Jack Kerouac

Aram Saroyan

Rob Admiraal

Classic fiction. Unmistakably autobiographical, this book is a moving account of a man coming to terms with his own myth, his own talent and his uncontrollable, unrelenting, self-destructive life. Now approaching middle-age, Jack Duluoz retreats to California to escape the pressures of his fame.

Big Sur

Aske Dørge

The face of yourself you see in the mirror with its expression of unbearable anguish so haggard and awful with sorrow you cant even cry for a thing so ugly, so lost, no connection whatever with early perfection and therefore nothing to connect with tears or anything

For after all the sea must be like God, God isn't asking us to mope and suffer and sit by the sea in the cold at midnight for the sake of writing down useless sounds, he gave us the tools of self reliance after all to make it straight thru bad life mortality towards Paradise maybe I hope – But some miserables like me dont even know it, when it comes to us we're amazed – Ah, life is a gate, a way, a path to Paradise anyway, why not live for fun and joy and love or some sort of girl by a fireside, why not go to your desire and LAUGH... but I ran away from the seashore and never came back again without that secret knowledge: that it didnt want me there, that I was a fool to sit there in the first place, the sea has its waves, the man has his fireside, period. That being the first indication of my later flip.

my otter, my dear otter, my dear otter I'd written poems about - Why did he die? I ask myself in despair -Why do they do that? -What's the sense of all this?'- All the fellows are shading their eyes to get a better look at the big peaceful tortured hunk of seacow out there as tho it's something of passing interest while to me it's a blow acros the eyes and down into my heart

on the hangovers of alcoholics. Continues for 1.5 pages

can hear myself again whining Why does God torture me?' - But anybody who's never had delirium tremens even in their early stages may not understand that it's not so much a physical pain but a men- tal anguish indescribable to those ignorant people who dont drink and accuse drinkers of irresponsibility-The mental anguish is so intense that you feel you have betrayed your very birth, the efforts nay the birth pangs of your mother when she bore you and delivered you to the world, you've betrayed every effort your father ever made to feed you and raise you and make you strong and my God even educate you for life', you feel a guilt so deep you identify yourself

I go walking towards Mien Mo mountain in the moon illuminated August night, see gorgeous misty mountains rising the horizon and like saying to me “You dont have to torture your consciousness with endless thinking” so I sit in the sand and look inward and see those old roses of the unborn again

I keep waving at my ears - I'm afraid to close my eyes for all the turmoiled universes I see tilting and expanding suddenly exploding suddenly clawing in to my center, faces, yelling mouths, long haired yellers, sudden evil confi- dences, sudden rat-tat-tats of cerebral committees arguing about Jack'

Suddenly I hear a hum, a definite flying saucer is hovering right over those trees where the hum must be, there are orders in there, "They're coming to get me O my Godl-I jump up and glare at the tree, I'm going to defend myself- The bat flaps in front of my face- "The bat is their representative in the canyon, his radar message they got, why dont they leave? doesnt Dave hear that awful hum?- Billie is dead asleep but little Elliott suddenly thumps his foot, once- I realize he's not even asleep and knows everything that's going on - I lie down again and peek at him across the porch floor: I suddenly realizing he's staring at the moon and there he goes again, thumping his foot: he's sending messages - He's a warlock dis- guised asa little boy, he's also destroying Billie! - I get up to look at him feeling guilty too realizing this is all nonsense probably

Coming back to the sleepers and staring at them wild eyed like my brother'd once stared at me in the dark over my crib, staring at them not only enviously but lonely inhuman isolation from their simple sleeping minds

Big Sur quotes

Join the club