Tristessa (urspr publ 1960; utgåvan 1969)

This was another great Kerouac book. The style, the prose was so succinct and revealing. The romanticism was intense and the entire conceptualization, page after page, was well worth the effort of reading this short, intriguing book. Kerouac was a master of his time and this book is just another example of it.

4.25 stars! ( )

This is a tiny, tiny little Kerouac book.

And you need to know right now absolutely and unequivocally this book has a lot of drug use and drug references. Okay? Okay.

I have mixed feelings about Jack Kerouac, and I think I always will. Originally, I absolutely adored him, and now I'm not sure how to feel about him.

Regardless, I enjoyed the writing in this book. The writing, I thought, was quite lyrical and there were a lot of run-on sentences. The lack of punctuation was difficult to get used to, but try not to let it worry you if you decide to read this book. The character of Tristessa I totally fell in love with at the time, but now I'm not sure if she was presented with the respect she deserved? Was she fetishised, made exotic / erotic? If I ever get around to rereading this book, I want to read it more critically so I know how I feel about it. It's easy for me to get swept along in his writing style and not challenge what I read, or, at least, it was.

The book doesn't really have a plot per se, so if you like plot, this book might not be for you. I think I will rate this 3.25 stars. c:

( )

^Read

I have read this book many times. the last time was a few years go so the details are blurry and, like all my favorite books, i am left with the lingering thoughts & emotions the book imprinted on me.

This is one of my favorite books of all time. It's tied for my favorite Kerouac book (with The Subterraneans). This book is heartbreaking. It's raw, and honest. I don't mean honesty like we've come to be used to/expect in authors and narrators. I mean -- so honest you may shift in your seat and grumble because you feel as though you're reading the diary of a close friend. Tristessa is an angel in my eyes (and his). A beautiful angel who is sad, and sick. She's a junkie and Kerouac lusts for her. It's a short book, and a quick read. It will make you cry, it always makes me cry. Although everytime I finish it I always feel a little bit different.. It always changes me a little bit. This is a mark of a truly brilliant book. I think the last time I read it I felt similar feelings to Jacks own.."couldn't he have done something more for her?!" I felt sad, like I lost someone I loved. And angry at Him for letting it happen. ( )

Tristessa by Jack Kerouac is a fairly simple story, but just as a drunk is difficult to understand when speaking as with a swollen tongue while under the intoxication of alcohol, likewise the story-telling in Tristessa seems distorted, as if seen through infocused glasses, under the intoxication of morphine or heroin. Tristessa is about the hopeless love of the narrator for a Mexican young women called Tristessa, who is addicted to morphine. Life in Mexico is as much part of the narrative as the almost stream-of-conscious like descriptions of the place and ramblings about love, the world and everything. The first part of the novel is the development of the narrator's angelic love for Tristessa.

The second part of the novel, a year later, is about the devastating effect of drug abuse on in the life of Tristessa, and the narrator's wish to save her from that. William Burroughs makes an appearance in the novel as "the Old Bull", author of "Junkey" (p.64-65). Much of the effects of drug abuse are derived from "the Old Bull's" experience with morphine, and make for some gruesome descriptions. Otherwise, Tristessa is another book in which very little happens.

Tristessa is a very readable short novel, but readers should be open-minded about the ideas the authors of the Beat Generation had about narcotics. In their eyes, although they also experienced the negative side-effects of drug abuse, they still believed that a choice for narcotics was a voluntary choice, and that life of an addict was is fact an ideal form of life, and elevated experience. ( )