With the arrival of the second volume in Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich's series of "Album Biographies," it's harder than ever
to discern a rationale for this quasi-academic project. Ross
Macdonald (p. 74), by series editor Matthew J. Bruccoli, suggested
that the subjects might be writers not usually given substantial
literary treatment. Now, however, comes a flat, routine
mini-biography of Jack Kerouac, whose life and work have been
reported and analyzed in an avalanche of recent print - some of it
distinguished. Clark (The World of Damon Runyon) adds little new
material and offers no particular viewpoint on the Kerouac canon -
which is defended against "snobbish" critics, treated with vague
reverence, and given only occasional, hackneyed critical focus.
("The first-person prose of this novel achieves a unified sound
like a great bop solo.") Kerouac's early life is sketched in with
some emphasis on crucial shaping forces: the childhood death of his
brother; his "Canuck" background; his father's bitter failures. But
once Jack begins his vagabond "Beat" years - the Ginsberg/Burroughs
circle, the alcoholism, the male-bonding obsessions, the writing
experiments, the publishing frustrations, the fatal fame - Clark's
narrative becomes thin, linear, and merely depressing, with the
psychological mayhem largely reduced to dank gossip. Too
superficial for involvement or insight, too detail-clotted for a
satisfying short-take: an unnecessary addition to the
already-crowded Kerouac-studies shelf - which, with the bewildering
exception of Joyce Johnson's Minor Characters (absent from the
bibliography here), Clark draws on extensively, unimaginatively.
(Kirkus Reviews)
Since his death in 1969, the legend of Jack Kerouac, 'King of the
Beats', has continued to grow. Clark's biography reveals the
essential Kerouac, often through his own words and writings.
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