Rating: 
Summary: Spontaneous Autonomy Or Muddled Proustian?
Review: Allan Ginsberg wrote in August 1972: "Some of Kerouac's writings of '52, particularly his Visions of Cody, are some of the most brilliant texts written about the psychedelic experience, especially the description of him and Neal Cassidy on Peyote." AND From October 26, 1974, Ginsberg writes of himself, which he learned from Kerouac: What I mean by "polish the mind," in that you actually do get an increasing awareness either through meditative or poetry which is another yoga, of the actual stuff, cita. And then it becomes a matter of being a very faithful secretary. You can't get everything, so you get as much as you can so you have something solid to work with. In other words, you're not doing something arbitrary, romantic, babble, bullsh*t, you're actually dealing with your mind stuff just like a painter's working with an actual landscape. Solid in the sense that it's real, it's objective, it isn't even your subjectivity any more, you're just objectively watching something move. So there's no long any question of egotism or self-expression or personal expression. All those theoretical things are like nonpracticing questions. But if you're actually practicing there's a real thing to work with, which is your thought-forms."
"Chogyam Trungpa's principle of "First thought, best thought." That was kerouac's basic principle for his spontaneous writing, for the same Buddhist reasons of practical inquiry into the operation of the mind. Both Kerouac and Trungpa realized, and teach, a very simple thing, which is that the first way that you flash on a thing is the unselfconscious, naked, real first-mind way, which is totally private and odd, eccentric to you, but is so direct that anybody can understand it."
At first, this book was way too muddled to be of much use for myself, not receiving much out of the book and feeling that I have invested way too much time for the read, but I think that's because I've been reading it as a novel like "On The Road," and this is more poetry or jazz style spontaneous prose. Actually, this book is from flashing mental thoughts that are suddenly inspired within the self. This book is not some preplanned novel and storyline and not at all the robotic, mechanical mindset of the propogandized America and therefore represents a breakthrough in American thinking, thinking for the autonomous self.
I think if this book were given the publisher to publish before "On The Road" they would have agreed here on such being garbled and overly Proustian in attempt of remembrance. However, to the person looking for poetry or verbal prose over a story, and in this we have a jazz type expression of bebop in words and that makes this book a major change from the herd mentality of the masses. Hey, this is the beat rhythmic language, not Melville or Dostoevsky, but Proust and Celine.
Now to be fair, there are some good descriptions and well written feelings through out the book, but not in volume. Now don't get me wrong, I'm a Beat Hipster I would like to think, a Nietzschian, a mystical, philosophical seeker into spiritual, psychedelic and karmic realms, but maybe not the existential, Benzedine type. This book is largely garbled ramblings?? Or is just too poetic for me? I can appreciate the long "bird" Parker-like jazz of the spontaneous sentence styles, the overly descriptive emphasis on observable flashes of insight, but this story has no story line, ok-it's poetry or electic prose. So it's verbal dynamics in avant garde, not a novel then, and I guess I'm failing to fully appreciate it.
When Kerouac gets Celine-ian he works very well, but when he enters his Proustian attempt at daily observations, he becomes cloudy in tangent ramblings of private memories, non-relating to his current observations that are over detailed and nonsensical in the first place. His dope-riddled conversations and past remembrances enter back doorways in winding pathways of the red neon lights.
Now Ginsberg's introduction to the book, that I found both enjoyable and very understandable. Allen Ginsberg in a November 26th 1968 interview, from the book, Spontaneous Mind, page 132, writes on Robert Creeley and Kerouac's style of writing:
"Creeley was talking about how his writing was determined by the typewriter, neurasthenias of his habit; mine is determined by the physical circumstances of writing, i.e., literally that. And I got that actually from Kerouac, who was that simple and straight about it. If he had a short notebook he wrote little ditties and if he had a long . . . a big typewriter page, he wrote big long sentences like Proust."
I think this agrees with Visions of Cody, in consisting of either short "ditties" or "long sentences like Proust," all depending on the writing pad Kerouac was using at the time of writing. To me this makes a whole lot of sense in the arbitrary, elusive and haphazard style of this book.
What appears to me as the Kerouac trademark: a jazz styled prose of spontaneous expression from the "real," non-conditioned, non-image-to-portray self, an existential life of despair in fast paced living with the rush of jazz, drink, sex, travel, under the literary and scholarly ideals of avant garde sophistication, adventure, desires, seeking new discoveries, walking places one never has been before, risk taking and traveling, all so under this empty void of utter lonely existence, devoid of substantial meanings of foundational holds and securities, walking in the desert not knowing when water will appear and if it does, if this water will sustain life or poison it. So there's this emptiness, this sadness of it all in the modern man and woman, both subterranean and beatnik.
Remember-able observances in my mind: Kerouac's staring up at a man in an apartment building watching and writing and suddenly the light goes off! He saw him!; a description of a church that failed all gothic tests into the modern brown brick suburban model of tackiness with the stupidest shrubbery to boot; Cody's (Cassidy's) hobo father walking the train tracks looking for a fix; Cody's pool hustling and challenged football playing from a jump out of the car, left on the side of the road.
Rating: 
Summary: worst, last Kerouac to read.
Review: As much as I love Kerouac, this one is just too muddled to be of much use. That reviewer who said this hooked him on Kerouac for life scares the hell out of me. There is only so much dope-addled rambling a person can take. When Jack and Cody start tossing nonsense at each other, just mumbling stuff, well, that's an interesting take on poetry for a page or two, but not for hundreds of pages. Read everything else by Kerouac. If that's not enough, then give this a shot. You probably won't finish it anyway. Sure, there's a gem here and there, but it's hardly worth the hunt when there's so much other kick-butt Kerouac out there.
Rating: 
Summary: Jack's Best
Review: Buy this book! Then forget it's a novel. Forget looking for plot, action or continuity, just read each section like a prose poem. Or better, a short run of notes in a brilliant sax solo. Jack wrote this in 1951 (age 29), right before "On the Road." It's more like a sketchbook than a finished portrait, but on every page his amazing ear takes American English to entirely new places. If you get bored, read it aloud & listen to the surge, chop and swing that Keroauc gives to the language. In "Visions of Cody," he got his vision of America down in a SOUND: staccato, breathless, brave & precise. One of America's greatest poets, and this is maybe his greatest poem. Read, re-read, read again, enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Jack's Best
Review: Buy this book! Then forget it's a novel. Forget looking for plot, action or continuity, just read each section like a prose poem. Or better, a short run of notes in a brilliant sax solo. Jack wrote this in 1951 (age 29), right before "On the Road." It's more like a sketchbook than a finished portrait, but on every page his amazing ear takes American English to entirely new places. If you get bored, read it aloud & listen to the surge, chop and swing that Keroauc gives to the language. In "Visions of Cody," he got his vision of America down in a SOUND: staccato, breathless, brave & precise. One of America's greatest poets, and this is maybe his greatest poem. Read, re-read, read again, enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing -- Truly Amazing -- Don't Miss It!
Review: I agree with many that say that the first 150 pages are really worth reading. They are beautiful and brilliant with images and gives you an inside seat as to how On the Road came about. Yet after that it is a tough read. The transcripts are long, go on forever and you wonder why they were included. The last half of the book is pretty good. This is defiantly one of those books you will want to read when you have the time, skill to concentrate , and desire for a wild ride. It took the two years to read this book and I am not a slow reader. But I was glad I had read it.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Book Yet can be a Bear To Read
Review: I agree with many that say that the first 150 pages are really worth reading. They are beautiful and brilliant with images and gives you an inside seat as to how On the Road came about. Yet after that it is a tough read. The transcripts are long, go on forever and you wonder why they were included. The last half of the book is pretty good. This is defiantly one of those books you will want to read when you have the time, skill to concentrate , and desire for a wild ride. It took the two years to read this book and I am not a slow reader. But I was glad I had read it.
Rating:
Summary: The Ultimate Jazz novel
Review: I agree with most of the reviews posted here, I just wanted to add that, aside from the difficulty of reading the middle section (patience required)--This book absolutely "BLOWS" such a sweet non-linear Jazz of Prose as I have never seen or ("heard" or "visualized") before. It really sucks you in and shows you what the analyzed life can appear like from different perspectives--while being high or as translated into "bop prosody" later in the book. Very inspiring, makes you wish you were there listening to the jazz records with Neal & Jack, high as a kite, blowing sweet melodious mind-jazz. Perhaps the best book I have ever read. note: Lots of curse words, so not for kids.
Rating:
Summary: What?
Review: I bought this book because of the NY Times review comment quoted on the back of the jacket in essence saying that this book was the true companion to "On the Road". While I can say that I was mildly interested with Kerouac's prose in "On the Road", I can also say that I found this book to be absolutely awful. Why anyone has any interest in the drunk and high reminiscing of the characters in this book is beyond me. Abstract views on sex and drugs are fine, (eg Hunter S. Thompson), but this isn't even mildly interesting or amusing. I had hoped, ultimately, that I would find something of value in Kerouac's style or philosophy, perhaps even something that would enable me to see the world from a different, but somehow valuable point of view... unfortunately, that was not the case.
Rating:
Summary: Visions Of Cody + an editor= On The road
Review: I read On the Road over 30 years ago in college. I was hooked and within two years I read everything JK had written. I bought a first edition of Visions Of Cody some years later and found it a monumental bore. While I'll nod to the readers that get off on the experimental nature of the prose, for someone like me, who thinks On The Road and The Dharma Bums are almost perfect, Cody is not much more than the rough cut...very rough...for On The Road.
Rating:
Summary: Visions of Cody: an abstaction
Review: I remember when I read On the Road for the first time, I was simpley amazed by Keroauc's innovative, non-stop narative of criss-crossing America. After two readings of On the Road, I moved on to Visions of Cody, somewhat expecting a lot similiaralites between the two novels, I was wrong. Visions of Cody is abstract. Visions of Cody is highly experimental. It takes the conventions of novels and throws them out the window. Plot? Gone. Character? Gone. In a lot of ways it reminds me of Naked Lunch, although it had a steady, consistent narrator, which is not the case in Visions of Cody. But that does not mean that I did not enjoy this novel, because I loved it (well, maybe not loved it but I liked it very much.) The most worthwhile quality about the novel is how Keroauc redefines prose. As I said above, there is no consistent narrator, the voices change constantly, requiring a close read and a high degree of patience. This makes the novel deep and allows multiple views about one topic or situation. Although Visions of Cody may not be a page-turner, or have a story that engules you, it posses a value of ingenuity and experimentation that is priceless and worth your time. This is assuming you are a (pretty big) fan of Jack Keroacu.
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