Trainsong

Rating:
Summary: Bittersweet Reality
Review: In the late seventies I worked for my next door neighbor (a friend I had known since birth), at his ceramic studio in the Hollywood Hills. We made ceramic coffee mugs in his garage (later moving into a studio in Burbank). Over the years he employed many colorful characters but no one compared to Jan Kerouac. She kept us amused and somewhat scepticle of her stories that she told about her life on the road and with John Lash. She was living in a room in a home above the Hollywood Bowl and later moved in with my friend. Although this must mean nothing to you as a reader, I can assure you after getting to know Jan that she wrote the truth as she lived it. I will remember her forever and possibly longer and think of her often and miss her daffy ways and silly high-jinks. She mentions her time at the ceramic studio but does not mention my friend (they lived together for about 1 year). As far as the title is concerned, while working at the studio I would bring in cassettes to listen to such as Bowie/Eno and Can and other electronic music .One song in particular was done by a friend of mine at UCSD who was a music major.The song was an ambient sort of tune with train like whistles that he called trainsong.Jan would often ask to here that song and I guess it left its mark. Those were the days....Anyway as far as this book is concerned Im no literary critic but I loved every page and I can say the same for Baby Driver.They sparkle with a bittersweat reality that few authors can bring to life. She influenced me in many ways and opened up a love of the ordinary and often mundane and certainly the absurd. I always looked up to Jan and will forever cherish her books as tatterd as they have become.

Rating:
Summary: Walking in the beat shadow of a famous father.
Review: This book is stunning. A far better read than "Baby Driver". Brutally and poetically honest. The reader finally gets a soulful look into the life of the daughter of Beat luminary Jack Kerouac--a father whom she hardly knew. By fate, she finds herself eternally walking in his shadow. By doing so she then becomes an entity unto herself. After many years of searching for this book, I was glad to see it was being reprinted again with the addition of previously unpublished interviews. In the beginning of the book there are also poems written by Jan in which it is not difficult to see that she had inherited her father's talent for extemporaneous wordplay. A must read for anyone interested in the Kerouac legacy.