Reviews for Survival till seventeen

The average rating for Survival till seventeen based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-12-04 00:00:00 Matthew Meintel I had a Beat phase in high school that I'm mostly embarrassed about by this point. Though I'm ever so occasionally able to look back fondly on some of the romanticism of it all. I watched this atrocious interview with Kerouac on Italian television where he's just shit-faced and stupid and arrogant as fuck and it really made me feel embarrassed for my 15 year old self who thought Kerouac was the best. But I also find that the only time it's really excusable to be way into the Beat stuff is as a teenager. It's got "TEENAGER" written all over it. But adults who hang onto it obsessively strike me as people not too willing to really reflect on things or explore the world outside of the Kerouac-Ginsberg-Burroughs-et al mythos. I was 14 when I read On the Road and it just worked for me somehow. I mean, as my disclaimer says in all my "reviews" of Kerouac's books: "It spoke to me in that way that people will describe books like On The Road and Catcher in the Rye as speaking to them and others for as long as those books continue to be spoken about. There's no real mystery as to why these kind of books appeal to so many people crossing/constructing that cliche, proverbial bridge between childhood and adulthood. I can still remember how pleasurable and edifying it was to read these books but I remember it with varying levels of self-embarrassment." Back to mining my past and my past remarks about these things: I would say Kerouac was something I wallowed in more than felt to be liberating. I guess it gave me a warm feeling to "identify" with certain things he had to say. Most of it is really about him drinking a lot and blabbering on about Buddhism and Catholicism (he consider himself both...yeah) and being really sad or euphoric. At least that's how I remember it now. It's basically hanging out inside the mind of a manic-depressive with substance abuse issues, hence, the appeal to me as a teenager. Plus it has all that anti-authoritarianism running through it ("TEENAGER"). Some of the Walden-y stuff I think I still can respect--my favorite was Big Sur which was about him drying out alone in a cabin, and then it takes a dive into delirium tremens and paranoia and more drunken irresponsibility. Also, his ego was insanely puffed up sometimes (the manic part of the manic-depression, I guess). He spoke about himself like he was the greatest writer of all time somewhat often, if my memory serves me well (which it may not as it's been about ten years since I read any of his work). So this was another bio I read back then which I found a bit more fascinating than the one by Barry Miles (King of the Beats, ugh). It focuses on Kerouac's sexuality and its contribution to his overall "suffering artist" brand of an emotional life, his fatal alcoholism, etc. The story (which is probably an exaggerated version of the truth at best but a good yarn nonetheless) that's been reiterated in multiple takes on Kerouac is that his first orgasm was experienced in the bathroom of his childhood home as his mother and sister were out looking for his lost dog. His mother called up to the window to inform him that his dog had been hit by a car and killed. Thus, sexual ecstasy and the sorrow of death were intertwined. It's fairly heavy handed and clumsy psychoanalysis but makes for a good childhood psychology type of centerpiece for a biography about a tortured soul figure such as Jack Kerouac. I read the book so long ago now that all I can really remember about it is that it's essentially a chronological retelling of his life but with more focus on his bisexual experiences, his condemnation of bi and homosexuality, his unenthusiastic womanizing and of course his widely written about and extremely classic Oedipal relationship with his mother. This kind of recognition of the disparity between my tastes of years past and the present really is a prime example for me in realizing how much people really change. We really are never the same person from moment to moment, and the years outstretched in our wake are proof positive that the unity of "the self" is a deeply convincing sleight of hand more than anything else.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-03-18 00:00:00 Svein Kyrre Ludviksen Amburn's book is correct in its contention that Kerouac's sexuality is fascinating and needs more attention. Unfortunately, this book treats the subject far too reductively, explaining Kerouac's closeted sexuality as the single missing key to the author's alcoholism and early death, as well as reading every other detail of the author's life. On top of that, and as if to back off of the very claims he asserts, the book footnotes its claims very sloppily. Allegedly, all sorts of people in Lowell, Massachusetts, Kerouac's hometown, knew he was secretly gay. But when you try to find out who exactly said what, it's impossible, given Amburn's practice of only footnoting once every four or five paragraphs, then listing a number of sources, largely personal interviews, so that little can be directly identified and nothing can be confirmed. Amburn's second biggest source is the novels themselves, which he interprets narrowly, to confirm his thesis. Amburn himself was Kerouac's editor late in his career, and claims this gives him special insight into the author. But a limited acquaintance can also give someone a skewed picture of a person. That's a charitable reading. A less charitable reading is that Amburn was deliberately out to exploit his subject for personal gain, whatever the facts might be. The book carries you through to the end, but this is also partially because it's hard to fall asleep when you're frequently cringing.