From the bookshelves 7

    Before On The Road there was The Town and the City. When I was younger I didn't want to read just the well known writings of authors and went on a quest to find everything published by a particular writer. Consequently I had a D.H. Lawrence phase not for the infamy of Lady Chatterly's Lover but because Sons and Lovers was one of the books set when I did 'O' level GCE. William Golding's The Spire, The Inheritors, Pincher Martin and the travel writing followed Lord of the Flies. I still aver Steinbeck's best is East of Eden although I enjoyed Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row. I no longer own copies of many of the books I read through the attrition of lending, moving and misplacing, giving away and selling.


    Truman Capote said of Kerouac's work,"That's not writing; it's typing" But Visions of Gerard makes a lie of that view. The book mark from Chatterton's of Hollywood and the date I've written inside the cover confirm I was living in Hollywood at the time I read this book, so it may have accompanied me on Will Roger's State Beach at the end of Sunset Blvd.

     It is easier to list the Kerouac I have not read: The Scripture of the Golden Eternity; Book of Dreams; Visions of Cody and Mexico City Blues. I also have a copy of the selected letters 1940-1956 which is on a growing to be read (or finished) pile.