Jack Kerouac’s “Big Sur”
A Writer Looks Back at His Life and Anticipates Its End
I have heard it said that Big Sur, one of the final novels by Jack Kerouac is a tired novel. A book written by a writer who’d run out of ideas and so cobbled this one together. I recently re-read the book, and I’m not sure that’s a fair assessment.
Though, I do imagine there were times when he was both writing it and experiencing what he writes about (like most of his work, it is largely autobiographical,) Jack Kerouac was very tired. He also wrote the novel in a nonstop ten-day writing frenzy (also typical of his writing style).
Suffering from alcoholism and with fame having taken its toll, the overall tone of the book is from someone who has had enough and wants to be left alone. But it may also be said that fame can be a frisky mistress at times. You never know what to expect, and she is very hard to refuse.
So off Jack Kerouac goes (or in the book, Jack Duluoz) to San Francisco, the Beat culture epicenter in 1960, to the City Lights Bookstore, owned by his friend Lorenzo Monsanto (in real life, the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti). Though he tries to keep a low profile, he’s immediately recognized and soon his quiet re-entry descends into a two-day drunken binge.
