Desolation Angels

A revolutionary novel important to all times and all people, Desolation Angels is a journey into the life experiences of another person. The unorthodoxy of this life that was Jack Kerouac gives us insight into what it is to be human

generation in Desolation Angels. Kerouacs frank accounts and vivid style draw you into the heart of a man both idealistic and cinical, naive and experienced, proud and downtrodden, as well as buddist and Catholic, living the life of a "Dharma Bum" as he travels to Mexico. From the fire lookout high on Desolaion Peak, to the junk steets of Mexico, Kerouac shares with his readers every experience and emotion, carring the reader deep into the lifestyle of the Beats as few authors ever accomplished. Its no wonder Kerouac became the symbol of the Beat generation for millions of kats in the 50's, for even today his writing is hep, and inciteful. He could very easily be an icon for generations to come.

From the moment I opened On the Road, I knew Jack Kerouac wasn't just any author. A new spirit and new feelings, stirred up by mere words...It doesn't happen often enough. In that respect, Desolation Angels is typical Kerouac. The incredibly flowing mad descriptions and details, his friends as real as the stars, beautifully rendered real personalities. From his isolation as a fire lookout, long time to be sober for Kerouac, he jumps back into his old life...Drinking screaming talking crazy friends Ginsberg Cassady et al. A trip to Mexico, living above an old junky, Mexican women, writing. Friends come to Mexico...you can imagine. Tangier and William Burroughs, another junky...Kerouac helps him, typing the manuscript of Naked Lunch (Nude Dinner, he calls it, just like the other pseudonyms he assigns...)... Back to the States, more of the wonderful same, always fresh and exciting...But in the end, I was only surprised. He left his Desolation Angels.

For some readers who found this book after reading some of Kerouac's more conventional literary works, this novel may come off as a bit tedious. Kerouac wasn't that great an experimental novelist, or at least not as graceful with spontaneous prose and extra-sensory perceptive description as his pier William S. Burroughs, as exemplified by the book's more incoherent and often undermanaged meanderings. As a piece of creative autobiography, however, the novel is a symbolic giant of originality, fearlessly defying traditional literary convention and organization. For those seeking out Kerouac for more traditional entertainment, however, the novel proves far more complex than a single reading may warrant.

I have been reading Kerouac for about twenty years (but still haven't exhausted the canon). After reading Desolation Angels I think it might still be a while.

You have got to love Kerouac to get through much of this book (and I do) and it is ultimately worth the effort, but what an effort! Too much of this book is "we did this, then we did that" and Kerouac's lack of contextualizing all this can get to you.

But there are always small epiphanies that make Kerouac worth reading. There are about six in this book, the best being his brief account of his sea voyage to Tangiers on a Yugoslav freighter in a storm. "It scares a seaman to hear the Kitchen scream in fear." And Kerouac's lamentation on the unfortunate popularization of the 'cool' ethos: "But all I could do was sit on the edge of the bed in despair listening to their awful 'likes' and 'like you know' and 'wow crazy'...All this was about to sprout out all over America even down to High School level and be attributed in part to my doing!"

Much of what makes Kerouac one of the American Big Three is that nobody else could get away with writing like this. It ain't pretty and it's often exasperating, but what a Great Soul.

Somewhere in the 409 pages of this book you'll find buried a truly great work of American literature. It is hard to fault Kerouac for his devotion to spontaneous and unedited writing; though these methods imposed limitations on what he could accomplish as a writer, they also contributed to what makes his books so fascinating. If Jack had lived in Hemingway's time, he would have submitted Desolation Angels to the publisher and would have been handed back a 300 page masterpiece.

The most problematic section is the first one, "Desolation in Solitude." I understand that Kerouac wanted to convey the sheer insanity of his isolation as a lookout, but considering that he already devoted about 30 pages to this in Dharma Bums, he essentially retreads the same mystic nonsense for another 70 pages without giving much new insight into his experience. The one interesting bit that comes out of the whole ordeal is the gradual dissatisfaction that Kerouac feels for Buddhism (which, through his interpretation, seems to fall a bit close to nihilism) and his reacceptance of Christianity.

But after this first section, things pick up and Kerouac delivers one painfully sad and and transcendentally beautiful insight after another (one of my favorites: his frustration at receiving a $3 jaywalking ticket on the way to a job, costing him half his day's pay-- but you have to read the way he puts it to understand, of couse). It is worth noting that Desolation Angels really is two different books written almost 5 years apart. The first half he wrote while in Mexico City (during events he describes in the second half, Passing Through), while the second half was written in Florida (I think) while he lived with his mother. Thus, Kerouac's interpretation of life radically shifts when you begin the 2nd half. He also suddenly becomes a lot more candid, talking about his life as a writer, his use of drugs, and the homosexuality of his peers in a lot more detail and honesty than he could manage before. It is also important to understand that "Desolation Angels" (part 1) was written BEFORE On the Road was published, while "Passing Through" (part 2) was written AFTER. His sudden brush with fame can probably account for this shift in perspective.

I don't want to go into too much detail about the multitude of spiritual revelations within the book, as its better to hear it out of the mouth of the mystic. Reading the book, one can't help but notice that Kerouac, even when past his literary and spiritual peak, was not the embittered and impotent wreck that he's usually considered-- not based on his touching insights in "Passing Through." He clearly has a lot of faith in humanity, and of the necessity that people act out of love and respect rather than hate and fear. Many critics quickly dismiss Desolation Angels as a "lesser work," but I think that if you're willing the persist through the dense opening section, the rewards are nearly as profound as those of his more famous novels.

The classic novel from the definitive voice of the Beat Generation, Desolation Angels is the story of Kerouac's life just before the publication of On the Road--as told through his fictional self--Jack Duluoz. As he hitches, walks, and talks his way across the world, Duluoz perceives the angel that is in everything. It is life as he sees it.