Big Sur
The next essential installment in your Great American Literature collection.
Big Sur is the fictionalized retelling of Kerouac's three separate visits to beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti's cabin in the wilds of coastal California. One of his last novels, Big Sur in unique in its depiction of the author-as-main-character--no longer shown as a transient but instead a popular, published author. Like all his works, the veil between fact and fiction is thin, and the winding trip is a raw look at Kerouac's struggles with a newly demanding public, as well as his increasing difficulty with his own alcoholism. The stream of consciousness style he popularized and became known for is persistent throughout, yet with Big Sur, you also get a slice of a bygone California era, and the smell of the Pacific fills every page.
- Paperback
- 244 pages