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Summary: Sad Book
Review: This book is very sad, yet beautiful. It tells the autobiographical story of Jack Kerouac, who is now forty years old, famous for writing On the Road, and has a problem with alcohol.
Jack in this book, feels he is on the brink of madness. He has a hard time accepting the negative forces in life, such as death, and other people's insanity. He is much too sensitive for the world the way it is. He is a man who loves animals, feels a strong tie to his family, and saves insects. He also loves people very much.
This novel almost seems like a horror novel in the parts where Jack describes his mental anguish. He never wanted to be famous, to be the 'king of the beats' and all he wants is some peace of mind, yet he has people following him around all the time. Even the atmosphere at Big Sur becomes oppressive.
The writing is beautiful and poetic, and hauntingly honest. The book ends with a poem echoing the sounds of the sea at Big Sur.
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Summary: A new perspective?
Review: "Cliches are cliches because they are truisms and truisms and truisms because they are true.....". Paraphrasing maybe but the essence of Kerouacs self-fulfilling prophecy is elementary and perhaps helps us to pause and think of the basics. Millions have read it and millions will try and tell you that 'they' know what it means, but these are hero-worshipers and vain in the extreme. Take time to write that letter to the friend you haven't heard from in years, visit the old haunts and sit down and read that book again. This time it seemed to whisper in MY ear a lesson in how not to live. He sure could write though!
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Summary: Whew!
Review: A quick, breathless read from the reluctant "King of the Beats." Plot: Jack goes to cabin in Big Sur, spends 3 weeks alone, has brush with insanity, gets bored, goes into town and spends a hundred pages romping with Cody (Neal Cassady) and some of the usual gang, then returns to cabin with Cody's mistress and another couple and goes completely berserk from alcohol delirium tremens. His descriptions of his hallucinations and dreams are unparalleled. The guy just lays everything out on the page. You find yourself wanting to just reach into the book and give poor Jack a big hug, tell him everything's going to be OK, we all love you and want the best for you. The man was completely egoless. It's ironic how the fame he acquired as a "beatnik" prevented him from living a true beat life, which essentially means living as authentically as possible. People confuse it with the clothing, mannerisms, hep talk, which when you read Jack you realize was just a lot of condescending media hype. This book, as with Jack's life, was a constant dance between total bliss and complete despair, and you'll get plenty of book in this superbly written and very readable testament to the human condition.
Rating: 
Summary: Tilting the bottle at Big Sur
Review: A very good and heartfelt book. One of Kerouac's best. Brave and awful in it's honesty... The cabin at Big Sur, Mien Mo Mountain, the beatniks of San Francisco, the fog, the surf, the canyons, the author sitting on the rocks alongside the Pacific Ocean and writing down all that the ocean tells him, the paranoid ravages of alcohol delirium tremens, the wild imaginings of all those evil forces out to get him, the agonizing, the haunting, the warlocks and the UFOs...Poor Jack suffered through it all--but by his on volition! Most of the time he was only "marginally there" but he still composed himself long enough for the writing of this novel. At the end of it all you wonder how he ever did it.--Alex Sydorenko, Chicago, 2001.
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Summary: his best
Review: Although Kerouac is most famous for authoring the book that launched a generation of beatniks, I consider "Big Sur" to be his greatest accomplishment. Stylistically, it exceeds his other works - which makes sense since it is one of the last books he wrote during a prolific, yet short, career. It was also the last time Kerouac ever turned the microscope on himself (ala Hemingway). Perhaps you will see in this book how Kerouac's struggles with his constant demon companions - alcohol, religion, and a self-effacing manner that never quite fit with the exterior self he created - finally come to a climax of his collected works. I've read about half of Kerouac's books and this is by far my favorite. I feel a sense of relief for him in that I feel he was able, in a small way, to find the peace he had so longed for by the end of this book. All the while, a saddness remains that this peace has come through his own self-destruction.
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Summary: Painfully Real
Review: As one who has recently come to terms with my own alcoholism, I must say that Kerouac's description of his battle is hauntingly real. His words hit so close to home that, overcome with guilt and sorrow, I found myself unable to continue reading on more than one occasion. However, his willingness to share his feelings has enabled me to open my eyes and notice our shared experiences. Quite frankly, this novel made me think more about myself and the direction of my life more than any other work I have ever read. I only wish that it could have done the same for himself.
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Summary: The Dark Side Of On The Road
Review: Big Sur is Jack Kerouac's memoir of his drift into an alcoholic's heart of darkness. Things start out happily enough, with Jack Dulouz (Kerouac) spending a couple of weeks in his friend Lorenzo Monsanto's (Lawrence Ferlingetti's) cabin in Big Sur, drying out and writing poetry. The downward spiral begins when Jack heads into San Francisco and begins a weeks-long bout of heavy drinking. A sad tale, but a valuable one - and, as always with Kerouac, a beautifully written one as well. Marred only slightly by an overly optimistic (though somehow appropriate) ending. (A note on the reading: Tom Parker does a fine job here, though his narration may run by a bit quickly for some. His rendition of Cody Pomeray (Neal Cassady's) twangy drawl is particularly fine. All in all, nicely done.)
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Summary: Kerouac's most personal work......
Review: Big Sur is one of Kerouac's most personal and intimate novels. It deals with his alcoholism and trying to break free from the throes of an alcoholic tendency while staying at Lawrence Ferlinghetti's cabin in the Big Sur mountains. As usual, Kerouac's spontaneous prose is witty, deep, and profound - workingman's literature. Big Sur is personally my favorite novel from the King of the Beats. It's a must-read for any Keroauc fan, as well as anyone who wants to spend some time in the depths of a deeply personal novel. Dont just take my word - buy this.
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Summary: An amazing book
Review: Big Sur is one of the most harrowing books ever written about alcoholism, mental illness, and fame. The demons that Jack Kerouac describes in this book will be nothing new to people who have read the previous novels in his autobiographical Dulouz Saga. Throughout all of his work, Kerouac was painfully honest about his problems with alcohol, his tendency towards manic depression and paranoia, and his inability to find joy or hope in anything for too long of a time. However, in Big Sur, one thing has changed. Kerouac's surrogate Jack Dulouz is now a famous writer -- an icon to young, wanna-be beatniks everywhere. Whereas previously Dulouz's breakdowns were, at least, only seen by his friends, he now finds his problems observed, it seems, by the entire world. Reeling from the sudden success of his novel "Road" (which, of course, is Kerouac's On the Road), Dulouz accepts an invitation to spend a few months at a cabin in Big Sur where he can get away from his new admirers (who, in a few bitingly humorous passages, are described as tracking him down at his mother's house, expecting to find a young hellion and becoming angered when they find the actual middle-aged, rather conservative Dulouz). Alone, Dulouz hopes to commune with nature but instead, he finds the crashing of the nearby surf to be oppressive and even imagines it as a voice condemning him for his many sins. As a result, Dulouz descends further and further into alcoholism and insanity before finally hitchhiking to a nearby town where he ends up romantically entangled with a truly horrific woman and coming face-to-face with his future fate if he doesn't change his ways. (Sadly, the fate that Dulouz tries to escape in this book would be the fate that would eventually claim Kerouac in reality.) Its a harrowing vision, one that is as readable as it is scary. Especially poignant is the knowledge that Kerouac pretty much wrote the book as the events were happening. When we see Dulouz go insane, its impossible to forget that Kerouac wrote this while going crazy himself. There's been a tendency to undervalue the literary worth of Jack Kerouac. While most critics will now grudgingly admit the importance of On the Road, his other works are often dismissed. Beyond a loyal following, many seem to agree with Truman Capote's unfair assessment of Kerouac's work -- "That's not writing. Its typing." Well, it is true that Kerouac's writing was basically a recording of the events of his life and, much like life, Kerouac's books often had a certain randomness to them. While it is incorrect to see that they lacked structure, it was a very subtle structure that demanded the reader search his words for the hidden meaning on their own as opposed to simply having Kerouac's themes spoon fed to them. What is often missed that if Kerouac was simply recording his life, he still did it with a talent and an honesty that elavated events that might have been dismissed as mundane or simply pathetic and instead, shaped them into a haunting portrait of what it was like to be lost in a country that seemed to regard that as a crime. Big Sur seems to serve as his answer to all of those who were too quick to automatically idealize the vision he put forth in On the Road. Its a book that everyone who claims to be imitating Kerouac's popular image should read. There was a lot more to Jack Kerouac's talent than just the media hype surrounding the so-called Beat Generation and Kerouac deserves better than to be remembered for only one (admitedly wonderful) book. Big Sur is one of the greatest American novels of the 20th Century and remains Jack Kerouac's most vibrant literary legacy. Unfortunately, he destroyed himself to create it.
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Summary: Kerouac's novel of self-vivisection.
Review: Big Sur is the story of Kerouac's mental and physical breakdown while on "retreat" at Lawrence Ferlinghetti's cabin at Big Sur. Having obtained instant fame after the publication of On the Road, Kerouac was not prepared for the adulation and pressures that accompany success. Pushed, pulled and used by various "hangers-on" on his return to San Francisco, he retreated to Big Sur to try to find solitude and to escape the hectic world of the city. While there, he is able to find the peace he was seeking, but in the end is lured back to the city where he begins a period of heavy drinking. Several characters from On the Road appear, like Neal Cassady and his wife, Carolyn, and give this novel a sense of continuity with the earlier books. The writing is similar to Kerouac's other efforts, but the prose in Big Sur is tinged with a certain urgency and sense of calamity. The climatic scene in the novel is Kerouac's vivid description of his delirium tremens after several weeks of very heavy drinking. I think this represents some of his best writing as he deals with his own anxieties and a variety of frightening hallucinations. Not surprising, this novel received the best reviews of any of Kerouac's novels. But just as he was beginning to receive some mainstream acceptance, his experiences in San Francisco and Big Sur (as well as his new found fame) turned him away from the writing experience. Kerouac remarks at the end of the novel: "Books, shmooks, this sickness has got me wishing if I can ever get out of this I'll gladly become a millworker and shut my big mouth." Although a few minor books were to follow Big Sur, they never lived up to his earlier works. Kerouac's poem, "Sea: Sounds of the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur," is appended to the end of the novel.
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