Maggie Cassidy

When Kerouac was good he was superb. This is young love in a glorious, mind-bending nutshell. Beautifully written and deeply felt. When I was much younger and had experienced my first brutal betrayal in life, this novel was my greatest comfort. Kerouac had uncanny vision into the human heart, and was capable of expressing the awful paradox of young love, the joy and pain of it, it terms that were never sentimental, and often quietly heroic.A poetic, lovely book.

Kerouac had a real talent for capturing the dream of life in words. When I read his books the memories and images are almost palatable. He has the hypnotic effect that all writers dream about and aim for. The fact that he had to draw on his own life for inspiration is both his strength and his failing. Rather, it was a failing that he was able to turn into a strength. Early in his career Kerouac attempted to write normal fiction. His first book The Town & the City is an unfocused mess that lies somewhere between a novel and a memoir. By the time On the Road came scrolling out of his typewriter, Kerouac had figured out his method. Thereafter, he would write his memoirs but he would use a novelist's approach. Freeing himself from the task of inventing stories (which he never quite learned to do properly) he was able to concentrate on capturing the dramas and textures of his own life. Some of the books he subsequently produced by this method were merely self-indulgent meditations on memories that only Kerouac himself could have possibly have been interested in, but other books tell stories that have a more universal appeal and a touching drama at the heart of them. Maggie Cassidy is such a book. It tells the tale of the loss of first love. It takes an unconvential approach as love stories go. Kerouac includes all sorts of scenes and details that seem almost beside the point, and bare little connection to the main plot; the friends playing hookey, his eating crackers in the empty house, the blizzarding birthday party, the track meet. In the end, the book is less the story of a love affair, as it is a meditation on the time in his life when he was in love. It captures that sense of magic that being in love gives to everything around you. Kerouac has also taken a peculair approach to their characters and events in the story. Everything and everyone seems to be viewed from a distance and in soft focus, achieving a very haunting effect. The people don't seem to be present. They seem like ghosts fading away, and everything feels like it happened a long, long, time ago. You get the sense that Kerouac would like to change alot of how all this turned out, but it's all too far away, locked in the irretrievable past, and all he can do now is share with us his sadness and regret.

Whenever people talk of Kerouac, they're going to start talking about On the Road, The Dharma Bums or The Subterreaneans. You can't blame them, after all they are the best known of Kerouac's works, and they're all fine novels. Yet too often Kerouac's lesser works go unnoticed, such as Desolation Angels, Dr. Sax...and Maggie Cassidy. Out of all the Kerouac books I've read, I don't think one has ever made me feel so much, in this case it really took me back to my own adolescence. Much like Kerouac (here called Jack Dulouz) I had my own circle of friends in high school that I ran with on a regular basis and I saw many mirror images of them in Jack's group. And much like Dulouz, I hardly ever see them nowadays. And of course, I had my own Maggie Cassidy. It's amazing the similarity of how much Jack and Maggie's relationship ended and how mine and my girlfriend's ended. It was just a gradual end, we both lost interest in each other and our relationship end in spirit long before we ended it officially. We had both met other people and I had come to the realization that I was too young to be tied down to one person, which I think Dulouz realizes in the end also. And then there are the descriptions that Kerouac gives. It's often been said that his books are poetry and that is most certainly true in this case. The way he describes the snowy New England nights is absolutely beautiful and the way he portrays Maggie you can tell he genuinely felt for her. There are always nuggets of wisdom to be found in Kerouac's book, some insight that he sticks in the middle of his prose/poetry, and there is one in here. He is watching the clock in his living room and what he says is amazing; I won't spoil it for you, you'll just have to read it yourself. Another reviewer said skip On the Road and go straight for Maggie Cassidy. I don't know if I would go that far, but defintely read it afterwards. The narrative structure in both is pretty straightforward, and both make you feel the moment that Jack was living in at the time.

such a powerful tale of love. the story was constructed in retrospect with the purity of an artist, and in the end this purity amounted to common corruption. kerouac admitted to his weakness. brutal honesty . . . that is what gives "maggie cassidy" its power.

If you are a fan of Kerouac then this is a must. It is more lyrical and poetic than ON THE ROAD, yet not as difficult to read as Lonesome Traveller. I enjoyed the first person narrative and was keen to see the switch to third person in the closing chapter as J.D. leaves adolescence behind. Kerouac artfully captures the feelings that accompany a burgeoning love affair even if the characters are only 17. I would highly recommend!