Book of Blues

by Jack Kerouac

Book Overview

Best known for his "Legend of Duluoz" novels, including On the Road and The Dharma Bums, Jack Kerouac is also an important poet. In these eight extended poems, Kerouac writes from the heart of experience in the music of language, employing the same instrumental blues form that he used to fullest effect in Mexico City Blues, his largely unheralded classic of postmodern literature. Edited by Kerouac himself, Book of Blues...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140587004
• ISBN13: 9780140587005
• Release Date: September 1995
• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.1" x 7.7"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

what an excellent use of imagery!

this book has so many unique qualities to it, and they all focus so much on Kerouac's unusual lifestyle... the book, with it's so many chouruses is an inspiration!

Jack Kerouac's Book of Blues

Kerouac's Book of Blues is an important book for anyone interested in Kerouac's spontaneous style of writing. For those more familiar with his novels and prose Book of Blues will open a more pure and raw form of verse than even "On the Road". Kerouac was truly a poet at heart. To get the full effect of this book which reaaly needs to be read aloud to full experience I also highly recommend Kerouac's Blues & Haikus CD which contains him reading several of the poems in Book of Blues.

Book of Blues works together with Desolation Angels

Book of Blues is an important piece of writing that chronicles an important time in Kerouac's life and works well with Desolation Angels. As I read Desolation Angels, I noticed that Jack Duluoz makes references to various works of poetry as he moves through the book and Book of Blues contains many of those poems. Desolation Blues was written about his time on Desolation Peak and accompanies that section of the book well. You begin to understand Jack's thoughts and anxities better. Later Jack is in Mexico City writing Mexico City Blues but he also wrote Orizabo(I believe) at the same time, at least according to Desolation Angels. Orizabo Blues can be seen as the outakes or the preparaton from Mexico City Blues. Later on in the book, Jack Duluoz is back in Mexico City after his trip to Europe and during these times he wrote Cerrera Medellin blues. Other Blues not included in Book of Blues though mentioned in Desolatioin Angels are Washington, D.C. Blues and Tangier Blues which have yet to be published. Book of Blues is an important book to the Kerouac canon.

author well known during the'60's ; all ways had good conten

I first read Kerouac's writtings over 30 years ago. The content of this work is firm but is limited in it's scope and focus. The author usually slips into a tanghent that not many of us would comprehend unless we had lived in the 1960's.