Word: kerouacs
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SATORI IN PARIS, by Jack Kerouac. The zestful, pie-eyed piper of the beats relates the details of a wacky safari to France in a vain effort to track down some supposedly noble Kerouac ancestors...
SATORI IN PARIS, by Jack Kerouac. An account of a beat writer's ribald search for some noble French ancestors, told with gusto and amusing dropout grammar...
...record of the ten-day quest-a flight from Florida to Paris, train to Brest and back-comes with an engaging disclaimer. The tale is told, writes Kerouac, "for no other reason but companionship. This book'll say, in effect, have pity on us all and don't get mad at me for writing...
...France and Brittany just to look up this old name of mine, which is just about three thousand years old and was never changed in all that time, as who would change a name that simply means House (Ker), in the Field (Ouac)." Yet the bounce and burble of Kerouac's gusto and dropout grammar carry the reader along his wacky safari. Actually, Kerouac claims that it was less safari than satori (the Japanese zen term for sudden illumination), although it is not clear just what the satori conveyed...
Happily, he got his armorial bearings in Brest (and a motto to match: "Love, Work, Suffer"), though he made no headway in claiming the barony that is said to go with the name. It is fortunate, too, for the reader, that Kerouac lost his own bearings so often: amusingly drunken cafe brawls, busted suitcases tied up with neckties, lost planes, overcharging tarts and mercenary French petite bourgeoisie. Kerouac is an engaging fellow. Brave, too. At one point, he undertook to explain to goggle-eyed Parisians that he speaks purer French than they, because "I roll...