Old Angel Midnight

Rating:
Summary: Brilliance unencumbered by usefulness
Review: Man, this is a hard slog. This is truly a work of spontaneous prose and you quickly realize this as you try to follow any path of sensible thought until you get to the point where you realize `It's not there'. This is not the written sounds of anything that flowed through Kerouac's midnight window, as he has you believe in a letter to a friend. I have never heard anything like that anywhere through any window of my life. This is purely Kerouac's mind at play with words as they pop into his thoughts. There are some beautiful subtle fragments to be found in this work, mixed in with, phew, with umm, all sorts of stuff. It's a potpourri of poetry written upon the meditation of his own mind & quite often very funny. I believe he succeeded in what he set out to do, but that outcome by its nature is not something appealing to most people. Only a hard core Kerouac fan could truly love this book. I read it in one hit. Perhaps the secret is to pick it up & read stanzas at a time, over time. It's very interesting, means nothing, demands concentration & leaves you scratching your head. I liked it but could love it with time. I'd give it five stars for its brilliance & inventiveness but its inaccessibility can only grant it four.

Rating:
Summary: read it outloud
Review: This book is about the time the author just sits in his lonely shack and listens to the sounds around.I guess if you just sit and listen intendly right now to all the sounds coming into your universe you will get the message jack was trying to put across. The best way to read this book is to read a section at a time out loud to someone. The result is quite magical. The words somehow all become clear and the visions and situations become real. This is not an easy book to comprehend in the normal manner of a read but hey delve in deep and it becomes a cosmic comet in the universe of your mind.