thinks and writes, they're gorgeous, uplifting, insane, horrific, and sometimes bleak beyond belief. But through it all there is a shocking sweetness and sometimes earnest naivety from Kerouac himself, which endears so much about the world to - I'm certain - anyone who reads it.

I still don't believe in God, but Kerouac has given me the best reasons why belief is still important, and can still be beautiful. Oh, and the temptation to hop on a train and disappear into the unknown, is a force to contend with once finished...

You know when you've just finished reading something utterly wonderful, and you feel all pretentiously gob-smacked that your brain has been irrevocably changed? My poor brain! There's no going back.

[Steven Godin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Described by some as Kerouac's best work, Desolation Angels contains everything you would come to expect from a key writer of the Beat Generation, with an abundance of Jack's sometimes difficult to grasp Spontaneous Prose. This was such a mixed bag for me, from the stream of his semi-conscious jazz-like rhythm fuzzy beatnik mind, to the more clearer and poignant writing later on that chronicles the travelling lives of himself, his friends, including Irwin Garden (Allen Ginsberg) and Bull Hubbard (William Burroughs), Cody Pomeray (Neal Cassady) and towards the end, an emotive journey with his own mother. Even William Carlos Williams gets a brief appearance later on.

The biggest problem came in the first one-hundred pages or so, thrown straight into the deep end with some egocentric text that I struggled to fathom. Jack Duluoz (Kerouac) spends an age stuck on a mountain (desolation peak) recording a long hot summer fire-watching, searching for spiritual meaning, and just getting high. A lot of what he rabbles on about didn't make a blind bit of sense, but still somehow through the blurry images managed to convey a feeling of loneliness and isolation, creating an epiphany rooted solely in the self, before finally plodding on down to life below, and where his writing started to pick up. Not just slightly, but massively. For me though, the best this book had to offer didn't happen until past the mid-way point, simply because it was more reader friendly.

Whether travelling with a purpose, or just aimlessly wandering, you get the sense of importance not just through miles covered, but an internal journey shaping his life. He proceeds to travel south, down the West Coast of America, staying in San Francisco, on into Mexico where he falls in with his buddies, back north to New York, before a ships voyage to Tangiers that seemed to be the drugs capital of the world, before a knackered Duluoz finally takes in Paris and London (albeit briefly). Heading back to the States he embarks on a trip with his mother through Florida, Texas, the tip of Mexico and California again. This was him at his most affecting as a writer. Many people he runs into, whether those he knows or his proper friends who feature regularly seem to live a constant stream of reading, writing, drinking, smoking, some screwing with prostitutes and drug taking. It sounds like a blast them having the time of their lives, but for the reader there is sometimes so much crammed in to short passages it's hard to keep up on what's what. There is a little misogyny, and a few below the belt occurrences, but for a book of this nature that's to be expected.

I am not suddenly going to turn into a big admirer of kerouac's work. His poetry didn't connect with me at all. I never got to finish 'On the Road', and are in no hurry to read him again any time soon. But this was my best kerouac experience to date. It took a while to get going, had some great moments both funny and moving, and I appreciate his unique style a little more now.
Two stars for the first third, three to four for everything else.

[Vit Babenco · Rating 4 out of 5]

“My life is a vast and insane legend reaching everywhere without beginning or ending, like the Void – like Samsara – A thousand memories come like tics all day perturbing my vital mind with almost muscular spasms of clarity and recall…”
Solitude isn’t for Jack Kerouac – alone on the mountain peak he is tortured and intimidated by loneliness and gets bored with it.
“…the vision of the freedom of eternity which I saw and which all wilderness hermitage saints have seen, is of little use in cities and warring societies such as we have…”
So back to the madding crowd where Jack Kerouac does belong…
“Now everything is too cool for a fight, now it’s jazz, the place is roaring, all beautiful girls in there, one mad brunette at the bar drunk with her boys – One strange chick I remember from somewhere, wearing a simple skirt with pockets, her hands in there, short haircut, slouched, talking to everybody – Up and down the stairs they come – The bartenders are the regular band of Jack, and the heavenly drummer who looks up in the sky with blue eyes, with a beard, is wailing beer-caps of bottles and jamming on the cash register and everything is going to the beat – It’s the beat generation, it’s béat, it’s the beat to keep, it’s the beat of the heart, it’s being beat and down in the world and like oldtime lowdown and like in ancient civilizations the slave boatmen rowing galleys to a beat and servants spinning pottery to a beat – The faces!”
Beatniks seem to have existed only to burn their lives – like those moths circling around a candle flame – disoriented and hypnotized desolation angels.

[P.E. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fleeting Timelessness

'Because all these serious faces’ll drive you mad, the only meaning is without meaning– Music blends with the heartbeat universe and we forget the brain beat.'

'It’s me that’s changed and done all this and come and gone and complained and hurt and joyed and yelled, not the Void.'



Le cygne noir (1895) - William Degouve de Nuncques


In a nutshell, what truly put this autofiction work by Kerouac on a whole different level for me:

1) The demanding, perilous and tireless confrontation with the self and the images of the self. Images originating both in the main character on the one hand and his relatives and friends on the other hand.


2) The fundamental scepticism as regards any form of essential value. Which supposes a strong certitude, or a form of faith.

'Sad understanding is what compassion means–I resign from the attempt to be happy. It's all discrimination anyway, you value this and devalue that and go up and down but if you were like the void you'd only stare into space and in that space though you'd see stiffnecked people in their favorite various displaytory furs [...] you'd still be staring into space for form is emptiness and emptiness is form'

See Wittgenstein: “If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty.”

This book retraces an intimate fight against nihilism.

'Like dying I saw all the years flash by, all the efforts my father had made to make living something to be interested about but only ending in death, blank death in the glare of automobile day, automobile cemeteries, whole parking lots of cemeteries everywhere.'


'One look at the officials in the American Consulate where we went for dreary paper routines was enough to make you realize what was wrong with American “diplomacy” throughout the Fellaheen world:—stiff officious squares with contempt even for their own Americans who happened not to wear neckties, as tho a necktie or whatever it stands for meant anything to the hungry Berbers who came into Tangiers every Saturday morning on meek asses, like Christ, carrying baskets of pitiful fruit or dates, and returned at dusk in silhouetted parades along the hill by the railroad track. The railroad track where barefooted prophets still walked and taught the Koran to children along the way. Why didnt the American consul ever walk into the urchin hall where Mohammed Mayé sat smoking? or squat in behind empty buildings with old Arabs who talked with their hands? or any thing? Instead it’s all private limousines, hotel restaurants, parties in the suburbs, an endless phoney rejection in the name of “democracy” of all that’s pith and moment of every land.'


'At night at my desk in the shack I see the reflection of myself in the black window, a rugged faced man in a dirty ragged shirt, need-a-shave, frowny, lipped, eyed, haired, nosed, eared, handed, necked, adamsappled, eyebrowed, a reflection just with all behind it the void of 7000000000000 light years of infinite darkness riddled by arbitrary limited-idea light, and yet there's a twinkle in my eye and I sing bawdy songs about the moon in the alleys of Dublin, about vodka hoy hoy, and then said Mexico sundown-over-rocks songs about amor, corazón, and tequila - My desk is littered with papers, beautiful to look at thru half closed eyes the delicate milky litter of papers piled, like some old dream of a picture of papers, like papers piled on a desk in a cartoon, like a realistic scene from an old Russian film, and the oil lamp shadowing some in half - And looking at my face closer in the tin mirror, I see the blue eyes and sun red face and red lips and weekly beard and think: 'Courage it takes to live and face all this iron impasse of die-you-dool? Nah, when all is said and done it doesn't matter.' '

2bis) Kerouac looks for a more genuinely personal way of life, looking for his place, not a posture, but a part in life, looking for a place to call his own, values to call his own:

'It was a little sad. Bull would be too tired to go out so Irwin and Simon would call up to me from the garden just like little kids calling at your childhood window, “Jack-Kee!” which would bring tears to my eyes almost and force me to go down and join them. “Why are you so withdrawn all of a sudden!” cried Simon. I couldnt explain it without telling them they bored me as well as everything else, a strange thing to have to say to people you’ve spent years with, all the lacrimae rerum of sweet association across the hopeless world dark, so dont say anything.'


'My money came and it was time to go but there’s poor Irwin at midnight calling up to me from the garden “Come on down Jack-Kee, there’s a big bunch of hipsters and chicks from Paris in Bull’s room.” And just like in New York or Frisco or anywhere there they are all hunching around in marijuana smoke, talking, the cool girls with long thin legs in slacks, the men with goatees, all an enormous drag after all and at the time (1957) not even started yet officially with the name of “Beat Generation.” To think that I had so much to do with it, too, in fact at that very moment the manuscript of Road was being linotyped for imminent publication and I was already sick of the whole subject. Nothing can be more dreary than “coolness” (not Irwin’s cool, or Bull’s or Simon’s, which is natural quietness) but postured, actually secretly rigid coolness that covers up the fact that the character is unable to convey anything of force or interest, a kind of sociological coolness soon to become a fad up into the mass of middleclass youth for awhile. There’s even a kind of insultingness, probably unintentional, like when I said to the Paris girl just fresh she said from visiting a Persian Shah for Tiger hunt “Did you actually shoot the tiger yourself?” she gave me a cold look as tho I’d just tried to kiss her at the window of a Drama School. Or tried to trip the Huntress. Or something. But all I could do was sit on the edge of the bed in despair like Lazarus listening to their awful “likes” and “like you know” and “wow crazy” and “a wig, man” “a real gas”—All this was about to sprout out all over America even down to High School level and be attributed in part to my doing! But Irwin paid no attention to all that and just wanted to know what they were thinking anyway.'


'And now, after the experience on top of the mountain where I was alone for two months without being questioned or looked at by any single human being I began a complete turnabout in my feelings about life—I now wanted a reproduction of that absolute peace in the world of society but secretly greedy too for some of the pleasures of society (such as shows, sex, comforts, fine foods & drink), no such things on a mountain—I knew now that my life was a search for peace as an artist, but not only as an artist—As a man of contemplations rather than too many actions, in the old Tao Chinese sense of “Do Nothing” (Wu Wei) which is a way of life in itself more beautiful than any, a kind of cloistral fervor in the midst of mad ranting action-seekers of this or any other “modern” world—'


'I'm 34, regular looking, but in my jeans and eerie outfits people are scared to look at me because I really look like an escaped mental patient with enough physical strength and innate dog-sense to manage outside of an institution to feed myself and go from place to place in a world growing gradually narrower in its views about eccentricity every day. Walking thru towns in the middle of America I got stared at weirdly. I was bound to live my own way. The expression 'nonconformity' was something I'd vaguely heard about somewhere (Adler? Eric Fromm?). But I was determined to be glad! Dostoevsky said 'Give man his Utopia and he will deliberately destroy it with a grin' and I was determined with the same grin to disprove Dostoevsky!' '[...] since it’s impossible for everybody to be artists, to recommend my way of life as a philosophy suitable for everyone else—In this respect I’m an oddball, like Rembrandt—Rembrandt could paint the busy burghers as they posed after lunch, but at midnight while they slept to rest for another day’s work, Old Rembrandt was up in his study putting on light touches of darkness to his canvases—The burghers didnt expect Rembrandt to be anything else but an artist and therefore they didnt go knocking on his door at midnight and ask: “Why do you live like this, Rembrandt? Why are you alone tonight? What are you dreaming about?” So they didnt expect Rembrandt to turn around and say to them: “You must live like I do, in the philosophy of solitude, there’s no other way.”'


'And also dont think of me as a simple character—A lecher, a ship-jumper, a loafer, a conner of older women, even of queers, an idiot, nay a drunken baby Indian when drinking—Got socked everywhere and never socked back (except when young tough football player)—In fact, I dont even know what I was—Some kind of fevered being different as a snowflake. (Now talking like Simon, who comes up ahead.) In any case, a wondrous mess of contradictions (good enough, said Whitman) but more fit for Holy Russia of 19th Century than for this modern America of crew cuts and sullen faces in Pontiacs—'


'God how right Hemingway was when he said there was no remedy for life—and to think that negative little paper shuffling prissies should write condescending obituaries about a man who told the truth, nay who drew breath in pain to tell a tale like that!… No remedy but in my mind I raise a fist to High Heaven promising that I shall bull whip the first bastard who makes fun of human hopelessness anyway—I know it’s ridiculous to pray to my father that hunk of dung in a grave yet I pray to him anyway, what else shall I do? sneer? shuffle paper on a desk and burp with rationality? Ah thank God for all the Rationalists the worms and vermin got. Thank God for all the hate mongering political pamphleteers with no left or right to yell about in the Grave of Space. I say that we shall all be reborn with The Only One, that we will not be ourselves any more but simply the Companion of The Only One, and that’s what makes me go on, and my mother too. She has her rosary in the bus, dont deny her that, that’s her way of stating the fact. If there cant be love among men let there be love at least between men and God. Human courage is an opiate but opiates are human too. If God is an opiate so am I. Therefore eat me. Eat the night, the long desolate America between Sanford and Shlamford and Blamford and Crapford, eat the hematodes that hang parasitically from dreary southern trees, eat the blood in the ground, the dead Indians, the dead pioneers, the dead Fords and Pontiacs, the dead Mississippis, the dead arms of forlorn hopelessness washing underneath—Who are men, that they can insult men? Who are these people who wear pants and dresses and sneer? What am I talking about? I’m talking about human helplessness and unbelievable loneliness in the darkness of birth and death and asking “What is there to laugh about in that?” “How can you be clever in a meatgrinder?” “Who makes fun of misery?” There’s my mother a hunk of flesh that didnt ask to be born, sleeping restlessly, dreaming hopefully, beside her son who also didnt ask to be born, thinking desperately, praying hopelessly, in a bouncing earthly vehicle going from nowhere to nowhere, all in the night, worst of all for that matter all in noonday glare of bestial Gulf Coast roads—Where is the rock that will sustain us? Why are we here? What kind of crazy college would feature a seminar where people talk about hopelessness, forever?'


'A fine thing to say in this day and age! And especially with the wild life he was now leading that was going to end in tragedy in six months, as I’ll tell in a minute—A fine thing to be talking about angels in this day when common thieves smash the holy rosaries of their victims in the street … When the highest ideals on earth are based on the month and the day of some cruel bloody revolution, nay when the highest ideals are simply new reasons for murdering and despoiling people—And Angels?'

3) And this raging fight, against the very fundamental elements of reality, is fought by Kerouac with nothing but painful honesty, humanity, and humour, and writing.

'Raphael in the middle hearing nothing and seeing nothing but just looking straight ahead, like Buddha, and the driver of the Heavenly Vehicle (the full Oxcart Bullock White-as-Snow Number One Team) talking earnestly about numbers, waving with one hand, and the third person or angel listening with surprise.'


'“Random and Urso argue with me about my theory of absolute spontaneity. In the kitchen, Random takes out the Jack Daniel’s and says, “How can you get any refined or well-gestated thoughts into a spontaneous flow, as you call it? It can all end up in gibberish”. And that was no Harvard lie. But I said:
”If it’s gibberish, it’s gibberish. There’s a certain amount of control going on, like a man telling a story in a bar without interruptions or even one pause.”
– “Well, it’ll probably become a popular gimmick, but I prefer to look on my poetry as a craft.”
– “Craft is craft”
– “Yes, meaning?”
– “Meaning crafty. How can you confess your crafty soul in craft?'

It also reflects the part played by Kerouac during the writing/montage/composition of Naked Lunch.

And finally:

'Here now I’m telling about the most important person in this whole story and the best. I’ve noticed how most of my fellow writers all seem to “hate” their mothers and make big Freudian or sociological philosophies around that, in fact using it as the straight theme of their fantasies, or at least saying as much—I often wonder if they’ve ever slept till four in the afternoon and woke up to see their mother darning their socks in a sad window light, or come back from revolutionary horrors of weekends to see her mending the rips in a bloody shirt with quiet eternal bowed head over needle—And not with martyred pose of resentment, either, but actually seriously bemused over mending, the mending of torture and folly and all loss, mending the very days of your life with almost glad purposeful gravity—And when it’s cold she puts on that shawl, and mends on, and on the stove potatoes are burbling forever.'

Whistler's Mother (1871) - James McNeill Whistler


Also read:

- Absurd, Transcendentalism and Nihilism:
Là-Bas
Earthly Powers
VALIS
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer
Jude the Obscure
The Decay of the Angel
Essais

- Deep dive into the self:
The Book of Disquiet
L'Arrache-Cœur
La Déchéance d'un homme

- Materialism:
Contes Cruels
Exégèse Des Lieux Communs
Les Choses: Une histoire des années soixante
La Montagne morte de la vie
Le Déclin du courage
Into the Wild

- Other lives on the fringes of society:
I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft, Volume 1
I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft, Volume 2
Ham on Rye

- Drinking bouts & extravaganza:
Under the Volcano
Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises
Trainspotting

- Part from the Duluoz Legend cycle:
The Dharma Bums
On the Road: the Original Scroll
Big Sur



Ambient Soundtrack:
Soon - Yes

[None Ofyourbusiness Loves Israel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kerouac—or rather his thinly veiled alter ego Jack Duluoz—takes us on a journey that, like most Beat adventures, manages to be simultaneously profound and profoundly tedious. Beginning as a fire lookout on Washington's aptly named Desolation Peak, Duluoz trades external wilderness for the far more treacherous landscape of his own mind, where bears materialize from thin air and Buddhism proves as ephemeral as morning mist.

"I'd rather hop freights around the country and cook my food out of tin cans over wood fires, than be rich and have a home or work," Duluoz declares in one of his more lucid moments—a sentiment that sounds delightfully romantic until you've spent 400 pages with a man who genuinely attempts to live this way.

Kerouac drags us through the predictable Beat geography: Mexico, where cantina beers and Zocalo fireworks compete with the experience of bein robbed and an earthquake; New York, where Helen Weaver tolerates his presence until she wisely doesn't; Tangiers, where he assists William S. Burroughs with Naked Lunch—a process akin to helping a surgeon perform an appendectomy while both are on hallucinogens.

His style, famously described as "spontaneous," reads like someone transcribing jazz while riding a mechanical bull. The sentences flow, or rather spill, across the page with an urgency that suggests Kerouac feared punctuation might become extinct. "The only people for me are the mad ones," he writes elsewhere, and indeed, by the end of this odyssey, one wonders if sanity itself isn't simply overrated.

Perhaps the most honest moment comes when Duluoz laments: "I'm lost, but my work is found." This perfectly encapsulates the paradox of Kerouac—a man eternally searching for meaning while inadvertently creating it through the very act of documenting his search.

Desolation Angels exemplifies self-mythology and the peculiar American talent for turning existential crisis into literary currency. It's a work that, like its author, is both irritating and irresistible—a book that promises transcendence but delivers something far more valuable: the uncomfortable truth that even our most profound spiritual journeys often lead us right back to where we started, only with better stories to tell.

"...I wake up in the morning at seven and my mop is still drying on the rock,like a woman’s head of hair, like Hecuba forlorn, and the lake is a misty mirror a mile below out of which soon the ladies of the lake shall rise in wrath and all night long I hardly slept (I hear faint thunder in my eardrums) because the mice, the rat, and the two fawns befawdledawdled all over my place, the fawns unreal, too skinny, too strange to be deer, but new kinds of mystery mountain mammals— They cleaned out utterly the plate of cold boiled potatoes I laid out for them—My sleepingbag is flat for another day—I sing at the stove: “How coffee, you sure look good when you brewin”—
“How how lady, you sure look good when you lovin”
(the ladies of the North Pole Snow I heard sing in Greenland)..."

[Meike · Rating 4 out of 5]

New German translation: Engel der Trübsal (The old, incomplete German translation was titled Engel, Kif und neue Länder - WTF???)
Kerouac is having a spiritual crisis, and his inner and outer movement has a more pathological angle here than in On the Road. "Desolation Angels" was first published in 1965, and the book tells the story of Kerouac's life in the year before the publication of On the Road (1957). The first 100 pages are him spending two months alone at Desolation Peak, WA, which drives him into a deep alienation and depression - than the Catholic comes down from the mountain to get on the road again, first with his friends, then with his mother. traveling in the US, Mexico and Europe.

Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac was already 35 when his second novel "On the Road" was published and finally made him famous. Before that, Kerouac had slowly become more and more miserable: He had lost his dreams to become a football star at Columbia University and dropped out, he was discharged from the Navy on psychiatric grounds, he was taken in as a material witness in the murder of David Kammerer (for more info, consult And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks); he was twice divorced, had worked odd jobs, traveled around and maintained a concerningly close relationship to his mother, who had to take him in and give him money again and again. His whole family was concerned because Jack could not live self-reliantly and was by then already a heavy drinker and pot smoker.

At the same time, he was deeply convinced of his own genius and worked to create his own literary legend, the Legend of Duluoz (duluoz meaning „louse“ in Kerouac’s French-Canadian dialect). The crisis resulting from his situation is reflected in the book, as well as his spiritual search: Kerouac was born a Catholic, but his pals Allen Ginsberg and especially Gary Snyder were Buddhist scholars, and Kerouac, in his desperation, turned to Buddhism, but ultimately without much success.

The language is Kerouac's typical jazz-inspired spontaneous prose / sketches, but mixed with religious outbursts, and beat / beautitude merge with desolation, referring to (Catholic) martyrdom. Kerouac might have been the most unpolitical of the Beats, but his personal plight certainly had a political dimension.

A great entry to the Legend of Duluoz (although the engimatic first 100 pages are a strugle), I'll tackle Tristessa next.

[Matthew Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

72nd book of 2020.

This is my 8th Kerouac now - And though not my favourite (that is still Big Sur - review here), this is still a great read.

Desolation Angels begins again, where we are left at the end of The Dharma Bums - at the top of the mountain as a fire-warden. Then we traverse not only America but Mexico, Tangiers and England. The most interesting part for me was the short section in Tangiers with writer William S. Burroughs. Neal Cassady returns too (Dean Moriarty in On the Road) as Cody. So, we have many returning characters.

I have to record this short discussion between Kerouac and Burroughs, referring to the shocking nature of the images in Burroughs' work. Kerouac is speaking first.

'Why are all these young boys in white shirts being hanged in limestone caves?'
'Dont ask me - I get these messagesfrom other planets - I'm apparently some kind of agent from another planet but I havent got all my orders clearly decoded yet.'
'But why all the vile rheum - like r-h-e-u-m.'
'I'm shitting out my educated Middlewest background for once and for all. It's a matter of catharsis where I say the most horrible thing I can think of- Realise that, the most horrible dirty slimy awful niggardliest posture possible - By the time I finish this book I'll be pure as an angel, my dear. These great existential anarchists and terrorists so-called never even their own drippy fly mentioneth, dear - They should poke sticks thru their shit and analyse that for social progress.'
'But where'll all this shit get us?'
'Simply get us rid of shit, really Jack.' He whips out (it's 4 p.m.) the afternoon's aperitif cognac bottle. We both sigh to see it.

Kerouac also gives us beautiful writing, as expected, and at the end, honest and heartfelt writing about his mother. There is a lot on the internet, and in biographies, about Kerouac and his mother- how he (I'm paraphrasing some quote I remember here): 'never freed himself from her apron strings' - never could 'escape' her. He loved her 'too' much.

But anyway - I'm here for Kerouac's unwavering voice, and beautiful writing:

But how can I ever forget even madder Fall in the Skagit Valley where it would whip the silver ooing moon with slavers of cold mist, smelling of orchards, and tar rooftops with night-ink colours that smelt as rich as frankincense, woodsmoke, leafsmoke, river rain, the smell of the cold on your kneepants, the smell of doors opening, the door of Summer's opened and let in brief glee-y fall with his apple smile, behind him old sparkly winter hobbles

[Laura González · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ángeles de Desolación es el libro más introspectivo y triste de Kerouac: el más humano. Sin embargo, y a pesar de ser una gran seguidora de su obra, se me hizo pesado y desconecté a menudo de su prosa espontánea cargada de un egocentrismo demente que me incomodó mucho.

Tal vez lo que más me gustó fueron las palabras que dedica a su madre en las páginas finales del libro, como las que dejo a continuación, muy conmovedoras:

Voy a hablar ahora de la persona más importante de toda esta historia, y la mejor. He notado que casi todos los colegas de la pluma parecen «odiar» a sus madres y construyen grandes filosofías freudianas o sociológicas alrededor de ello, [....]. A menudo me pregunto si alguna vez han dormido hasta las cuatro de la tarde y visto a su madre al despertar zurciéndoles los calcetines a la luz que entra por una triste ventana o si al volver de los horrores revolucionarios de los fines de semana la han visto remendar los sietes de una camisa manchada de sangre con la silenciosa cabeza eternamente inclinada sobre la aguja. Y no con la resentida pose del martirio, no, sino sincera y seriamente desconcertada por tener que "remendar", remendar la tortura, la locura y toda clase de pérdidas, remendar todos los días de tu vida con una gravedad casi alegre y misionera. Y cuando hace frío, se pone el chal y sigue remendando, y en la cocina las patatas no paran de hervir. Poniendo furiosos a algunos neuróticos que ven estas muestras de salud en una casa. Poniéndome a mí furioso a veces porque he sido tan imprudente que he roto la camisa, he perdido los zapatos, y he perdido y hecho trizas la esperanza en esa imbecilidad llamada existencia "salvaje". [...] desgarrarme la camisa, sólo para que mi madre, dos días después, se siente a remendar esa misma prenda, porque es una camisa y es mía, de su hijo. [...] Y cuando la camisa ya no tenía remedio, la lavaba y la guardaba «para poner remiendos» o para convertirla en trapo de fregar. En uno de esos trapos he reconocido tres decenios de vida atormentada, no sólo mía, sino de ella, de mi padre, de mi hermana. Habría remendado hasta la tumba y la habría usado, si hubiera sido posible.

[robin friedman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loneliness And Restlessness On Desolation Peak

After reading the memoirs of Helen Weaver 'The Awakener: A Memoir of Kerouac" and Joyce Johnson (Glassman) "Minor Characters", I wanted to read Kerouac's novel "Desolation Angels". Kerouac had a short relationship with Weaver in 1956 followed by a longer relationship with Johnson. In "Desolation Angels", Kerouac describes his relationship with these women from his own perspective. There is much more to the book.

"Desolation Angels" is the most literally autobiographical of Kerouac's novels, with the author frequently only slightly changing the names of his friends and supporting characters. The book covers about one year in Kerouac's life, from the summer, 1956, to late 1957, just before the New York Times published a favorable review of "On the Road" which took Kerouac from obscurity to fame. The book is in two large sections (called "books") written at different times and in different styles. Kerouac wrote book one titled "Desolation Angels" in 1956-1957 shortly after the events it describes. The book is written in the spontaneous, associative stream-of-consciousness style that characterizes Kerouac's best-known work. It was rejected for publication in 1957.

In 1961, when Kerouac was in the middle of a long decline, he wrote the second book of what became "Desolation Angels", titled "Passing Through" while living in Mexico. Kerouac's writing in this second book, which includes his relationships with Weaver and Glassman, is more straightforward narrative than in the first book. Kerouac thought of publishing each part as separate works but decided to combine the two together. The result is "Desolation Angels" first published in 1965. The current edition of the book, which dates from 1995, begins with a valuable introduction by Joyce Johnson.

In the summer of 1956, Kerouac worked for two months in western Washington in isolation on a fire tower on Desolation Peak. Kerouac thought he would be able to use this period of isolation for meditation and gaining control of his life. He soon found himself, however, missing friends, companionship and every day activity. Kerouac reflects on his surroundings, on his family, and on his earlier life in short, stream-of-conscious sections before he comes down from the mountain to rejoin the world. A sense of religious and philosophical meditation, which includes a great deal of Buddhism, also pervades Kerouac's discussion of his time on Desolation Peak and the novel as a whole.

The remainder of book one describes Kerouac's descent from the mountain and hitchhiking through Portland to San Francisco. He spends a riotous week with his friends in the middle of the San Francisco Poetry renaissance, but the best scenes are of Kerouac and his friends having fun and walking the streets. Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsburg, and Gregory Corso, with slightly changed names, play important roles. The sense of dissatisfaction and the need to move on, whether alone on Desolation Peak or with friends, is critical to Kerouac. Unhappy in San Francisco, he sets off for Mexico.

The aptly titled "Passing Through", book two of the work, describes Kerouac's continued restlessness, spiritual questioning, and dizzying journeys to Mexico, New York City, Tangiers, France, back to New York, California, and New York again. When he wrote "Passing Through" in 1961, Kerouac was famous.. He was seriously troubled by the faddish attention given to the so-called "Beat Movement" which he had not intended to create. In "Passing Through", Kerouac describes how "On the Road" is accepted for publication, but he makes relatively little of this.. In many places, Kerouac addresses his readers directly and intimately. Thus, early in book two he cautions his readers:

"And also dont think of me as a simple character-- A lecher, a ship-jumper, a loafer, a conner of older women, even of queers, an idiot, nay a drunken baby Indian when drinking--- Got socked everywhere and never socked back (except when young tough football player)-- In fact, I don't even know what I was-- Some kind of fevered being different as a snowflake....In any case, a wondrous mess of contradictions (good enough, said Whitman) but morefit for the Holy Russia of the 19th Century than for this modern America of crew cuts and sullen faces in Pontiacs--".

The scenes in Mexico City, with Bill Burroughs in Tangiers, and particularly with his mother in a long, disastrous trip to California are as good as the scenes with Weaver and Johnson.

This book captures a great deal of Kerouac and his contradictions. It shows a man who loved and tried to savor the common experiences of life, his friends, lovers, and food, and yet suffered from an inner loneliness and restlessness. Wherever he was, Kerouac felt he had to be somewhere else. Alcoholism and drugs and wandering inexorably took their toll. The story is told in "Desolation Angels" with strong religious overtones. The spirituality in this book is complex and unsystematized. It includes Buddhism, Catholicism and simple living in the here and now but does not reduce to any formula. I found the spiritual quest theme of this book challenging and moving.

"Desolation Angels" is a difficult mixed book, with eloquent writing together with portions that are less successful. The work gradually won me over as a read into it. This book will be of greatest interest to readers with a strong passion for Kerouac who have read, for example, "On the Road", "The Dharma Bums" and "Tristessa". These three novels are all available in the Library of America's excellent volume of Kerouac's "Road Novels". "Desolation Angels" itself is not included in any LOA volume of Kerouac.

Robin Friedman

[Joscha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Desolation Angels starts where Kerouac left us at the end of The Dharma Bums. On Desolation Peak. Although the two books kind of flow into each other you will notice that Kerouac has changed. After the thrilling and fervid On The Road he became more quiet and meditative. He still has that excitement for life and experience and that somehow never ending urge to be on the road and hang out with his old Beat buddies but eventually he can't identify with the spirit of the so called Beat Generation anymore. Throughout the book he spends lots of time in solitude - thinking, drinking and writing. Some of these passages have been a little challenging if not boring to me. I don't know, it seems you have to be in a certain mood to feel Kerouacs writing because sometimes, I experienced the truth of his words so intensely I thought that every single sentence has to be carved in stone and I wanted to go outside and yell it at the dreary people.
What should I say. It is a book about solitude, friendship and poetry. If you liked The Dharma Bums, Desolation Angels should follow.

[ra · Rating 5 out of 5]

this whole book was kerouac oscillating between the high of "once i attain the buddha nature (detachment and simultaneous perfect harmony with all things) it's over for y'all" and the low of being overwhelmed by the horror of holding that connection (as in crying over a bug dying in a coat of fresh paint) and yeah i owe him an apology i loved this. much better than on the road, just as fast but there was something a more crystallised at the center of this. and not to be me but i do think it was the buddhism/realisation of the fact that everything is temporary but goes around forever and ever and what the hell do you do when you love life this much and also you used to be catholic and have the great looming sense you're doing it all wrong

— "Sunday morning, I empty of my little tricks to make life more livable. An empty orphan sitting nowhere, sick and crying. Like dying I saw all the years flash by, all the efforts my father had made to make living something to be interested about but only ending in death, blank death in the glare of automobile day, automobile cemeteries, whole parking lots of cemeteries everywhere. I saw the glum faces of my mother, of Irwin, of Julien, of Ruth, all trying to make it go on believing without hope. [...] I remembered the enormous despair of when I was 24 sitting in my mother's house all day while she worked in the shoe factory, in fact sitting in my father's death chair, staring like a bust of Goethe at nothing. Getting up once in a while to plunk sonatas on the piano, sonatas of my own spontaneous invention, then falling on the bed crying. Looking out the window at the glare of automobiles on Crossbay Boulevard. Bending my head over my first novel, too sick to go on. Wondering about Goldsmith and Johnson how they burped sorrow by their firesides in a life that was too long. That's what my father told me the night before he died, 'Life is too long.'"

[Carly]

Jack Kerouac is kind of annoying

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I try to read books by 20th century authors in publication order, but with Kerouac that is tricky because of his odd publication history. His debut novel, The Town and the City, was published in 1950. He was unable to get any other books published until On the Road came out in 1957. His incredible sudden fame from that book nearly ruined his precarious mental health, but most of the other books he had written before 1957 began to be released.

Desolation Angels was written in 1956 as he awaited a publication date for On the Road. It is somewhat different from other of his novels, in that he wrote it from journals he kept about his tenure as a fire watcher, when he was studying Buddhism and trying his best to practice it. Then he came down from Desolation Peak, returned to his friends, his drinking and drug taking, and his on the road life.

All his famous friends are with him, though called by pseudonyms: William Burroughs, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg and others. This journey began in San Francisco and led to Mexico, New York City, Tangiers, France and London. He wrote every day!

But I could tell that by the time he returned to New York he was not in a good state. He surely was not ready for the fame, attention and burdens that came with his most famous book. Even though his dream came true, it was not the dream he wanted. He could no more fit into society than he ever had before.

I know this is an old story for creative people. The very consciousness that enabled their art was not at ease in the commercial world. How can one be a true Buddhist in our insane world?

Still, I love Kerouac unconditionally. Reading him opens my consciousness and loosens the constrictions I live and write under.

[sophia · Rating 4 out of 5]

My heart is consumed by an unwavering love for Kerouac.

Within the pages of "Desolation Angels," a poignant and pivotal work that unfolds in the wake of his renowned "On the Road," one gains a deeper understanding of Kerouac's essence and the tapestry of events that shaped the Beat Generation. While "On the Road" immerses us in his journeys, friendships, and the shifting cultural landscape of America, this introspective masterpiece focuses solely on the enigmatic character of Kerouac himself.

Here, we encounter a Kerouac stripped bare, a revelation of his unfiltered truth. In "On the Road," Sal Paradise lacked the melancholy and the fractured soul that Kerouac carried with him across the vast expanse of America, from Tangier to Paris, London, and back to his homeland. It is in these pages that we witness his profound bond with his mother, his adoration for the people who populate his world.

Within these pages, the brotherhood between Ginsberg, Orlovsky, and Kerouac emerges, alongside the tender care he holds for Burroughs and the surprising revelations about his thoughts on Corso, for whom he harbored a deep admiration—a truth that shatters preconceived notions of animosity between them.

We are also privy to the emergence of Kerouac's poetic language, a precursor to the heightened prose found later in "On the Road," when he was fueled by opium or marijuana. We witness the impact of newfound fame on his life and his evolving perspective on America. In these early stages of his descent into depression, he grew weary of the so-called "hipster" generation, a movement that he himself, it is said, birthed.

Within the elegant prose "Desolation Angels" captures the essence of Kerouac's soul, laying bare his joys, sorrows, and the profound struggles that colored his existence. It is a testament to his enduring legacy, a poignant exploration that leaves an indelible mark on the reader's consciousness.

For those who wish to delve into the depths of Kerouac's being and witness the genesis of the Beat Generation, "Desolation Angels" is an essential read. It is a tender embrace of vulnerability, a testament to the power of literature to illuminate the innermost recesses of the human spirit.

[Dava B · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favourite Kerouac book so far. If there is a continuum of idealism, which starts from 'On the Road' and on through 'The Dharma Bums', it is at this book (which follows on from 'The Dharma Bums') that the cracks are really beginning to appear in Jack Kerouac's experience.

Yet to put it so simply feels like a crude summing up of what Jack Kerouac was really about. His ability to capture the highs, the lows, the humor and the horror of life is nothing short of inspiring. And who am I, really, to comment on such a great mind.

In the final chapter of this book, Kerouac writes (in relation to Neal Cassidy, though he is obviously making a wider point):

'He is a believer in life and he wants to go to Heaven but because he loves life so he embraces it so much he thinks he sins and will never see Heaven ... You could have ten thousand cold eyed Materialistic officials claim they love life too but can never embrace it so near sin and also never see Heaven - They will contemn the hot blooded life lover with their cold papers on a desk because they have no blood and therefore have no sin? No! They sin by lifelessness! They are the ogres of Law entering the Holy Realm of Sin!'

This is a typical moment in the book, where Kerouac merges poetry with prose, so that there is no clear distinction between the two. But it is what he is getting at here that felt so significant to me, something clearly beyond any idealistic view of the world and our experiences within.

aye.

[Rob · Rating 1 out of 5]

It was all downhill after the beautiful title save for some sporadic flashes of poignancy... I was leery of picking up this late-career work of Kerouac's, coming at a point when his writing had saturated the market and booze had flooded his talent. My worst fears were confirmed: this is an incoherent mess. He primes us for tedium by shamelessly recycling The Dharma Bums for the first 70 odd pages, then rambles his way through an endless procession of tired, desultory nonsense. It has none of the swagger of his earlier more exuberant prose and the dialogue frequently gets interrupted by half-assed, self-conscious bee bop bullshit... Nowhere near the standard as his pre-1960 work, Desolation Angels is a painful, pretentious bore.

[Andy Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I truly loved On the Road, I was pleasantly surprised when I read Dharma Bums and found it to be an even better book. However, I found Desolation Angels somewhat of a disappointment

The book starts with his time as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak in the North Cascade, I've learned that this section of the book was mainly taken from the journals he wrote at the time--much of it deals with his musings on Buddhism and his life-and I found that part to be somewhat flat.More interesting was his discussion of his actual life on the lookout and the loneliness he clearly felt

The book continues with his reconnection to the beat writers when he returns to San Francisco. While there he tells Ginsburg, Cassidy and Corsi of his plans to take a freight train to Mexico and they laugh; in an example of Kerouac at his best he writes: But the laughter is genuinine, and I console myself with the reminder,embodied in the Tao of my Rememberance "The Sage who provokes laughter is more valuable than a well."

Kerouac does go to Mexico and here we also see Kerouac at his worst, a description of his encounter with a 14 year old prostitute. I'm including this writing, as offensive as it is, to remind us not to over romanticize Kerouac. Kerouac writes "my little girl leads me and starts washing unceremoniously in the squatting position. "Tres pesos" she says sternly, making sure to get her 24 cents before we start. When we do start she's so small you can't find her for at least a minute of probing. Then the rabbits run,like American high school kids running a mile a minute...But she is not particularly interested either. I find myself losing myself in her without one iota of trained responsibility holding me back"

Kerouac describes his next travels to New York and meeting different women, one of whom writes a foreword in the most recent edition. The writing here is again vintage "On the Road" Kerouac continues with his travels to Africa and Europe and this included the following poignant passage when he becomes homesick and wishes only for a box of Wheaties in an American kitchen

Many Americans suddenly sick in foreign lands must get the same childlike yen, like Wolfe suddenly remembering the lonely milkman's bottle clink at dawn in North Carolina as he lies there tormented in an Oxford room, or Hemingway suddenly seeing the autumn leaves of Ann Arbor in a Berlin brothel,Scott Fitz tears coming into his eyes in Spain to think of his father's old shoes in the farmhouse door."

That passage reminds me of the writer that Kerouac could have become if he had continued to evolve. Instead the book ends with his opening a box of the newly published "On the Road" and his reflections of the beat generation and what was hip and was what not, foreshadowing the disillusionment and spell that we all know sadly led to the isolated and bitter end of his life

[East Bay J · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of the many Beat writers, Burroughs and Kerouac are the two who I’ve read the most and who’s writing has had the most impact on me. Of the two, I like Burroughs’ writing more but find I identify more with Kerouac’s.

The first Kerouac book I read was On The Road . I was in college and I was in Spokane in the early morning waiting for a bus to take me home to Cheney. I read the entire book waiting for that bus, which tells you I was way into it and that the busses In Spokane were few and far between.

Having read Burroughs recently, I thought it would be swell to give Kerouac another go. Desolation Angels was at my fingertips so I tackled it. It’s great! His free form, uninterrupted writing turned me off at first, but his language, the overall style of his writing pulled me in. I found myself enjoying the free form stuff more and more each time I encountered it. I found myself, at 34, identifying with thoughts and feelings Kerouac had at 34 (and writing about years later), identifying with who he was. His description of people, the way he conveys their personality so freely and successfully, is marvelous. And his reactions to things around him, good bad or neutral, seem terribly honest and I found myself identifying with that, as well.

The one thing I don’t get is the sexism. There’s a one dimensional and fairly grim view of women in this and other Kerouac books. It’s sad that a “movement” so wrapped up and even fueled by open mindedness and acceptance of new ideas was still so backwards regarding women.

What I like best is Kerouac’s descriptions of his friends, the way he talks about them. You feel the love in his words, the fascination with their characters and personalities. And you can tell he loved the quirks more than anything, that he loved every weirdness, oddity and eccentricity they had. It’s a pleasure to read Kerouac talking about his friends.

In fact, some of my favorites parts of Desolation Angels were when he was talking about hanging out with Burroughs. I could hear Burroughs’ voice saying the things in this book, hear his peculiar tones and inflections.

And this is probably blasphemy but I kept seeing David Cross as Irwin Garden (Allan Ginsberg).

Really a very, very good read.

[Robert Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Desolation Angels is heaven and hell and the world and America and the Void and his Mom. Kerouac/Duluoz is a despicable, noble, earnest, loving, whiny, brilliant, loyal, weak, irreplaceable, insane jazz poet. As a preamble, listen to Bob Dylan’s Desolation Row and realize how he creates surprisingly linear beauty tangentially, and then crank up the random-o-meter one hundred times for Kerouac. One thousand preliminarily random images turn into a masterful Pointillist painting in prose. Bebop improvisation touching on a particular theme from a million different angles placates those of us requiring a story if we are patient. His prose is so poetic at times that it’s exhausting; infinitely compressed like a neutron star. In Desolation Angels he is Dharma Bum, addict, alcoholic, villain, criminal, poet, preacher, seer, mystic and finally Penitente and Bodhisattva having simultaneously reached the gates of Heaven/Nirvana and found himself unforgivable. From Desolation Peak and Seattle to Frisco; to Mexico City and New York; across the Atlantic to Tangiers, Paris and London; from Florida to Berkeley and back again; Desolation Angels is “ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny;” his whole rucksack (lost and found); every work, every poem, every sketch every howl. Ginsberg, Dali, Burroughs are all there, the pantheon of crazy pathetic beat angels.

[Harry Whitewolf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Forget On The Road- this is Kerouac at his best. Combining the spiritual philosophies of the Dharma Bums, the road and parties and seeking of On The Road and the desolation and isolation of the human spirit in the abyss of nature of Big Sur. To me, this is Jack's most accessible and balanced writing, not only for the content, but also for his lyrical prose being at its finest. Genius!

[Sarah Crawford · Rating 3 out of 5]

I, like many others, found Desolation Angels after reading On The Road.
If you're expecting this to be an off-shoot of On The Road, you'd be wrong.
This book is a journey into the mind of Kerouac. Some call him genius, some madman, but I don't think you can truly define him in any one catagory.
This book is no easy task. It takes a lot of thinking and a lot of patience to get through, but it's well worth the effort in the end.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Boy, I really enjoyed this book, even if not a great work of art. For me reading later Kerouac is like a great conversation with a really thoughtful and interesting, if somewhat mixed-up friend. I bought this for .50 at the Friends of Library Booksale, lost it for about two months, and spent many pleasurable hours on my front porch reading the almost 400 pages this spring, summer and fall. I'm feeling kind of melancholy that I'm finished and don't have Jack to visit with anymore. Goodbye Jack. Maybe we'll run into each other again sometime.

[Scott Lesperance · Rating 1 out of 5]

I tried getting into this but wow, this is horrible and I dont understand why so many give it great reviews.
His style is extremely awkward, and the mini-rants(for lack of better term) are pointless. I could not get past page 5.

[Andy C · Rating 1 out of 5]

Me, 5 pages in:
"OMG what style!! This is gonna be fun, can't wait to read a whole book written like this!!"

Me, one month and 400 pages later:
"I have never so desired death."

[tami with an i · Rating 1 out of 5]

to the person who left this terrible book in the laundromat…count your days…and GET A JOB! zero stars

[Alan Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

ON THE ROAD...with Mom

This book may come as a real shock to those whom have a preconcieved notion about what the "Beats" were all about, and it may also be a shock for those more familiar with the jubilant ecstatic life affirmations of On The Road or even The Dharma Bums.

In this book Jack goes on the road (with Mom), has sex with a fourteen year old mexican prostitute, meets up with a Neal (Cody) whom is a far fly from his On the Road days and is tied down with a wife + three kids and a job, meets Salidore Dali + William Carlos WIlliams + Carl Sandburg, gets his book published, is constantly compulsively depressed, has a paradigmatic consciousness flip after a huge dose of opium, meets up with junkie Burroughs in Tangiers (whom is lovelorn over Ginsburg), and kicks Buddhism down a notch for a more hardcore return to Christianity.

As others have noted, this book follows directly after the Dharma Bums and that book should be read first. What follows is Jack's experiences on the mountain which, contrary to his expectations in Dharma Bums, is almost like a nightmare prison sentence.

After he leaves the mountain, we enter into the first half of the book (his return to California), which is a bit ponderous and slow (but never boring). We are treated to a tortureous description of his day of betting at a race track with Neal and Corso.

The book picks up speed bigtime when he goes back on the road and then travels internationally.

His prose is brilliant and poetic and his observations remarkable and I think this book is brilliant; but it is also tremendously sad, deeply frusterated and lost, spiritually drained and destitute, and there is little ecstacy to be had. By the end of the book, and with the return of his compulsive obsession with Christianity, one can really sense the beginning of his psychosis and alcoholism and mommy obsession which would spell his death by age fourty seven.

I'm not sure to whom this book should be recommended- for I'm not sure whom would care about this descent of an icon for joy. It should definetly be read by those whom have read On the Road and the Dharma Bums, but also by those whom think that the counter cultural movements were all done by joy seeking thrill addicts without a care in the world. After reading this book, it would seem that caring is something that was not is short supply amongst these bands of fellow travelers on the way.

Also, those whom felt that the beats were all leftist radicals, anarchists and communists would be very suprised to read in this book that Jack almost seems like a rightist in many regards. He reads a book on the atrocities of communism on the mountain, he constantly is remarking about totalitarian regimes (in particular- Russia), brings up Mao (at a time when some on the left felt he may have been a hero and the crimes against "reactionaries" hadn't yet come into light) and Castro (while others went off to visit Cuba jack said "I'm not concerned with the Cuban Revolution, I'm concerned with the American Revolution.") and even Zapata is discussed in negative diatribes. He was also a fan of Ike. He spends far more time bitching about leftist than he does about rightists. He also has some special scorn put aside for the common hipster, the mass of "beats" whom came after.

Very moving, sad, beautiful, profound, funny, poetic- a treasure from a real man at the start of his turn into a caricature by the mass media. By the end, when he drags his mother to california and he doesn't have hardly a nickel, he truely does seem like a little boy lost, crushed still by the death of his brother Gerard and his father whom he found, crushed by all the love lost, by all the dreams evaporated.

Evey place he goes, he believes that happiness may lie at the next stop- but once he gets there, there is only sadness once again. At first he wants to return to the mountain on which he'd felt so trapped, but by the end of the book, he just wants to return to the womb.

[Angus Jansen · Rating 5 out of 5]

So I just finished up book 2, don't know if ol jk intended for these to be published together or not and I do not intend to find out. Read book 1: desolation angels in 3 or 4 sittings the majority of which was done in route to NICA approx 6 months back so memory fails me a bit but remember loving how much it reminded me of OTR. And breezed thru book 2 in 3 days so safe to say it was a banger imho. Told MD that reading jk made me feel grounded why idk just love the guy and the way he spits. Recently picked up on how much he ties in and puts a ribbon on a point made 3,5,10 pages back which to me rings clever writing but could also just be proud of myself for seeing the lines between the dots. Something that I don't give much mind is the reference after references that mean nothing to me, l've investigated 1 or 2 but don't love reading and mid sesh picking up my phone every other page,,, also think about this thing i read where if you don’t know a word and you continue reading you miss the purpose/meaning of the whole page which i just don’t agree with at this point. Oh anddd he was shouting out Rembrandt a bunch near the end who’s obviously is the nederlands premier painting so gotta tip the cap to timing being just that. But anyway great stuff will have to get my hands on another soon which musings is the question

[Bobparr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Questi folli e ubriachi poeti e scrittori, che hanno vissuto in un brandello di terra cinquant'anni fa e più, che hanno sovvertito le regole del linguaggio e del comportamento, scambiando obnubilamenti e follie per estasi ed illuminazioni, risultano oltremodo affascinanti e veri. Hanno lasciato dietro di sé bottiglie vuote e sprazzi di onesta gioia; non hanno cambiato il mondo ma lo hanno colorato e investito di una santità nuova; hanno creato una crepa dalla quale guardare aldilà, e di questo non potremo mai ringraziarli abbastanza. Ecco di cosa parla questo libro.
Seconda parte a tratti più profonda, nel Messico, a tratti più noiosa, a tratti più tenera - con la madre in viaggio per la California.

Prima lettura 1985, seconda lettura 2019, non è invecchiato come il suo più famoso, rimane il più bel ricordo di Kerouac che ho in libreria.

[Secret · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5/5

[Charlotte · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5

Met the Naked Lunch (of zoals Kerouac eraan refereert in dit boek - the Nude Supper) als maatstaf voor al wat the Beat Generation ooit heeft geproduceerd, weliswaar! There’s nothing to life than just the living of it (Woodward, blijkbaar). En the Void.

“And suddenly realising ‘it’s me that’s changed and done all this and come and gone and complained and hurt and joyed and yelled, not the Void’. (…) Does the Void take any part in life and that? Does it have funerals? Or birth cakes?”

“For normal peasants Sunday is a smile, but as black poets - I guess Sunday is God’s lookingglass.”

“But I see the big sad invisible wings on all the shoulders and I feel bad. They are invisible and of no earthly use and never were and all we are doing is fighting to our deaths -“

“We’ll have perfect medicine and drugs to carry us through anything short of death - and will all agree that death is a reward.”

P. 343 (nr. 64) over moeders.

“So what do we all do in this life which comes on so much like an empty voidness yet warn us that we will die in pain, decay, old age, horror? Hemingway called it a dirty trick.”