Frances
Quality paper, good design, substantial information. 5 stars for the effort. I don't think there'll be too many people serious enough to need this book, but if you are, then it will be your bible. Otherwise you'll probably still consider getting it even just as a coffee table book.
This giant book was a huge part of my childhood. I still have it in slightly good condition, more than a decade later.
I read the whole book in one sitting and what an experience. I smiled, I chuckled, eyes grew wide, heart melted, head shook in amazement. With themes of earnest love, tragedy, bodies of water, magical realism, I had it all while sitting on a park bench on a damp and chilly day. This writer moves words masterfully in a way few can. One of my favorite living poets now.
Kerouac lays the Word down on what it means to be a beatnik and what makes one a hippie. I like the translation even though it doesn't give us the „raw“ Kerouac it at least makes this an easier read.
I enjoyed this immensely so i don‘t understand the poor ratings of this book. These people must be hipsters!
Your opinion of this book will depend on your mood when you pick it up. There were times when I was drawn deeply into the sequence of thought in the dialogue. Other times, I developed a headache and resorted to throwing it aside for perusal at a better time.
I wonder what he must have taken to write something like this. The dialogues are extremely paranoid with obsessive use of language. At some point it would appear that the characters are desperate.
So many layers are used to arrive at a single point that at a glance, the entire book would appear absurd. The amount of focus it takes to write this is impressive, though. It presents itself as something close to a performance art. There are some profound moments in the midst of all the white noise. The dilemmas presented hit so close to home.
If the book starts to make you feel sick, don't give up. You might need to take a break from it, but do finish it.
This book is a true piece of modern-day beat literature. The ubiquity of drugs in his narrative gives it a fluid impression – the drugs make his story hard to tell, but the drugs gave him a story to tell. We are taken through a dizzying series of vignettes, in Kerouac fashion, of short-term encounters with places and people, jumping from one continent to the next, suitcase of chemicals in tow. Memory is a weak force, and there is little connecting the stories to each other. There is a recurring half-memory of a woman. Everything may have started after her, but if she was indeed what the memory erasers were supposed to kill, then it is amusing how almost everything but her was lost.
Amidst the flurry of images is a blanket of dry contemplation, and I am reminded of Palahniuk. It reads like romantic nihilism. Like the detached sentimentality of a man who remembers nothing, or rather, only one thing.
10 stars out of 5.
First of all, who made this ugly cover?
Now that that's out of the way, I'm trying to remember why I declared myself a fan of Charles Bukowski some ten or so years ago when I discovered his work and the person that he is. Other than the fact that I was depressed at that time, it must have been the way he bares all of his guts to the world, his suffering, his demons, without asking for pity, for help. Sometimes you will sense a plea for forgiveness in the subtext of his lines, but only faintly so, you could miss it entirely.
The first few poems in this collection had me seriously question how he had become such a celebrated writer, but soon enough this was answered for me. An amazing poem after another. And it's not entirely in the style of writing, but the attitude he has taken towards writing those words. As you read them, you are there, listening to him speak to himself. You will know how he felt. Really felt.
A heart of stone, a heart so soft.
He has given up, but also not really.
That must have hurt, but he has already pulled away before it could reach him.
I haven't read his work in a long time, and only remember one, my favorite thus far (Raw With Love). This is the first time I read a collection of his in one sitting. I am understanding him better now.
It's the kind of book you write in your sleep. In this fashion, Brautigan carries us through dream sequences with no mercy for the reader. Some recurring elements give the impression of fleeting moments lost, of regret, of guilt, and a difficulty in writing a straight apology. Or he could've been pulling our legs the whole time. You take what meaning you can get.
Linguistic structure aside it's a well-written book and great for fans of abstract prose.
Howl is real. But the writing doesn't carry me away. I can say the same for some of his other poems. Despite there being parallels between Ginsberg and Kerouac, this is only seemingly so, for Ginsberg's feels premeditated, with an elementary rhythm that is a ways away from jazz writing. The way he creates a vision for us, of a scene, with the choice of words and the order of the words, feel born from a template.
I am only saying that about his writing style. Like I said, Howl is real, and so were the other poems in this collection. The paths his thoughts take, his honest yearnings and madness come from nobody but him and you will know this.
I like him because he listens to the Bleachers. Definitely an entertaining and easy read. A standup comedy from start to finish? It also breaks your heart, because the words are true. The ending took me by surprise and my tears almost fell in public.
Most of the stories here are some of his best. As usual, it is not easy to get through his writing. But it doesn't take long to run into a literary gold, over and over again. It was only the Mexico Fellaheen story that I did not enjoy, it was difficult to spend time on, and led me to dropping the book, picking it up again only months later, pushing with effort through to the end of that story. Obviously a worthy effort, as the next ones were astounding. Kerouac's writing is pure, effortless jazz.
Had I reviewed this closer to when I read the bulk of it, this review would have been more insightful. But a pity it is that this was not as easy to read as his last book (The Order of Time), and so I read this intermittently over the course of nearly a year.
The challenge I faced with this book is that in some sections (particularly Chapters 4 and 6) his train of thought becomes hard to follow. Some concepts and relations are repeated, I think that was intended for this new grammar of reality offered by quantum theory to be eventually absorbed, but not so effectively. Something could be lost in translation too.
There are some very important notions he wants delivered in this book though, so it does deserve a careful reading and comprehension in supplement to his earlier work (I would recommend reading The Order of Time before this, as that sets the foundation for the key ideas he elaborates here).
Politics, literature, history and philosophy are discussed in much of this book. There is an acknowledgment of the relevance of Eastern philosophy too, although he strongly rebukes the appropriation of quantum physics by contemporary schools of metaphysics.
I was captivated and engrossed in the first 3 chapters and in the last one he ends once again in a poetic outburst on his journey of learning and relaying the knowledge and comprehension he's had thus far in this field.
That said I will want to give this a second reading when I have time.
I'm writing this review without having read Part III yet (just skimmed it), only because I intend to revisit it (and I feel it was meant to be read) when I have started studying/reviewing the subjects themselves. The main agenda of the book though is found in the chapters before and after it (which I finished in one afternoon, as I found the book was an easy read and for me an enjoyable one). I am reading this as a former physics major who dropped out in the middle of the bachelors program 11 years ago and now wish to pursue it again.
The book could very well be called “How the Study of Physics Ought to Be”.
Not only does the author attempt to democratize physics with non-elitist language, he also bravely exposes the futility, in some ways, of conventional routes of education, something you are inevitably subjected to by pursuing a university degree. Furthermore, he provides some insider information from the scientific field.
In no way does he discourage university, but he does offer a roadmap for anybody who wishes to study physics not only in pursuit of a career “trophy” but also to help expand what is currently illuminated in the field. The latter not necessarily as an alternative but also as a supplement to the former.
In some parts I felt the author is suggesting that the alternative route outside of the former could help you achieve the latter, but here we have the paradox that actually putting a place for your own findings is near impossible without the credentials of university.
Also in some chapters a lot of what he wants to teach you are in external resources, offered through direct URLs provided in the margins. Sociology was one chapter where he does a better job at teaching the reader without making eternal references, because here he teaches his own methods and describes his own experience with specific examples.
A reader with zero background in the subject might also find themselves lost in chapters such as The Structure of Physics where some jargon is suddenly thrown at you, but don't let this discourage you from perusing the rest of the book.
Though I don't find this as eloquent/poetic a read as other democratizing texts (such as those by Rovelli), all in all it was a pleasant read, and I will definitely check out his other, subject-specific books.
This is just the second Steinbeck book that I've read and he's already starting to rub off on me. He writes about life with a microscopic lens, singling out individuals and their circumstances, all the while panning through the rest of the worldly distractions with a hazy eye, permeating into the everyday lives of his characters and inking the once-invisible thread that connects people. It will be a while before the image of Cannery Row fades into the back rows of my mind. For now, I will ride on through life in this bubble of romanticism, basking in my “hour of pearl”.
I picked up this book hoping to gain new insights on the belief (one that I take sides with) that time isn't a dimension, that it isn't something we traverse on, especially not in a commutative manner (i.e. time travel). Carlo Rovelli accomplishes this with his equally poetic and mathematical narrative, but not before taking me on a journey of existential romanticizing, confusion, doubt, bewilderment and sympathy, in this order.
There were some radical jumps in the definition of time which went from independent entity → human construct → gravitational field that is both subjective and independent of perception (Einstein's resolution of Aristotle time and Newtonian time) → emotions. By this point Carlo has explained elegantly the mathematics of his new notion of time and succumbs to an elegy of the beauty of all its implications.
The parts where I felt least convinced were some analogies that I felt were weak (e.g. mixing of all things = growing count of disordered configurations = collapsing mountain = crumbling structure) and similarly how some concepts were interpreted (e.g. “The difference between things and events is that things persist in time; events have a limited duration.” - the logic would have been more elegant if he had instead said “events create time”) though this could also be a liability of translation as it is originally in Italian.
I had expected something along the lines of a rationalization of the belief that time is artificial, that it is nothing but a human invention necessitated by our need for organization, to map out what we learn and understand and operate with, and that which is constructed around the regularity of phenomena (e.g. day-night cycle). While the book does lend affirmation to this, it also introduces a completely new and mind-blowing concept. The concept is a set of concepts, and because it's unintuitive and unobservable by human senses, it's naturally not easy to maintain in one's thought process (especially because he somehow uses the word “time” in colloquial phrases that contradict what he has revealed - though it could be because he is limited by conservative language, we have yet to develop the language that more accurately expresses the seemingly abstract concepts of quantum physics), thus requiring some muscle memory to be built which you will realize after it's been referred to enough times throughout the chapters. The concept needs to be learned as if learning a new grammar, but Carlo writes his book in a way that makes this easy for the reader with a kind of spaced repetition of the unfamiliar terms (or their contexts). This is the first reason why I think he is just the right spokesperson for such disruptive concepts of quantum physics.
The second reason is that by the third chapter he circles back to justifying why we perceive time the way we do despite the disruptive nature of the novel theory. This saves the readers from falling into a pit of existential dread, some possible dissociation, alarm, or even blunt rejection of the new notion of time. What the book guarantees though is a complete upheaval of perspective, and you walk away with new questions to brew, or new sensibilities to nurture.
The third reason is he writes the book for a broad audience, while still satisfying the more inquisitive readers with superscripts and optional technical chapters (he gives permission to skip two chapters but I think it's worth the pain of sludging through as a non-technical reader).
In the last section ‘Sister of Sleep' he goes off on a more personal soliloquy, waltzing us along a personal stage of his thoughts, revealing his sentiments on the finality of his life, of his experience of time and that now he is ready for death, having already “drunk deep of the bittersweet contents of this chalice.”
I‘be been in a reading slump, and i was pulled out of that after just the first pages of this book. This is significant - after having suffered from some kind of reading ADD for some time i somehow could read this book for hours without effort. To have discovered Patti Smith‘s world, her mind and her absolute, unpretentious mastery of prose shifted a part of me into a position that I could now appreciate and identify as, without shame. This book really changed something in me immensely. What a world, and what a life! To think this was only a part of hers in relation to Robert Mapplethorpe. For a period of time I felt as if I lived through their world. I‘m eager to read more of her work, how i hope she will continue to write, for as long as we have her around.
I read some opinions of her taking after her father, and I was wrong to assume that I'd find the resemblance in their writing style. Rather, I find hers to be “simple”. Their lives couldn't be more similar though, despite the fact that they only met twice. A couple of chapters in and I had become so engrossed in her story. So much is happening and above it all, there is a muted sadness. Jan's penchant for exploration - both outside of and in herself - came at a great cost.
Her body of work should be read not solely in relation to Jack Kerouac. Although, if you are a fan of him, then knowing his role in her life might make you hate him even just a little bit.
What happens in the latter years of her short life is tragic. I've been digging through some outdated blogs for more information. I've lost most of the links but for anybody interested you can start here:
http://www.blacklistedjournalist.com/column22b.html
This being my first Henry Miller book and not having been briefed of the pornographic content of his writing, I was, to say the least blindsided but holy hell, what a ride!
A few weeks ago, after seeing the NYE countdown in Champs-Élysées, I decided to stay out, against the suggestion of my sister to get myself home and get to sleep (if you know me enough you know that makes me just squirm). I had no clue where where to go next, and because we had walked a fair distance northward, in the midst of an excited crowd flowing through the streets and traffic, I decided to walk eastward, alone. I ended up in the Bd de Clichy where I spent 4 hours in the chilly winter, the events of which belong to something that is not a book review.
Obviously that place made quite an impression on me and when I found out Henry Miller had written a book about it I immediately ordered a copy from Amazon.
The first part begins with a kind of prose that I found too simple to like. Quickly I realized this dude‘s perspective on women and sexuality and I am just disgusted. But I kept reading... and I think for the same reason this writer is a celebrated one, in spite of the obvious. He writes of life as it has happened, and with that, cures us of the ignorance of the ends to which people, so uninhibited, can reach, and specifically the hedonistic parts of the edge of society.
I would have rated this lower because of how degrading he writes of women and the disgusting display of machismo power, but then again this book isn‘t written to make right of what is wrong, it isn't meant to teach, or make a point even.
I enjoyed this book because of the many reactions it got from me. I was titillated, I was horrified, I burst out laughing, here and there.
And about mid-way up until the end, in the second section where he waxes poetic about two women who resembled one another, he started using a form of prose that I could like.
I would not recommend this book to anyone and will probably be too embarrassed to admit I actually enjoyed this, but in the end I am judging this for the piece of literature that it is and not the morals behind.
I would describe this as a casual anthropological book, mostly written by foreigners who have visited or lived in Tokyo. It is a good perspective to have, but it also tells you what sentiments to expect. I think I enjoyed at least half of it, mostly the visual chapters and creative writing (fiction). The rest were, as others have written, pretentious and bland - pertaining to the essays which were hard to read and offer little to no striking insight. I felt something was missing - the intimacy of daily life - aspects of the society that I encountered having visited the country about 6 times thus far. It somehow fails to humanize the people as they should be.