Reader Reviews for Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954:
|
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Great Quality
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Writing, Not Typing
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing publication after grandiose promises
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Feel like I've known this good friend for years...
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Philosophical, lighthearted, fascinating
Comment: 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.
|
|
