The Portable Jack Kerouac (The Viking Portable Library)

Rating:
Summary: almost confusing
Review: For a true kerouac reader, i think it's worth it to work through this book. It's long, but a good part of it is the editor talking, a woman who has a true love of Kerouac. It's a little bit of everything, from his letters, to his ideas on buddhism(my personal fave) It's a good, but long, read

Rating:
Summary: WILD, WEIRD, WONDERFUL--- AND WOOLLY AND WOOZY,
Review: GRANTED that the selections are a mishmash of Kerouac styles, and at times misuse words with a kind of tender haughtiness and screw you if you don't like it but this is what I bruit. Bruit? But at his best Kerouac time and again tells us of that railroad earth and trains rolling under October skies and rushes up our noses with piney phrases that would raise gooseflesh on Thomas Wolfe. What's more, Ann Charters serves Jack nobly by inventively selecting along a timeline that captures the hero's age throughout, a superb bit of editing much like Malcolm Cowley's for The Portable Faulkner in which he patched together a groundbreaking picture of Yoknapatawpha County from Faulkner's many works. A Must-Have Kerouac volume that should break ground for new readers and give old admirers a bath in that old spontaneous prose he dreamed up nightly with candlelight on the kitchen table, booze, and weed. Some of it's mush, some visionary, and much of it just what writing should be: straight from the heart.

Rating:
Summary: Well edited, but it has continuity issues
Review: This collection is wonderfully edited. There are no major breaks in the plot and Ann Charters commentary provides a good context to understand the book (e.g. she provides a table that matches character names to actual people). However, since the books were written out of order, the immensely different writing styles of Kerouac's different novels do not mesh well at times. It is fine for somebody who has had previous exposure to Kerouac's writing and now wants a survey of all his different styles, but I would generally recommend buying the individual books.

Rating:
Summary: Well edited, but it has continuity issues
Review: This collection is wonderfully edited. There are no major breaks in the plot and Ann Charters commentary provides a good context to understand the book (e.g. she provides a table that matches character names to actual people). However, since the books were written out of order, the immensely different writing styles of Kerouac's different novels do not mesh well at times. It is fine for somebody who has had previous exposure to Kerouac's writing and now wants a survey of all his different styles, but I would generally recommend buying the individual books.