Jack Kerouac: King of the Beats

by Barry Miles

Book Overview

In conformist 1950s America, Jack Kerouac's On the Road was greeted with both delirium and dismay, but in Kerouac's hunt for the big experience and his longing for greatness, he has inspired each... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 080506043X
• ISBN13: 9780805060430
• Release Date: November 1998
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Company
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

An imperfect book, but important to consider

Perhaps the most important thing to note for anyone who is considering whether to read or buy this book is that it is not a biography. Although the book's structure is based on the chronology of Kerouac's life, the content is more concerned with analysis than it is with a straightforward, objective account. Miles's concern is primarily to present Kerouac and his works in a more complete and sober context than the average person is likely to have gleaned from the most available cultural sources (Kerouac's own books and his image in various media); and in so doing to correct the common perception of Kerouac as pure genius hero. If the reader is looking for a traditional biography, the best one available is probably Paul Maher's 2004 "Kerouac: A Definitive Biography". As analysis, Miles's book is perceptive and worthwhile. It is incredibly refreshing to see honest criticism of Kerouac and his ideas from a source like Barry Miles, who almost certainly drew his conclusions from a reasonably informed standpoint. Miles appears quite intent on not allowing bias, either negative of positive, to interfere with his assesment of Kerouac. He is well-researched and consistently perceptive, and his discussion of his subject is blunt, well-considered and engaging. Similarly, Miles's criticism of Kerouac's writing, though less complete than his examination of the man himself, is realistic and thoughtful. He assesses each book with a balanced eye toward its literary virtues and vices, as well as its content, and his criticism is insightful and well worth reading. Although Miles's analysis of Kerouac's life often comes off as exceptionally uncharitable, that doesn't necessarily mean that it is inaccurate. Certainly, though, Miles is overly selective in his presentation, and often he withholds or doesn't take seriously elements of Kerouac's life which might do some little bit to salvage a more positive view of the man. In this, he goes too far, not allowing the reader to consider for himself whether Miles's interpretation is entirely correct. If this were a court case, Miles would be a prosecutor. Nevertheless, it would be incorrect to call this book a hatchet job, as it is unlikely that "King of the Beats" is the reader's introduction to Kerouac. Rather than seeking to impugn Kerouac and destroy his reputation, Miles comes off more as dispassionately giving a severe word of caution to the reader not to get caught up in the myth of Kerouac as a compassionate and inspired genius, a holy fool, or a mystic. Ultimately, he presents a realistic perspective on a man whose legacy has often been in danger of ascending spotless to heaven. Miles's assessment of Kerouac often seems overwhelmingly negative, but this seems to come less from spite than from having a hard case to make, what with the ludicrously positive received opinion. In the end, Miles accurately presents Kerouac: naive, adolescent, passionate, confused, talented, and deeply, tragically tro

Unexpectedly compelling

With Kerouac an industry these days, it is hard to imagine anything new being offered, particularly from a biographer who never (on the strength of this text) even met him.Well stick with it. As a review on the back on my copy puts it "this is an excellent portrait of a ghastly man."Barry Miles does not understate Kerouac's influence. He takes him seriously as a writer and stylist, despite the patchiness of his output. His importance, says Miles, lay in his popularising the break with American post-war conformity (On the Road) and his prophesizing a Zen-infused "world full of rucksack wanderers" (The Dharma Bums), which underpinned the more thoughtful end of hippiedom.No doubt such things would have happened without Kerouac, or any of the beats, but this odd mother-lovin' alcoholic redneck from the small-town north-east undoubtedly flavoured the 60s and 70s and inspired countless thousands of wanderers and artists.Barry Miles's contribution is to sort through the myth, delivering a freshness to a now largely stale story of genius, self-obsession, and fatal loathing. The accounts of the cold-water flats of 1940s New York are especially vivid, where the beat ethos - much rougher than its hippie godchild - was formed.With so much sentimentalising of the Kerouac story, this is one for readers who've been moved by the man but want more than the literary postcard.

Excellent Bio-pic

Miles does an incredible job of putting together the jaded intricate life of an insanely selfish man. Kerouac was an incredible writer, yes, because he scrounged off everyone around him to better his skill. Funny when our heros turn into humans and we begin to feel our own inspiration from it.

A TARNISHED KING

This biography is part of an unceasing flow of writings about Kerouac and about the Beat movement which he helped to inspire. Miles's book is valuable because it explains why people continue to read Kerouac and the beats and also focuses on the limitations of the movement, I think, through discussion of Kerouac as a person.Kerouac was first and foremost a writer. Miles' book emphasizes this. It discusses virtually each of Kerouac's major works, and minor works as well, in the context of his life -- when, precisely, they were written, what they are about, and where each book fits, in Miles's usually well-considered opinion, in Kedrouac's work as a whole. Such writing is more the purview of literary criticism than biography but Miles does it well and it is needed in a consideration of Kerouac's life and work. He focuses on the spritual side of the beats, their quarrel with conformity, materialism, and repressed sexuality, and their emphasis on feeling and the expression of feeling. Miles properly places Kerouac in the romantic tradition of literature and within American Romanticism in particular as a follower, most immediately, of Thomas Wolfe.Miles does not spare Kerouac the man, in a discussion that should discourage any tendendy to hero-worship or mystification. Kerouac was selfish and inconsiderate of others, adolescent at the core, unduly attached to his mother, on the far fringes of the American right (although he probably deserves to be praised for not adopting the hippie, ultra-left, anti United States attitude of his followers and colleagues), and lead a destructive life, to his own talents and to the lives of people who loved him and had a right to depend upon him, such as his daughter.As a writer, Kerouac emerges in the book as a person of talent with a vision of American life that is valuable (though hardly unique, I think). He wrote well but too much and too carelessly and too much under the influence of drugs. He also, as Miles suggests was overly dogmatic and rigid in his use of spontaneous prose.The beats were a unique literary movement and Kerouac was an integral part of it. His books, I think will continue to be read and valued not for the most part as literary masterpieces, but as expressing the mood of a generation. There is much in them that is worthwhile. Miles' portrait of Kerouac and his work is judicious. It also encourages the reader to explore Kerouac's writings for his or herself, which is the goal of any good biography or a writer.

A must read for all the people on the road out there

This book goes into Jack Kerouc's life through the eyes of his friends and people who knew him. This is a three-dimensional portrait of the real man without any of the mythical halo that is starting to build up around him. It's a great book. I definitely learned a lot not only about Jack Kerouac but also about the whole generation.