Description:
In a thinly veiled autobiographical account of his time in Big Sur at the cabin of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and with friends in San Francisco, Kerouac chronicles a ruinous alcoholic bender with searing psychological candor.
Brief description: Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) was an American novelist, poet, and, with Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs, a central figure of the Beat Generation. He was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, of French-Canadian parents and briefly attended Columbia University before falling in with a group of friends that would eventually define a literary movement. Big Sur is considered by many critics to be his finest literary achievement.
Review Quotes:
"Certainly Kerouac's grittiest novel to date and the one which will be read with most respect by those skeptical of all the Beat business in the first place."--The New York Times
"Kerouac's masterpiece, and one of the great, great works
of the English language."--Richard Meltzer
"A humane, precise account of the extraordinary ravages of alcohol delirium tremens on Kerouac, a superior novelist who had strength to complete his poetic narrative, a task few scribes so afflicted have accomplished. . . . Here at the peak of his suffering humorous genius he wrote through his misery to end with 'Sea, ' a brilliant poem."--Allen Ginsberg