Subterranean Kerouac: The Hidden Life of Jack Kerouac

This is pure, addictive reading pleasure as it leaves no stone unturned in its investigation of Kerouac the author and Kerouac the man. Not only that, but it also sheds light on a whole generation of bohemians and contemporaries of Kerouac whilst providing valuable background and insight into the literary masterpieces produced by this generation that included William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Paul Bowles, Neal Cassady and many others. Their lives prove that the path of excess often leads to the most sublime literature. This book has stimulated my interest in the Beat writers all over again and I shall reread their classics once more, this time with a clearer understanding of the interpersonal relationships and mutual influences underlying the text. I believe Amburn's excellent book is indispensable for a thorough understanding of the Beats and is a brilliant reference work with its copious notes, extensive bibliography and thorough index. The text is enlivened by black and white photographs all the important people, places and documents that played a part in Kerouac's life. Impeccable scholarship and an engaging writing style combine to ensure a riveting read and a valuable reference source that I certainly will return to again and again.

For the first time a realistic biography has finally been written concentrating on and revealing in part THE DARK TRUTH ABOUT THE BEAT GENERATION. Ellis Amburn's biography is one of the first to ADMIT in any "official" capacity, and show through the biographical medium of Jack Kerouac, the simple undeniable fact that the Beat Generation is, like most rebellious movements comprised of the young, the unaccepted, the lost, misplaced, unacknowledged, leaderless, angry, artistic, philosophical, experimental, et.al---largely consumed by dark, forbidden ( by society) impulses and passions too powerful to deny and are often obsessed and fascinated by them too much NOT to explore.... It is Kerouac's dream that people want, not the truth of his life; even the numerous biographies have but scratched "the beat surface", somehow writing their way around the truth as if it were a reality whose skirts they were too terrified to lift, as a veil guarding from sore eyes what is not a handsome leg! Not so with Ellis Amburn's subterranean Kerouac! Amburn was Kerouac's editor the last decade of Kerouac's life.... He came into Kerouac's career, fittingly, about the time of "Big Sur", in which K, admits for the first time on record to his Angel that he is going absolutely crazy in the horrific manner of narcotica... K.'s literary skills of graphic description here do not tantalize, but horrify! This is the book that alienated Kerouac's own audience, and Amburn coming on the scene from here onwards is qualified to paint the portrait of Kerouac in a realistic manner worthy of Soviet Realist Literature, who is writing from personal memoir as well as from biographical investigation. Of course all Amburn writes is verified, one can investigate matters thoroughly for oneself thanks to concise bibliographical notated sources, including Kerouac's own "sex-lists", and the information it contains is valid only because, unlike the multitude of biographies out there, it's sources ARE cited.... Kerouac struggled all his life, and the fact that he eulogizes his youth in way that produced the most Romantic literature of his generation cannot ever completely exorcise his roots in the black soil of a poor French-Canadian family of working class origins, replete with all the stigmata of the hell it is to be poor, with an alcoholic, unemployed gambler for a father and repressed, clinging, religious old-world peasant for a mother, and a dutiful son of deep inborn sorrows, "Ti Jean", who loves them at the same time they all lovingly murder one another with smiles on their faces...you know the story, writ in high Romanticism, if you've read his works, which of no writer can I recommend more than Kerouac that you read his own works first before consulting ANY biograpical tomes as Kerouac wrote his own autobiography the way Twain said "noone is more prepared to write about your life than you are" and if you want to learn about Kerouac's spirit written straight from the heart consu

Amburn offers a fresh perspective on Kerouac since he served as his last book editor. The books is well-written, very complete, and contains several new insights about Kerouac that I hadn't seen elsewhere.No single biography can do justice to Jack Kerouac, and I suggest you read several of them to balance out the facts -- and this book should be one of those you read.

I opened this book as a prejudiced reader, ready to dislike what I was sure would be Amburn's narrow-minded take on the writer, one more reduction of the artist through a filter of one more specialty school. Kerouac dissected by the scalpels of queer theory. I was delighted to find Amburn's immensely readable life of Ti Jean written with open mind and full heart. Satisfying in a way that few of the previous biographies have been, Amburn gives an authentic sense of a very complicated man across a busy and confused lifetime. No easy feat. The bonus is that Amburn also offers up tidbits from the archives unknown until now. (I was unaware that Kerouac once thought of merging Dr. Sax with On the Road and making the first novel the story of Sal Paradise's childhood). Clearly, the biographer cares about his subject even when he delineates Kerouac's failings in a clear-eyed, stinging fashion. There are fine insights into all the supporting cast of characters and its ever-shifting relationships (Burroughs, we learn, thought Cassady a low class con man. John Clellon Holmes suffered with his own alcoholic demons). The whole book is written in a pleasing, non-obtrusive style. Until Douglas Brinkley's official biography arrives, Amburn's book will do nicely to help sate the ever-expanding hunger for Kerouac studies.

This was an excellent book that gives the reader an in-depth look at the so-called "Beat Movement" and its' major players. Depending on your point of view, they were either disturbed maniacs and sex-fiends who should have all been incarcerated or instruments of a new literary and social consciousness.