Good Blonde & Others
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Beat Generation great Jack Kerouac traverses the vast landscape of American counterculture in this raucous and insightful collection
In these collected articles, essays, and wild autobiographical tales, Jack Kerouac, author of On the Road, leads readers down the highways and through the myriad subcultures of mid-twentieth-century America, guiding them along with his ingenious observations and brilliant command of language. He cruises to San Francisco high on Benzedrine with a barefoot blond model in a white bathing suit; traipses from New York to Florida with photographer Robert Frank and a $300 German camera; takes a bus ride along the edge of a precipice in Montana; and revels in the swampy blues of an old Southern bum at a Des Moines diner.
On a journey of the mind, Kerouac courses through the philosophy, origins, and dreams of the Beats, those “crazy illuminated hipsters” of post-war America; describes his theory of experimental prose with the “Essentials of Spontaneous Writing”; and gives a tour of the San Francisco Renaissance, pointing out the new American poets who are “childlike graybeard Homers singing on the street.” This sweeping portrait of the art, sounds, and people of a nation in transition could only be told with Kerouac’s inimitable wisdom and charm.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kerouac was a literary pilgrim in the ``careful . . . self-conscious'' 1950s, notes Creeley; this miscellany of some 30 magazine contributions (from Playboy , Escapade and other publications) is a good complement to his better-known work such as On the Road. Five pieces describe road trips; the satisfying title tale recalls a bygone time in which a beautiful blonde model might pick up a hitchhiker packing Benzedrine. Kerouac offers observations on the Beat Generation, tying it to beatitude and lamenting its appropriation by the ``Hollywood borscht circuit.'' His advice on writing is both incisively amusing (``Try never get drunk outside yr own house'') and perhaps unhelpful to the less talented (``sketching language is . . . blowing'' like a jazz musician). Most interesting is his elegant and persuasive defense of his novel The Subterraneans in 1963 after it was banned in Italy. His 1969 reflection on the radicals of the era is startling: though critical of the ``Establishment,'' he castigates young leftists and praises the American system that allowed him to travel wherever he wanted. But some other writings, like impressionistic sketches of Manhattan and articles on baseball, are strictly for fans.
