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3 of 6 members found this review helpful.Kerouac's Best
“This is Jack Kerouac's first novel, written when he was in his early twenties. "On the Road" brought him fame, but I think this is one is his best. The characters are all real and complex, particualrly one of the brothers of the large Martin family named Francis, who feels society is the enemy. The book is set in a fictional town which is based upon Kerouac's hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts. The novel delves into the life of each member of the Martin family. It spans several years, from pre-WWII to post WWII. The last part of the book has the most "beat" feeling because it describes characters who are based upon real friends of Kerouac's, such as Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassidy. This is a memorable family saga that has great philosophy and meaning in it. Don't miss it!”
An amazon user wrote this on 2005-03-23. -
3 of 3 members found this review helpful.
Jack's first
“At the risk of making Kerouac roll over a couple of times in his grave, I would describe his first novel as endearing. There is a certain simplicity, a certain hesitancy in this work that is lacking from his other novels and makes The Town and the City a bit unique from the rest of his output. It is by no accident that the novel begins in the present tense as the author takes the reader on a guided tour of sorts in and around the town of Galloway: "The town is Galloway. The Merrimac River, broad and placid, flows down to it from the New Hampshire hills ..." Each of the members of the Martin family is introduced in this same immediate way: "Francis Martin is always moping and sulking. Francis is tall and skinny ...", etc. The result of this approach is that Kerouac, not unlike in a play, has essentially given stage directions for the novel, putting flesh to characters and setting the location of the drama which is to come. And what follows is quite extraordinary for a first novel.
An amazon user wrote this on 2005-02-22.
Perhaps because Kerouac found it easier to write autobiography from a more objective point of view, he divided himself into what is essentially three different characters: Peter (the character who most resembles the novelist), Joe (the older brother who strikes up a friendship with a Neal Cassady-like character), and Francis (the surviving twin of the saintly Julian who is a scholar, aloof and a loner). As is indicated by the title, the novel is divided into two major parts: the portion that takes place in Galloway (a very thinly veiled version of Lowell, Massachusetts) and later in New York City. The "town" portion of the novel is written with deliberativeness, paying particular attention to detail, and is (as every other reader has remarked) very similar to the style of Thomas Wolfe in Look Homeward Angel. The "city" portion, although still indebted to Wolfe, begins to show hints of the Kerouac style which is to come, with a few touches of the stream of conscousness style that would ultimately best describe his writings.
Towards the end of the book it appears that Kerouac was wrestling with himself as the need to finish The Town and the City began to conflict with the artistic changes that were occuring within the author. While he was completing the final editing of The Town and the City, he was already making notes for the work that would come next, On the Road. The final chapter of Kerouac's first novel describes Peter hitchhiking, "traveling the continent westward". It was clear that, to Kerouac, lifestyle and art had become a little bit of the same thing. ” -
2 of 2 members found this review helpful.
Baby Kerouac...
“When, as a young man, Jack Kerouac penned this saga of the Martin family (thinly veiled reprentations of Kerouac's own family and friends), he could have scarcely imagined the cult that would arise surrounding his name, image and spirit. But fifty years later, here we are reading his initial entry to his legend. Obviously patterned after the hero of his early years, Thomas Wolfe, the book is very much character driven. In fact, that element of The Town and the City is probably the most obvious thread connecting this work to his later, revolutionary works i.e. "Tristessa", "Dr. Sax" and, of course, "On The Road". It is clear from the beginning that Kerouac was more interested in attitudes, behaviors, loves and losses (pardon the cliche) than telling a particular type of "story". That willingness to focus on every day people in their every day lives is what makes Kerouac so unique (aside from his later radical approaches to "style") and so American. Read the previous sentence and, if one is unfamilar with Kerouac, a person might think, "Gee, doesn't that sound dull." But the ability to take the seemingly mundane and infuse it with extraordinary attention to detail, enthusiam and a willingness to see the wonder in just being alive is, in my opinion, Kerouac's most pronounced claim to genius (read excerpts from his journals in the recently released "Windblown World" describing his cross-continent bus rides, for example). As far as The Town and the City goes, it stands on it's own (and proves beyond doubt that Kerouac's later path down the Spontaneous Prose road was hugely courageous as he could have easily settled into a respected literary career writing in a more conventional manner), but if one has a specific interest in Kerouac, as opposed to just wanting to read a good book, this work is fascinating as a precursor to the wonder that was to come. It's interesting to note that many of Kerouac's "On The Road" exploits were occurring while this book was being written. It's all there in The Town and the City, just below the surface, and about to change the world.
An amazon user wrote this on 2004-12-20.
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2 of 2 members found this review helpful.
The Great American Novel
“This book gets my vote for The Great American Novel edging out F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise.
An amazon user wrote this on 2004-08-06.
With passionate prose and a realistic events (traits common to first novels in my opinion) Kerouac lays out three main sections that are immediately familiar to an American reader and provides a window into the social development of the United States in a critical period in our history.
The first section is a portrait of growing up and the American family. In the second section the nation goes off to World War II and the protagonist comes of age shedding his innocence. The third section deals with the pyschological aftermath a war has on a society in a more uniquely Kerouac prose of jazz, drugs and the struggle of a "lost generation" to find happiness.
I just can't remember reading any other novel where on every page I couldn't help but thinking this IS the American experience. Moby Dick, The Grapes of Wrath, Gatsby, Catcher in the Rye, Catch-22, Huck Finn...these are all a slice of American life, but Kerouac gives us the whole apple pie with The Town and the City.” -
You can go home again
“This semi-autobiographical work covering the life and times of Jack Kerouac before he went "On the Road" comes full circle. It begins in the small town of Galloway, Massachusettes, wends its way to the city of New York, then finally returns to Galloway. Peter Martin has a large, nurturing, and close knit family. As happens in many families, as the children grow older and become young adults, they begin to drift apart from the family unit. Peter, who achieves fame as a college football star, later tires of college and small town life, and falls captive to the lure of New York City, where he meets several bohemian types, two of whom are readily identifiable as Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs. Francis, one of Peter's brothers, gets accepted into Harvard and falls in with a bookish, intellectual sort of man. One of the Martin sisters, Liz, decides to run off with a musician who specializes in be-bop. Added to this equation are family financial woes, a father with a gambling problem, and the start of the second world war, in which a couple of the brothers enlist in the armed services to fight the war against fascism in Europe.
I have to admit that I was occasionally put off by Kerouac's tendency to over sentimentalize the events in the life of the Martin family, but what Kerouac has by and large created is a warm and loving portrait of the complex nature of family relationships. The book shows, perhaps surprisingly, that people most often have the most heatedly passionate arguments with those family members whom they most love. What especially stood out for me in this book was Peter's Galloway friendship with Alexander Panos, a particularly sensitive and emotional young Greek-American who wrote poetry. There was also a strange and very funny scene in a New York subway where Martin's Jewish-American friend utilizes a unique method to "spy" on another rider, perhaps foreshadowing the Jack Kerouac that came after _The Town and the City_.”
An amazon user wrote this on 2004-06-28.
