Visions of Cody

read by Graham Parker. Alan Ginsberg thought that Visions of Cody was Jack's best book but whether we agree with him or not, Visions is a long and often tedious free association jazz riff manuscript about Jack and Neal Cassady and friends that can be difficult for some to "get into." I agree with the previous reviewers who advise the reader to have a few drinks, put on some jazz and, if you get bored, read it out loud. The rhythms of post World War II American English will come alive. Graham Parker does it for us with his reading. First of all, the reading is abridged into two cassettes and it helps to pare down this enormous, meandering manuscript to its high points. Second, Parker provides the music and the poetry with his magnificently expressive reading and added music. You might be put off, at first, by his English accent but I think you will be won over with his extraordinary vocal rendition of the essentials of Visions of Cody.

Yes, at first I thought the tape transcripts were just a lot of useless padding to fill out Jack's book. Boy, was I wrong! Here's how to read them: 1. Get a couple of Charley Parker albums (Bird and Diz will do nicely.) 2. Procure a jug of red wine and a joint. 3. Put on Bird, pour a glass of wine, and just relax with the music for a while. 4. Take a few tokes. Drink more wine. Get a nice mellow buzz. 5. NOW, begin reading the tape transcripts, and voila! You are invited to the party! You will be sitting there with Cassidy and Kerouac, digging the flow of music and conversation and experiencing a new comprehension of their friends, wives and lovers. The gossip, the stories, the subtle oneupmanship between them is a delicious fly-on-the wall experience. By recreating the set and setting of these long ago conversations, you will experience an intimacy that is uncanny. I've done this a few times and was amazed at the greater understanding I had of these two complicated men. I read and re-read the transcripts with delight and was sorry there wasn't more of them. This is surely what Kerouac intended. It's like the modern day extras and behind the scenes specials you get on movie DVDs. I mourn their passing more than ever and the fact that there doesn't appear to be anyone out there to take their place. Ever wonder why Hollywood depictions of the Beats are laughable failures? HERE'S why. Go now...

Kerouac's best book, no doubt about. As Ginsberg says in the intro, it's an elegy for a fallen America that no longer exists, especially today, an America where innocence and kindness and joy has been replaced by paranoia and selfishness, with Kerouac using Cody as a symbol of all that is good and lost in America. For this reason it's probably the most pertinent of Kerouac's books for the modern era. Not only that, but it contains the most personal and heartbreaking prose Kerouac ever wrote, sentences filled with love for his fellow man ("I'm writing this book because we're all going to die") and the pain he saw at what was happening to his country ("America is what laid on Cody's soul the onus and the stigma - that in the form of a big plainclothesman beat the s//t out of him till he talked about something that isn't even important anymore - it's where cody learned that people arent good, they want to be bad - and nobody cares but the heart in the middle of the United States that will reappear when the salesmen all die.") There are sentences like that throughout the book, just absoloutely beautiful heartfelt writing, plus little things such as Kerouac wondering whether a girl in a restaurant would like him, or what his dead father would think of him, small things from his day-to-day life that add up to a tapestry of love and compassion and longing. "I'm a fool, I loved the blue dawns over racetracks and made a bet Ioway was sweet like its name, my heart went out to lonely sounds in the misty springtime night of wild sweet America in her powers, I stood on sandpiles with an open soul... Goodbye, Cody. Adios, you who watched the sun go down, at the rail, by my side, smiling - Adios, King." If writing like that doesn't break your heart, looking at the way the world is run nowadays, then this book probably isn't for you. But if you mourn for a lost America, buy the book and find a soulmate - or a couple."What they want has already crumbled in a rubbish heap - they want banks." - Cody Pomeray.

Buy this book! Then forget it's a novel. Forget looking for plot, action or continuity, just read each section like a prose poem. Or better, a short run of notes in a brilliant sax solo. Jack wrote this in 1951 (age 29), right before "On the Road." It's more like a sketchbook than a finished portrait, but on every page his amazing ear takes American English to entirely new places. If you get bored, read it aloud & listen to the surge, chop and swing that Keroauc gives to the language. In "Visions of Cody," he got his vision of America down in a SOUND: staccato, breathless, brave & precise. One of America's greatest poets, and this is maybe his greatest poem. Read, re-read, read again, enjoy.