Lonesome Traveler (Kerouac, Jack)

I've carried this book around with me from my teenage years, my entire adult life (I'm 57 now) and all through my nomadic years; it still brings me so much joy to re-read my favorite passages. Besides Mexico City Blues 242 Choruses, Lonesome Traveler is required Kerouac reading, in my opinion. If you know a teenager/young adult, gift them with this book.

This is my favorite Kerouac book, and I've read it three times. My favorite chapters are the ones of him wandering Paris and the one about working on the railroad. The railroad chapter is so realistic, realistic because he is recounting his own life experiences throughout. You get the nitty gritty, day-to-day activity of what life was for a guy working on the railway back then: getting the last bit of sleep he can before it's time to hit it; boss who pretty much terrorizes him; screwing up big time (in which the tension is terrific). All the other chapters are winners, too.

Over the years I believe that I have read most of what Kerouac published, but this is probably the most representative of all his work- and my favorite. It had been decades since I first read it, yet I recalled scene after scene and image after image. First of all, you can't really read Kerouac like an ordinary author. This is flow-of-consciousness. There are passages or words that you may never be able to nail down, but the overall effect is a jazz riff of the spoken word. What you will come away with is an essence that a thousand pages of more "polished" prose will never give you. Kerouac traps the soul of America. Unfortunately it was a soul in danger of dieing from the cold even back when he wrote this book. The introductory biographical sketch is humorous and enlightening- it gives an immediate window into the man. Then you move to his frantic and unsuccessful attempt to find a berth on a ship after traveling clear across the country. Then there is a brief excursion to old rural fellaheen Indian Mexico. Then he lands a good job as an apprentice brakeman on the Southern Pacific out of San Jose. Then he chucks it all for a job on an old liberty ship as a steward- which he quit in New Orleans when he didn't like the Captain's attitude. But , as always, he saved his pay and headed for the bohemian scene in New York City- where we get a peek at the real beat scene at its height and not some beatnik wannabe parody. Then it is off to the top of Desolation Peak for a summer as a fire lookout in Buddhist solitude. After this we get a trip on a freighter to Tangiers and a tour in the company of Bill Burroughs before a prolonged stay in Paris- by way of Provence. After this it is home via London and then the best analysis of the vanishing hobo life ever written. Only a holy madman could pass through the world not only unscathed, but blessed. Kerouac knew the difference between a hobo and a bum- Jim Bridger, Johnny Appleseed, Walt Whitman, John Muir- Jesus and Buddha- were all "hobos..."

"Creative non-fiction" is a come lately term but it fits Jack Kerouac's 1960 account of his real life travels and experiences. The spontaneous, experimental style that marks his fiction is in high use in Lonesome Traveler, particularly in the chapter devoted to the railroad. In that piece, language becomes a mimic of the sounds and rhythms of the environment in which he works, the Southern Pacific runs between San Francisco and San Jose in the early 1950's. Forget words and structure as you know it, but don't worry about getting lost in the prose. If you trust Kerouac, he won't let you get lost, he brings you home in the end. As he visits Mexico, the shipping lanes, the streets of New York, a lone fire look-out on Desolation Peak in Washington State, and Europe, he speaks openly of what drives him. The last chapter is an ode to the vanishing hobo whose ethic he has embraced; as this was written, our changing society was transforming hobos into vagrant criminals and the homeless problem, extinguishing their culture with suspicion and policing. Kerouac is both Thoreau and the hobo, the fine or wide line depending upon how you look at it being his education and pursuit of spirituality.

This was the first Kerouac book I red and enjoyed it very much. After this I read the On the road thing which I was actually disappointed with. I guess I expected on the road to be a little more interesting and a real monumental read as everyone in a coffee shops rant. But no eye opening life style changes with that bore. I'd recommend lonesome for members of the short attentioned spaned and digitaly enhanced generation of the TV Babies. let the hippies and beats have on the road.