Reviews for Pacific Tremors

The average rating for Pacific Tremors based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-07-28 00:00:00 Juan Pereida An old man writes of his younger days... Surprisingly to most people, this is my favorite Kerouac volume. I've probably read it at least four or five times now; I'm now deliberately spacing my readings out to where I can forget parts and revisit the ways it's made me felt. The big difference here with Vanity is that Kerouac's explosive writing from the late '40s onward was now at something of an impasse: by the mid-'60s, he had told most of his life story and was running out material. The arch of the entire "mythologization" stems from "On the Road" into "Dharma Bums" and begins to seriously crest and break with "Big Sur" (the most depressing): with "Vanity" he was able to go back to his days in high school (with little of the "Maggie Cassidy" stuff) and to his days just after the war when he started doing benzendrine and getting really "beat". The result, while nostalgic, has a definite joi de vivre, an element the later books tend to cloud over with alcoholic melancholy and "Buddhist/Catholic" lamentations. Instead, the adventures of young Kerouac breath new life into the beat myth once again for anyone who felt something with "On the Road": Horace Mann school, football at Columbia, his involvement with Lucien Carr's killing of David Kammerer, his family falling apart, his days and eventual discharge in the military on psychiatric grounds, and hanging around and eating steaks and ice cream and feeling the possibility of everything.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-12-22 00:00:00 Lewis Halket A- My first Kerouac My cousin was hitchhiking across the country. "He read Jack Kerouac's On the Road and now he is not wearing a coat but a blanket and thumbing," my aunt told my parents worriedly. "Can I go to the library?" I asked. "Why?" my mom responded. "I want to get a book by Jack Keriowac." "No, I am not taking you for that!" I rode my bike, found out how to spell Kerouac, and On the Road was not in--that's one of the most stolen books from libraries and bookstores. Instead, V of D was in. I got it. Shortly after, I fell in love with another Beat fan. Kerouac glued us together. How could he not?