Subterraneans

by Jack Kerouac

Book Overview

Written over the course of three days and three nights, The Subterraneans was generated out of the same kind of ecstatic flash of inspiration that produced another one of Kerouac's early classics, On The Road. Centering around the tempestuous breakup of Leo Percepied and Mardou Fox--two denizens of the 1950s San Francisco underground--The Subterraneans is a tale of dark alleys and smoky rooms, of artists, visionaries, and adventurers existing outside...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802131867
• ISBN13: 9780802131867
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.3" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Young America - Bohemian Mystery, Existential Void

A very Kerouac novel. The love affair of Leo Percepied and a beautiful Black/Indian girl named Mardou, who the hoodlum looking Leo, separated her from the subterranean pack. Whirling in spiral moving descriptive memories of people, places, insecurities, unconscious thoughts and affairs. There's the good, bad and the ugly, thoughts and words that you'd find in many love relationships, in this instance, in one of the beats with the crazy tea smoking, bar hopping, relational attachments, sexual encounters, distancing of themselves, interior questions of unspoken thoughts that live subconsciously, some of them from dating outside the race, from drinking excessively, from jealously and the idea of not finding or really knowing who the self really is in the beat existential movement of spontaneity, where the plan, one day, was to go to Mexico, but first to buy some clothes and Gerry Mulligan records. But in the end jealously, a lack of passion, which is very existential and yet the pattern of inability to sit still and rest becomes emotionally impossible. The story is great Kerouac. It has this subtle sadness of existential angst, the emptiness of life as in Dostoevsky and Camus, the casual nature and lost souls of modern living and living in indulgence, drunkenness, socialness that lacks a depth of stability, a stronghold where intellectual and literary meanings can not fulfill, devoid of a centering which can not be found in the subterranean life of the late 40's - 50's avant garde. And this appears to me as the Kerouac trademark: a jazz styled prose of spontaneous expression from the "real," non-conditioned, non-image-to-portray self, an existential life of despair in fast paced living with the rush of jazz, drink, sex, travel, under the literary and scholarly ideals of avant garde sophistication, adventure, desires, seeking new discoveries, walking places one never has been before, risk taking and traveling, all so under this empty void of utter lonely existence, devoid of substantial meanings of foundational holds and securities, walking in the desert not knowing when water will appear and if it does, if this water will sustain life or poison it. So there's this emptiness, this sadness of it all in the modern man and woman, both subterranean and beatnik.

Achingly honest essential Beat

Every couple of years, I feel compelled to pick up this book and re-read it just to experience again the beautiful, descriptive images of Kerouac's world of love captured and love relinquished. It's really interesting how he lets us follow the relationship he fosters with this young, hipster girl from its passionate genesis to its inevitable demise. All the time, we try to steer him in certain directions, try to coax him to say and do things that will continue the romance because he makes us want it to work. Nevertheless, we are swept up in the rhythm of the prose, hanging on every emotion, applying it to similar relationships in our lives. I'd say its absolutely essential reading for people who have just severed ties with another person. The locomotive rush of the writing style painfully captures the images and burns them into our minds, often difficult and obscure in certain areas, but we understand them on a far more unconscious level. I'll probably pick it up again in the not-so-distant future. It's a classic.

mandy from massachusetts

Each time I even glance at the book on my book shelf, i am absolutely captivated and dreamy with emotion. Somehow Kerouac taps into such real and raw, yet surreal feeling with fragmented, disconnected sections. I fell in love with the way he loved her and the way it made me see myself, as true with every reader. "'One day it'll rain on our eves, baby.'" Great book.

Kerouac puts truth, poetry, and a little madness on paper

Anyone who has read more than one novel by Jack Kerouac knows that his style varies. In Dharma Bums, Kerouac writes with atypical lucidity. In Big Sur (what I think is his greatest novel), he goes an entire first chapter with the use of one period. Of the five books by Kerouac I have read (the fifth book being On The Road), Subterraneans reads the most like Tristessa. The style of each book is more fractured than in the others, making it sometimes more difficult to follow. But in each book Kerouac finds a stride and rhythm to his work that soon carries the reader away. In Subterraneans, Kerouac tells the story of a relationship with Mardou Fox, a part Native-American, part African-American, mentally barely stable, twenty-one year old woman. Though Kerouac is almost 10 years older, they seem a great match. As usual, Kerouac's tale takes him through bar- and apartment-hopping parties, intellectual upheavals, drunken sprawling adventures, and bitter hangover realizations. The thread of unity throughout is the experience of his evolving relationship with Mardou, his deep self-realizations, his anger, love, and pain. When I finished the book I knew Kerouac had once again found something true amid his temporary madnesses and put it on paper for me to read. I closed the book and felt I had read something beautiful. Kerouac, you did it again.

Wow! change the way you think

This is an amazing book. Not only does it have a facinating plot and realistic characters, (mainly due to the fact they're based on real people), the writing style is a powerful lucid force that suits the content down to the ground. The rushing prose create a momentum that carries the story and portrays the frenzied reality of Kerouac in love. Jealousy and disillusionment are key to this story and you can observe how the heavy drinking Leo, the author and main character, and Mardou, his black, mental unstable girlfriends' relationship evolves. This is certainly not a book to be missed and its short too. It limits its scope to the events of a short period with the story unravelling through accounts of specific episodes that allow the characters to develop. The best book I have ever read is this slim tome and I urge you to read it - a love story with anguish and a unique writing style.