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    Desolation Angels: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Desolation Angels: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Desolation Angels: A Novel
    Ebook475 pages10 hours

    Desolation Angels: A Novel

    By Jack Kerouac

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    A young man searches for meaning, creates art, and grapples with fame in this semiautobiographical Beat Generation classic by the author of On the Road.

    This urgently paced yet deeply introspective novel closely tracks Jack Kerouac’s own life. Jack Duluoz journeys from the Cascade Mountains to San Francisco, Mexico City, New York, and Tangier. While working as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak in the Cascades, Duluoz contemplates his inner void and the distressing isolation brought on by his youthful sense of adventure. In Tangier he suffers a similar feeling of desperation during an opium overdose, and in Mexico City he meets up with a morphine-addicted philosopher and seeks an antidote to his solitude in a whorehouse.

    As in Kerouac’s other novels, Desolation Angels features a lively cast of pseudonymous versions of his fellow Beat poets, including William S. Burroughs (as Bull Hubbard), Neal Cassady (as Cody Pomeray), and Allen Ginsberg (as Irwin Garden). Duluoz draws readers into the trials and tribulations of these literary iconoclasts—from drug-fueled writing frenzies and alcoholic self-realizations to frenetic international road trips and tumultuous love affairs. Achieving literary success comes with its own consequences though, as Duluoz and his friends must face the scrutiny that comes with rising to the national stage.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateMar 22, 2016
    ISBN9781504034012
    Unavailable
    Desolation Angels: A Novel
    Author

    Jack Kerouac

    Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) es el novelista más destacado y emblemático de la Generación Beat. En Anagrama se han publicado sus obras fundamentales: En el camino, Los subterráneos, Los Vagabundos del Dharma, La vanidad de los Duluoz y En la carretera. El rollo mecanografiado original, además de Cartas, la selección de su correspondencia con Allen Ginsberg, y, con William S. Burroughs, Y los hipopótamos se cocieron en sus tanques.

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    Reviews for Desolation Angels

    4/5

    322 ratings8 reviews

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    • 5/5
      The first part of Desolation Angels (the book is split into three distinct parts) can be quite difficult. It took me several attempts to get through it. Much of it is verbatim excerpts from Kerouac's journals while he was serving a summer as a fire lookout, alone atop a mountain in the North Cascades. The prose is rambling and abstract, though containing some excellent observations on life, childhood, memory, and dreams. It also documents Kerouac's struggle with Buddhism. I say "struggle" in the best possible way, the adoption of any new faith is not, nor should it ever be, easy. After Kerouac finally descends from the mountain and heads toward his familiar haunts in San Francisco and on the road, the book becomes slightly more like "The Dharma Bums," the novel which chronologically precedes "Desolation Angels" in the grand Vanity of Duluoz arch. Even more than in any of his previous works, Kerouac appears to strain under the pressure of balancing his wine- and people-loving sides with his side that just wants to return to his contemplations in solitude. Solitude and desolation play great roles in this book, contrasting with Jack's sociability, rising fame, and excitement about the ascendancy of the Beat Generation.Altogether, not always Kerouac's most readable work, but well worth the effort.
    • 4/5
      Poetic, lyrical, steam-of-consciousness...about being alone, traveling, and his friends.
    • 5/5
      great work of the beat lit. generation Always come back to this after "on The Road"
    • 4/5
      Kerouac was more than just a road happy bum. Here is sketches the Spiritual life of the Beat Generation. Not an easy read, and not for everyone.
    • 5/5
      As is often the case, Jack manages to talk about not doing a hell of a lot besides running around with his pals and still make it sensitive, spiritual, and entertaining.
    • 3/5
      Jack is in northwest Washington for a fire lookout job - with no liquor or drugs! Then, when the job is done, he hitchhikes to Seattle. Then a bus to San Francisco, rucksack still in hand. And then he “…hopped that freight down to L.A. and headed for Old Mexico and a resumption of my solitude in a hovel in the city.” Then, off to NYC! And then, a boat ride across the sea to Tangiers! Over to Europe, back to the U.S., then across the country with his mom. Then back.Well, I liked this book much more the first time I read it. This time, I just liked it okay. I don't remember Kerouac being so whiny. Even when "On the Road" is published near the end of this novel, he just seems put out. I thought I remembered this book as a fun adventure story, but this time around, it felt more like a sad man who is lost and all alone in the fame he thought he wanted.
    • 4/5
      Desolation Angels is heaven and hell and the world and America and the Void and his Mom. Kerouac/Duluoz is a despicable, noble, earnest, loving, whiny, brilliant, loyal, weak, irreplaceable, insane jazz poet. As a preamble, listen to Bob Dylan’s Desolation Row and realize how he creates surprisingly linear beauty tangentially, and then crank up the random-o-meter one hundred times for Kerouac. One thousand preliminarily random images turn into a masterful Pointillist painting in prose. Bebop improvisation touching on a particular theme from a million different angles placates those of us requiring a story if we are patient. His prose is so poetic at times that it’s exhausting; infinitely compressed like a neutron star. In Desolation Angels he is Dharma Bum, addict, alcoholic, villain, criminal, poet, preacher, seer, mystic and finally Penitente and Bodhisattva having simultaneously reached the gates of Heaven/Nirvana and found himself unforgivable. From Desolation Peak and Seattle to Frisco; to Mexico City and New York; across the Atlantic to Tangiers, Paris and London; from Florida to Berkeley and back again; Desolation Angels is “ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny;” his whole rucksack (lost and found); every work, every poem, every sketch every howl. Ginsberg, Dali, Burroughs are all there, the pantheon of crazy pathetic beat angels.
    • 3/5
      Re-read after many years, now older than Jack ever experienced.This doesn't hold up to my recollection, but how could it? Dharma Bums may be his only work still read, or worth reading, in a few more decades. It's all Jack, straight through.