7th February 2010, BOOK: Big Sur by Jack Kerouac

I'd read On The Road and didn't really enjoy it all that much. Big Sur took me an absolute age to get through. In fact I gave up on it once halfway through. But I'm not so good at giving up on books so I persevered and got there in the end. And it was really worth it. I think we're so used to standard narrative arcs that when you get something as far away from the norm as Big Sur, it can be quite difficult to deal with. Which is why this book fell by the wayside with me at first. Once you've realised that it doesn't matter if its not making sense or that you can't follow it, you can just go with the flow. And Big Sur really flows. Apparently the book was written in 10 mescaline-fuelled days and it shows (not that I know what the hell a mescaline-fuelled day is like, you understand). It rambles, sentences go on for pages and after a while, it's like one of the Big Sur waves has hit you, carrying you away with it. Big Sur is like a poem and, if you stick with it, it's a stunning ride.