Reviews for Years of discovery

The average rating for Years of discovery based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-11-03 00:00:00 Qwertyuiop Qwertyuiop I have been reading this book very slowly on and off for months because, truthfully, I don’t ever want it to end. I have only gotten so far in his “work journal” of his first novel Town and The City. Dismissed by most, it is my favorite novel by Kerouac, and I have many fond memories of reading it at my parent’s breakfast table one long and isolated winter (I have not-so fond memories of the winter when I read it, however). Here we see Jack Kerouac at his most pretentious and naïve, his most innocent and wild-eyed, as he struggles alone in his determination to become a Big Writer. We see his obsessions with his output in word count at the end of the day, his feelings on Catholicism, his sadly ill-fated attempts to swear off drinking, his morality, his guilt for being a twenty something layabout sponging off his mother, his existential fears, his lofty aspirations, his lonely walks, his dates, his deep conversations with slouching bohemians in the city, and his curious desire to settle down in Colorado with a wife and start a family. Such a life, we all know, would not be for him, but it is amazing to read in this book how much of an average Joe Jack Kerouac really was. I really don’t understand how anyone can hate Jack Kerouac. He wasn’t the smartest guy in the room, but then again he never really claimed to be. He was a jock, a real dyed in the wool American, and only by hanging around hip circles did he ever come to foresee the promise of questioning and creativity that could be the center of his life, that could be the center of any average American’s life. He glorified the working man, sure, but where’s the harm in putting some lipstick on this pig-shit of doldrum American life, of experiencing an ever-fleeting superficial high at the sight of railway tracks, coffee, factories, garbage cans, fast cars and beer? Kerouac knew what he was doing, though it seems most don’t know what to do with Kerouac. It’s funny to read at one point that he “believes in sane writing, as opposed to the psychotic sloppiness of Joyce. Joyce is a man who only gave up trying to communicate to human beings. I myself do that when I’m drunk-weary and full of misery, therefore I know it’s not so honest and it’s spiteful to blurt out in associations without a true human effort to evoke and give significant intelligence to one’s sayings. It’s a kind of scornful idiocy” (48). Isn’t that just the sort of thing Kerouac’s been accused of doing so many times? He had a process, and if he evolved as a writer into stream-of-consciousness nonsense, it’s because he thought that was the direction writing needed to go. I’m also fascinated by his love/hate relationship with other hipster/beats, especially Allen Ginsburg. Kerouac doesn’t seem to know whether they’re weighing him down to an anarchic, apathetic, hedonistic hip oblivion or whether they give him the energy and motivation and experience he needs to write anything of value. It also seems like Jack Kerouac was the hipster’s pet project at first, the simple-minded square guy that from his very essence of being square had some tap to “Truth,” though Kerouac seems aware he is being exploited (and in turn is exploiting) and derided for being a norm (just as he derides the others for being effeminate hipsters). They get into all sort of stupid but familiar arguments about whether things are “interesting” or “real” and it’s depressing to know that the dichotomy between over-educated hip people hasn’t changed much over the decades. Take it with a grain of salt, but Kerouac had this to say about Ginsberg, and I think it stands well for all hipsters at all times: “He giggles at everything except his own horror, which precipitates the giggles in the first place. He is locked up inside himself hopelessly to the point where he is actually like a gargoyle-head grinning on the prow of an old ship, and as the old ship proceeds through the waters of the world, the gargoyle-head, undeviating, is grinning and giggling forever as the ship rounds capes… noses into grimy old harbors, stands anchored in flowery lagoons… and finally sinks to the bottom of the ocean, where, amid bubbling muds and weird fishes and sea-light, the gargoyle-head still grins and giggles forever.” (43-44) Jack Kerouac was never a hypocrite (being a hypocrite requires a certain level of self-awareness he was incapable of) but he was at times a coward and a chauvinist and a petty, jealous blowhard. But so what? If he was ever lying to himself he never knew it, and when he thought he was being honest he was being honest in the best way possible, without veneer, without accepted vocabulary, just big fancy abstract, purple-prosed words that cut to the heart of the matter in ways nobody else would ever dare. He was self-taught and had the balls to call himself an intellectual and a self-made Big Writer, and as this workbook shows, he worked hard to get to the blessed yet doomed place he very much wanted to be. There’s an honesty and an approachability and an innocence and an aliveness and even an intelligence to Jack Kerouac that I have yet to encounter anywhere else, and that’s why reading almost anything by him leaves me awake, alive and inspired. And as far as this here journal goes, reading it should leave any writer inspired: not only does Kerouac treat writing as a "holy" profession, he is committed to working and does so with determination and loneliness through the nights. In other words: to be a writer you have to really really really want to write, and really really really write until dawn. The next best thing to doing all that of course is to at least be motivated by someone who does, and with that and a little bit of grace maybe even your or I will come around some day and get our shit together.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-03-11 00:00:00 Charles Block It's taken me several months to read this. Kerouac is one of my all time favourite writers, he writes the words from my soul in a way that very few others do. This was a wonderful Christmas present. I read it slowly because I wanted it to last. It's diary sections so easy to stop between parts. It was wonderful to have this glimpse directly into his mind outside his crafted prose. Here was so much self doubt, and self determination. The diary of a struggling writer, determined to write and tell stories. Full of dreams about succuess and worries of failure. I'd recommend it to everyone who writes and worries about their writing.