| Liar!
Liar!
Is the fullest study of Jack Kerouac's fiction to date.
It is the first book to devote an individual chapter to
each and every one of his novels. On the Road, Visions
of Cody and The Subterraneans, Kerouac's central
masterpieces, are re-read in-depth, in a new and exciting
way. The books Kerouac himself saw as major elements of
his spontaneous 'bop' odyssey, Visions of Gerard
and Doctor Sax, are also strikingly re-interpreted,
as are other, daringly innovative writings, like 'The
Railroad Earth' and his 'try at a spontaneous Finnegan's
Wake', Old Angel Midnight. Undeservedly neglected
writings, such as Tristessa and Big Sur,
are also analysed, alongside better known novels like
Dharma Bums and Desolation Angels. |
| Liar!
Liar!
takes its title for the words of Tristessa's narrator,
Jack, referring to himself. He also warns us 'I guess,
I'm a liar, watch out!'. R. J. Ellis' study provocatively
proposes that we need to take this warning seriously and,
rather than reading Kerouac's novels simply as fictional
versions of his life, focus just as much on the way the
novels stand as variations on a series of ambiguously-represented
themes: explorations of class, sexual identity, the French-Canadian
Catholic confessional, and addiction in its hydra-headed
modern forms. Ellis shows how Kerouac's deep anxieties
in each of these arenas makes him an incisive commentator
on his uncertain times and a bitingly honest self-critic,
constantly attacking his narrators' 'vanities'. |
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