Doctor Sax: Faust Part Three

Rating:
Summary: Journey through Time
Review: Jacks Dr Sax represents his thoughts,feelings and fantasies throughout his early years in Lowell. Masterfully told through pre-birth, present tense and future tense, Dr Sax weaves a tangled web of delight to those who take the plunge into the River called Kerouac. The chapter "The Night The Man With The Watermelon Died" is worth the price of admission alone. Thank God for Kerouac a good companion throughout lifes troubled waters.

Rating:
Summary: Lowell superheroes
Review: These are stories from Kerouac's childhood. The writing resembles that of the later Henry Roth. Among other things, each man wrote of boys swimming in the river and the magic highlighted style gives the reader the sense of swimming, too, a not alltogether positive experience in the built-up industrial areas described. Kerouac's writing is vigorous and interesting. Dr. Sax is a mythic, half real, half unreal character, something, someone, looming up, derelict. Dicky Hampshire wrote on a fence that Jack is a big punk, and so on and so forth. The community described is comprised of many French-Canadians and French terms and phrases are used. As to the swimming in the Merrimac River, it was polluted in those days prior to World War II in the area near Lowell. Kerouac writes of a silent Boott Mills, horse racing, marble playing, and ghosts. There is bowling at the social club. Movies and funnies get the attention of the children, boys, friends of Ti-Jean. Family names mentioned include Duluoz. Dr. Sax in a shroud stands on the shore. The castle is a heap of stones. The Shadow Magazine is of significance in the book. Flooding in the area sometime in the thirties is described. The boys go to Paul's porch in a rowboat.

Rating:
Summary: The Art of Jazz Writing
Review: This book is Keroauc sitting in on a mean late night
jazz jam session, writing and reciting verse while all
those around him are blowing madly. It is very
different from the mainstream Keroauc where he
talks about writing in this style. This book is the
style as it spins a story in and out of the rhealm of
the waking consciousness and reminds me of the way I
feel like after listening to some classic Miles.
Read this book and let in linger in your mind for a
while, it has that kind of depth to it.