I became obsessed with The Beat Generation about a year ago when I watched 'Kill Your Darlings'. Amazing movie, starring Daniel Radcliffe, Dane DeHaan, Ben Foster, Jack Houston, Michael C. Hall and Elizabeth Olsen, shows how the young beats met each other, and what was happening to them around the time of the famous murder of David Kammerer. The movie made me very emotional and excited. First of all because the cast is just PER-FECT and second - the plot and the adaptation of the story is really great. I wasn`t planning on reviewing the movie here, so I`m just gonna suggest you watch it. If not for the plot then for the cast, if not for the whole cast then at least for Daniel Radcliffe, whom I`m so unbelievably proud of! If you still think of him as of Harry Potter...shame on you. He`s an amazing actor and he proves it every time. Love you, Dan ;)x
So yeah, go watch the movie!
After 'Kill Your Darlings' I started to read the biographies of all the main beats who were represented in the movie. All of their life stories are incredibly interesting, though somewhat sad...but what can you do? And searching the information about them I came across a lot of the books: their own works, their biographies, journals, letters (published as a book) etc. Three books that immediately caught my eye were 'And The Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks' by Jack Kerouac and Will Burroughs,'You`ll Be Okay: My Life With Jack Kerouac' by Eddie Kerouac-Parker, and 'On The Road' by Jack Kerouac. And those are the three books I want to talk about today. So let`s get straight into it!
'And The Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks' by Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs.
This book is basically an autobiographical tell about the actual murder that occurred in 1944 when Lucien Carr, who was friends with Jack, Will and other beats, killed David Kammerer (for further information google it, it`s really interesting ;)). Those days affected all of the gang, obviously, and later Jack and Will decided to retell the whole story as it was (or at least very close to that). They used different names and places, but the story itself wasn`t changed much. The book is written from the point of view of the two people - Will Dennison (Burroughs) and Mike Ryko (Kerouac) which is an interesting way of writing, if you ask me, and also, if you`re not familiar with their other books, gives you a little sneak peek of their writing. The book will be interesting as a biographical piece and as a fiction as well. The best thing about it is that as young writers they wanted to write a decent story, inspired by true events, that the people will like as a literature piece. They weren`t legends back then. They weren`t trying to make it about themselves. They weren`t writing an autobiography. And this fact made this book even more attractive for me to read. It`s very easy to read as well. It keeps you excited, and even though there`s a murder in it, it`s not too tense or scary. And the other great thing about it is that it represents a whole timeline, the lifestyle of 40s in all its gloom. The beats were actually pretty good at representation the time they lived in.
'You`ll Be Okay: My Life With Jack Kerouac' by Eddie Kerouac-Parker.
(ohmygod the cover of this book makes my heart beat faster, and the book feels amazing in your hands as well!!)
Another book that represents the timeline and the lifestyle of the beats amazingly. The atmosphere of this book is something unreal, honestly. The minute I opened it and started reading I felt like I dived in a deep comforting ocean, and I didn`t wanna come back to the surface! Although Eddie Parker is not a writer or the real 'beat', her writing is AMAZING. She writes easy, truthfully and funny. You instantly fall in love with her. You feel connected and wrapped in her warmth. At least that`s how I felt. The book is absolutely biographical, it doesn`t have any plot to it. It`s just an honest, sweet, romantic and, most importantly, truthful story of Eddie`s life, of her moving to New York, meeting Jack Kerouac and other beats. The important thing about Eddie herself is the fact that it was because of her that Jack Kerouac, Lucien Carr, Allen Ginsberg and Will Burroughs met. She introduced them to one another, and she was in the middle of the beats' history in making. Can you imagine? I mean...It sounds pretty cool, although of course it wasn`t that cool in reality. And that`s basically what the book is about. About the ups and downs of Eddie`s life and her love story with Jack (which started off as one of the sweetest relationships I`ve ever heard/read about and ended very very sad and made me an emotional wreck), and her friendship with the beats, and more.
'On The Road' by Jack Kerouac.
Well, first of all only little children and stray dogs haven`t heard the title of this book, I suppose. Even though not many people have actually read it, everyone has heard of it. And I wasn`t an exception. I`d heard of it long before I knew who the beats were, long before I watched the movie, and long before I found out their story. And I always saw these quotes that I liked and thought to myself 'hmm..I need to read it some day'. And, of course, after I learned all of the above, I wanted to read it even more. So the day has come.
Reading On The Road was actually a less enjoyable experience than I expected it to be. I read it as an autobiography rather than a fictional story, and as a matter of fact it is an autobiography anyway. Just like with 'The Hippos..' The book was inspired by true events. After Jack and Eddie sadly started drifting apart Jack went on the road with his buddy, another beat, Neal Cassidy. It also is a great representation of what life was back then. How people lived, what they thought about life, and what were they all about. Especially the youth. The youth all over America. It sounds interesting, but there isn`t that much of a plot to it. Basically, this book is very philosophical, I`d say. You can think about it over and over. You can dig deeper and deeper and find something for yourself. It`s definitely deep, and there`s a lot to understand during the reading process. I was a little disappointed because everywhere people were talking about the book as about more of a fiction classics, and I thought there was gonna be more action, I guess. All the way I was just thinking 'oh my god, when`s it gonna finish already?', and then there was some action that I would really enjoy it and I would think 'yeeess now we`re talking!', and then again a big slump. They say you start to read faster while you passed the middle point... It didn`t happen here. Instead, I felt like there were more and more pages appearing out of nowhere. But the philosophical part was amazing. And I`m not saying the book was awful. I`m just saying it was slow. But all this slowness and tiredness was worth it anyway. And I realized it while reading the last page and sobbing like a baby. The last page was worth everything. On the last page you realize, what this is all about, and where we all are gonna be someday. The last page is amazing. And for those who decided to only read the last page...HAHA you won`t get how amazing it is if you don`t read the whole book.
Throughout the reading I sometimes would get really sad. I thought how much Kerouac`s life actually resembles my own in a sense (and any life of a twenty-year old nowadays, I guess). The similarity is that we both kinda don`t know where we`re going, what we`re doing with our lives. Our minds are all over the place, and we have so many aspirations.. It`s scary. All his life Jack wanted to be a writer, and nobody believed in him except his first wife. His family wasn`t head over heels about the idea and never supported him, always talking to him in a sense 'when are you finally gonna find a real job?'. He wanted to be a writer and, after his long troubled journey, he became one of the greatest authors of all times. Looking back we all see that his talent was born from his struggles, and experiences, and emotions, and all we can say, especially the young ones, is how cool it all was. We romanticise it so much that we can`t see the real picture. Reading On The Road made me see the real picture. He was a guy who wanted to be a writer in the world where almost nobody supported him and even more - told him he won`t be anyone in this life. A guy who was writing a lot, but in meantime had to get whatever job there was to make money for living. He didn`t have a plan, he didn`t have a stable job, he didn`t have a place to live, he always borrowed money and both, him and people who gave him those money, knew he wasn`t gonna pay it back. He drank a lot, he smoked a lot. His mind was rushing from one thing to another, and he was trying anything to stop it at least for a second. And that`s why drinking became his worst habit, which eventually killed him. Imagine living a life like that. When there`s almost nobody to lean on, when you only can really rely on yourslef, when your future is uncertain and pretty much sucks just like your present. For us he was a great, talented, open minded man full of imagination when, in fact, he was scared, and tired, and uncertain about everything. Just like most of us are today. It`s not cool, it`s not romantic, and I would never say 'I want to be like him', except that I already am like him. In more ways then I originally thought. And my whole generation is. And On The Road made me realize that, and made me think about my future as uncertain as ever. It made me scared. So if you have wide imagination, anxiety issues, and you`re emotional as hell I wanna warn you: you may feel miserable at some point while reading it. But you should read it anyway. ;)
Let me know if you`ve read any of these books or some other books of The Beat Generation, and what did you think of them? And also if you watched the movie. Let`s fangirl together (cause...It`s been a year and I still can`t get over how great the movie is.) x
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(I do not own any pictures from this post. All credits go to the owner!)
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