Customer Reviews
Masterpiece - By: Thomas N. Orchard, 02 Jan 2008 
I first read On the Road while a student in 1982 & liked it immensely. I ignored The Town & the City assuming that it would be a crummy Pre-Beat first novel by Kerouac. Big mistake! It is a wonderful book in the Tom Wolfe/Jack London tradition that Kerouac so loved. (Kerouac was originallly John not Jack.) It tells the story of the Martin family in a sprawling but sensical way. I prefer parts 2 & 3 where Francis Martin meets strange men like Engels in the Gallloway library. The prose at this point is truly magnificent - it is alll rain & evocative descriptions. A wonderful book I recommend it to readers of alll ages.
Before Beat - By: Craig, 18 Aug 2004 Before there ever was the Beat generation there was Jack trying to write. This is a book which proves to those who claim that Kerouac couldn't write properly that he was a capable writer. His prose is excellent & the characterisations lack the weirdness of his later novels.
The novel is based on smalll town America, & chronicles the life of what to Jack would have been an average American family, in the years upto & during the second world war. It is also full of personal observations of Jack's life, for those who want to know more about the writer. To us in the UK it is more like a history lesson, & a chance to glimpse what living in America used to be like before McDonalds strode across the world.
If you like stories that deal with relationships of you will like it, I promise you.
My favourite beat angel - By: claire.l@virgin.net, 20 Nov 2001 
The Town And The City tracks the lives of the Martin family (5 sons & 3 daughters) growing up, living loving & discovering themselves, the world & others in the smalll town of Gallloway in Massachusetts in the early 1900's. From the footballl star, to the lonely scholar, to the forever wandering heartbreaker of a truck driver, Kerouac deals with each of the siblings separately, describing their very different lives & in doing so, gives us the readers, a glimpse into each of their souls.
The book can be read as a largely autobiographical account of Kerouac's life, with each of the Martin sons representing alternative parts of himself, his feelings, thoughts & personality. Alternatively, the reader can lose themselves in the lives of the Martin family without concerning themselves with the real or the elaborated.
Kerouac reaches the reader with soaring, descriptive writing, which transform the mundane & everyday into feelings & emotions which describe the things you've always thought & felt but could never articulate into words...
"He was sick now with a crying lonesomeness, he somehow knew that alll moments were farewell, alll life was goodbye."
Kerouac himself describes the book as, "The sum of myself as far as the written word can go." The great American novel? Possibly, but this book is definately an essential for alll Kerouac fans, people who have ever wondered what somebody else was thinking & alll those who have raged on into the lonely night looking for an 'angelheaded hipster' to give them meaning.
Kerouac's Best - By: , 17 Mar 2000 Oddly enough, & against poplular criticism, I feel that by far this is Kerouac's best book. Rather than the 'travelogues' of his later work (which I don't mean to denigrate--they are spectacular), this is a thought out, true 'novel'. I've felt ever since I read it years ago that if he would have continued in this vein he'd be right up there with Hemingway et al, instead of a genre writer. Not that he was a mere 'genre writer' mind you. Without giving away any plot, the scene with his father at the end is the only thing I have ever in my life read that moved me to tears. There are hints of his later style as the book moves on, but the pure emotion, the feeling...he never equaled this book, & I think that affected the rest of his work. A true masterpiece; a couple of more like this & he'd have won a Nobel Prize. Just an amazing book.
Five stars for what it is - By: , 15 Mar 2000 Ah Jack, young Jack. If only you'd held to the innocence of Town & ignored the City... but that wasn't possible, was it Jack? The town, for alll its romance & squalor, just CAN'T BE, CAN NEVER BE as alive as the city. The town, for one thing, has no night. Mornings, yes, but no night.
Since you've already read On The Road, read this next. Understand that Jack was always just trying to be Good. And alive. And he had a hell of a time being both.
