by Jack Kerouac
ISBN: 978-2-07-296188-5
First published 1966
Translated from the English by Jean Autret
224 pages (112 English / 112 French)
Publisher: folio-lesite.fr
Cover photo by Giovanni Coruzzi / Leemage
4 / 5 Stars
An interesting book, about Jack Kerouac trying to find his descendants in Brittany, France. This copy is part of the Folio Bilingue collection, where the English version is on the left-hand side, and the French version is on the right-hand side.
I say ‘interesting’, its quite clear now that Kerouac had an addiction to alcohol. From a fifties perspective he liked a good time, hard-drinking ‘man about town’. From the 21st Century perspective, he had a problem with alcohol.
Narrative, plot driven, writing is sacrificed here for the casual, cascading, endless stream of consciousness that drunkenness allows for.
He can still function as a drunk, and every interact. The remonstrations of Ozzy Osbourne on the MTV in the early 2000’s are the nearest cultural reference I can think of.
‘Satori’ is defined by Merriam-Webster as ‘sudden enlightenment and a state of consciousness attained by intuitive illumination ‘ and Kerouac receives this at the end of his journey, from a Cab driver taking him to the airport in Paris.
The spiritual and mundane align in the last chapter of the book.
Jack never finds his descendants (it was his publisher’s idea, after all) and the book could still have been better if Jack Kerouac had been ‘dry’.
The Eclectic Book Review 