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Summary: Baby Kerouac...
Review: When, as a young man, Jack Kerouac penned this saga of the Martin family (thinly veiled reprentations of Kerouac's own family and friends), he could have scarcely imagined the cult that would arise surrounding his name, image and spirit. But fifty years later, here we are reading his initial entry to his legend. Obviously patterned after the hero of his early years, Thomas Wolfe, the book is very much character driven. In fact, that element of The Town and the City is probably the most obvious thread connecting this work to his later, revolutionary works i.e. "Tristessa", "Dr. Sax" and, of course, "On The Road". It is clear from the beginning that Kerouac was more interested in attitudes, behaviors, loves and losses (pardon the cliche) than telling a particular type of "story". That willingness to focus on every day people in their every day lives is what makes Kerouac so unique (aside from his later radical approaches to "style") and so American. Read the previous sentence and, if one is unfamilar with Kerouac, a person might think, "Gee, doesn't that sound dull." But the ability to take the seemingly mundane and infuse it with extraordinary attention to detail, enthusiam and a willingness to see the wonder in just being alive is, in my opinion, Kerouac's most pronounced claim to genius (read excerpts from his journals in the recently released "Windblown World" describing his cross-continent bus rides, for example). As far as The Town and the City goes, it stands on it's own (and proves beyond doubt that Kerouac's later path down the Spontaneous Prose road was hugely courageous as he could have easily settled into a respected literary career writing in a more conventional manner), but if one has a specific interest in Kerouac, as opposed to just wanting to read a good book, this work is fascinating as a precursor to the wonder that was to come. It's interesting to note that many of Kerouac's "On The Road" exploits were occurring while this book was being written. It's all there in The Town and the City, just below the surface, and about to change the world.
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Summary: The Kerouac We Never Knew
Review: Yes, this is Kerouac's first published novel. Yes, it is fundamentally autobiographical. Yes, it is stylistically derivative of Thomas Wolfe's epic novels. But there is more here for Kerouac devotees than these standard descriptions.First, when centered between the works written immediately before and after The Town and the City (specifically, the selections of short pieces recently published in Atop an Underwood and Kerouac's second published novel, On the Road)a clear picture of a writer's development emerges. The Town and the City has a sustained narrative that builds to a satisfying conclusion. This would change over time as Kerouac became more focused on episodic writing in his novels--for instance, lengthy descriptions of jazz club settings in The Subteraneans, or maybe the best example, the tape transcriptions of conversations with Neal Cassady in Visions of Cody--and found little need for pure resolution. The beginning of this shift is noticeable in On the Road, when the detailed re-creation of a car ride takes precedent over plot. This type of writing is not to be found in The Town and the City. Second, Kerouac's development as a human being presents itself as his themes are precipitated by the death of his father and the implicit responsibility for his family Kerouac (embodied in the character of Peter) would wrestle with for the rest of his life. Third, Kerouac, almost shockingly, finds his literary voice in the final two-hundred pages of the novel. While most of the book moves along with the languid prose of a young writer imitating his idols, the "City" sections show Kerouac opening up, taking more risks, and discovering the type of writing that would become his trademark: Rythmic, unique, and energized accounts of characters almost willing their lives to unfold before them, and dead-on, perfectly real dialogue that makes you believe Kerouac had a tape recorder with him everywhere he went. Finally, for those who've studied Kerouac's life and those that have visited his hometown of Lowell, you will see Kerouac struggling to fictionalize people, places, and events. This is a struggle he pretty much abandoned with On The Road, going so far as to use "Real Names" in the original draft. It is especially apparent in The Town and the City when Waldo committs suicide by jumping out of a window at Kenneth Wood's apartment. This episode was undoubtedly based on Lucien Carr's murder of David Kammerer. But Kerouac changes the murder to a suicide, and then attempts to fill Kenneth Wood with the same guilt Lucien Carr felt over the incident by implying that Kenneth might have pushed Waldo out the window. The result? It's not believable. Something Kerouac himself must have felt. Kerouac claimed that the original inspiration for his spontaneous prose style was a forty-page letter he received from Neal Cassady before writing On the Road. The Town and the City shows Kerouac was already discovering a voice of his own and exploring the places and people that would dominate his fiction for the remainder of his career. It was that letter, though, that hurled him into a different realm, showing him the possibilities of a wild, new bop prosody, later leading to a recognition of Kerouac as a pioneering, risk-taking, totally unique writer. Had Cassady never sent that letter, we might well be talking of Kerouac today as a stylistic extension of Thomas Wolfe, or we may not be talking of him at all. Still, The Town and the City proves, with or without Neal's letter, Kerouac had greatness in him all along.
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