My previous Duluoz experience goes to the first typed "On the Road" and then the smashing little druggy Mexico City love meditation "Tristessa", but now Kerouac has found fame through what he refers to as "Road", and post-fame blues with alcohol tremens are what will be taken on in "Big Sur".
Kids expect him to be younger, and wiser, and more and more Jack Ti thinks he's a complete idiot and full of shit. He's caught up with Cody Pomeray (Neal Cassady as you'd figure), sleeping with Cody's favorite mistress and sitting on her chair and binging as she works while her child drives him wild, and on this saga goes.
The first fifth of the book is simply our protagonist, Mr. Kerouac, searching for an escape from big crowds and people who need to talk to him now that he is so-called "King of Beatniks". He's famous, he's got money, and he's getting the hell out of New York, so he finds himself on a cabin on Big Sur on the Pacific, and he's isolating himself trying to find greener grass. Though such is not possible; when he's at Big Sur he misses the crowds when he's with the crowds he misses the isolation Big Sur provided him. His torture turns to him rationalizing all with supposed signs he's going mad (such as Tyke, his kitten, dying and he mourns this consistently through the book so fabled loss of innocence) until he winds back at Big Sur with friends and his affair screwing with her kid hanging off of her and all woebegone things. This is Kerouac at his maddest and most self-deprecating.
Yet again, it's about adventure. He drinks too much, he's getting old, he misses his time with his old road pale when it's just the two of them, but he's still picking his ass up and doing things. Big Sur itself seems the maddest place as Duluoz stands over the thousand foot bridge and the wild waters as if its some giant monster meant to deter him from the peacefulness of the cabin, the peacefulness of the pure life. His alcoholism are those mad waters which never calm. Eventually even the pure things begin to look crazy and convicting, as Duluoz gets more and more paranoid and into worse situations with Billie, the woman who so wishes to settle with him but ends up driving him mad with useless philosophy and beatings of her child (and she swears, in the most despondent parts of "Big Sur" that she'll kill herself and the kid and all will be over). This adventure is not the same as the others, however, where Kerouac finds joy and sadness but always the will, as it seems he loses some of his faith and eventually, in the last fifth of the book he's gone so mad it's hard to make anything concrete of the text at all -- a wonderful mish mash of words set to the tune of a scabbed and tattered brain. A maddening adventure of the alcohol-induced and destroyed psyche.
The strangest part is that in the last two pages he suddenly snaps out of it. Everything is OK. It leaves with a sort of "What the fuck" thought, though this is Kerouac and he is, as I previously suspected, so damn scared of falling into cynicism, and it's funny I'm drawn to people like that because my own writing I forget, and, while I will venture much farther to the darkside of my own mind than I've seen Kerouac do, I need to hold on to those rays. In "Big Sur", yes, it is totally forced, but I think Kerouac wanted us to see that, see that you need to draw your mindstate away simply, make a change, get rid of Billie and her damned kid, drop them off and your obligations if need be, and get back to the purity of things. Or go mad. It's hard to say where Duluoz leaves us this time. We just know he comes back at some point.
This is a much more picturesque, naturesque Kerouac this time around, and not only is there isolation through Big Sur, but he seems isolated by those around him, isolated by fame, isolated by the mindset that he is not who he may really be. It is not instantly quotable, philosophies much more scattered, but still a different side of Kerouac and his Legend, and all is strange and mad in the world of Duluoz.
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