***Vanities Of Kerouac-Jack Kerouac’s Vanity of Dulouz

 

 

 

Book Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Vanity of Dulouz, Jack Kerouac, Cowan-McCann, 1968

Yes, I have written reams (cyber-reams) of words touting the be-bop king of the “beats” and something of a muse for me, Jack Kerouac, many times over the past several years as I have gone back to the classics to get a feel for what it like to live the be-bop red scare cold war 1950s, the time of my coming of age, by a guy who rejected all that American “golden age” stuff. That is my Jack Kerouac, thank you, the one who made every star-struck kid, every angst-filled and alienated kid dream, at least a big cloud puff dream anyway, of the open road, the living of live for the moment, and getting out of wherever there was to get out of. Yeah, the guy, the stone-cold beat guy (beat down, beat around, beat six ways to Sunday, hell, even beat-ified) who gave us such novelistic classics as On the Road, Dharma Bums and Big Sur to feast on.  And definitely not the un-max-beat-daddy who disclaimed his step-children, the flower children of the 1960s, the guy who was drunk as a skunk pissed all over everything on classmate (NYC’s Horace Mann School) William Buckley’s television show one time. No,that was some other sad sack writer.   

And then as well we come to the time, that 1968 time, of that sad sack writer’s demise as a be-bop writer in the book under review, Vanities of Kerouac, oops, Vanities of Dulouz, which is the end piece of the whole series of books (17) that he proclaimed were one set and one vision of Dulouz from the beginning of his literary career. And taken as part of one set, or taken individually On The Road, Big  Sur, and Dharma Bums hold up and this last novel published while he was alive doesn’t. This book goes from Jack’s high school, prep school and truncated college days, through his induction into the Navy, his time in the Merchant Marines and through to his role in a New York City murder. Basically the war years in America, the World War II years, the years before the great open road break-out. While there are snippets of great stuff over all this retrospective review of the period of his life written some twenty years later is snotty (to his “wifey,” whom he is telling this saga to), self-indulgent and repetitive. This one is strictly for aficionados and crazed Kerouac guys like me.