The Town and the City, by Jack Kerouac

Recently I've been rereading an old favourite - Jack Kerouac's The Town and the City.

The Town and the City details the lives of the Martin family of Galloway, Massachusetts. The five sons and three daughters' lives are detailed in years before, during, and after World War II. The sons include a college football star, an introverted scholar, and a wanderlust romantic - all elements of Kerouac's own personality. In fact, whereas in later novels Kerouac would write about his own life, the Duluoz saga, with himself as a very loosely fictionalized character, in The Town and the City, Kerouac's personality is split between the characters quite distinctly, reflecting the rather distinct elements of himself. Throughout his life, Kerouac was pulled one way and the other - Buddhist and Catholic; liberal and conservative; lover and misogynist.

This book is very different to Kerouac's later works, and readers of his most famous novel - On the Road - will wonder if it's even by the same author. The Town in the City was an early work - his first published novel - and was heavily influenced in terms of its style by Thomas Wolfe. Later, Kerouac would be influenced by Neal Cassady's Joan Anderson letter (and his general style of talk) to write in a more improvised fashion. He'd focus on longer descriptions of scenes - sketching jazz bars with words to the rhythm of a song.

In this book Kerouac's story weaves in more traditional fashion. It is self-contained, and apart from the Duluoz legend books. It elegantly tracks the family's comings and goings, reaching a logical, satisfying conclusion.

Until recently, Kerouac's works weren't available on Kindle. However, thanks to Open Road Media, several of them, including this, have been recently released. Hopefully one of America's great writers will continue to reach new reads in this format.