Tristessa

by Jack Kerouac

Book Overview

Based on Jack Kerouac's real-life love affair in Mexico City, this novel follows a man's doomed relationship with a woman as her life spirals out of control.

" Kerouac] loves language, and he obviously has a profound feeling for the human race. . . . In the end he is more truthful, entertaining, and honest than most writers on the American scene."--The New York Times Book Review

This short novel, which Jack...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140168117
• ISBN13: 9780140168112
• Release Date: June 1992
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.24 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.1" x 7.8"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Tristessa

Many readers who love Kerouac consider "Tristessa" one of his finest novels. "Tristessa" has become the book of Kerouac that I return to most often. The book was initially rejected for publication, and it first appeared in paperback in 1960 following the success of "On the Road". The book initially may have been conceived as part of "On the Road." "Tristessa" is written in Kerouac's "spontaneous prose" style, with long rhythmic improvisational sentences and the feel of jazz. It is short, but deceptively complex, introspective, romantic, and sad. When I first read the book, I was taken by the descriptive passages and didn't pay much attention to the progression of the story. In my most recent reading, I got more from the story itself. "Tristessa" consists of two short parts, each of which tells the story of the first-person narrator, Jack, as he makes two visits to Mexico City separated by about a year. Jack is in love with a morphine-ridden prostitute named Tristessa. In part 1 of the book, "Trembling and Chaste" we see the ambiguous relationship between Jack and Tristessa. The reader meets Tristessa in her shabby room, surrounded by other addicts, including her supplier, a man named El Indio, and by cats, dogs, chickens,and by a crucifix over her bed. Jack is with her, but he leaves and takes the reader on a tour through the underside of Mexico City, rife with poverty, drugs, and prostitutes. The scenes with Tristessa are interlaced with discussions of suffering, religion and Buddhism. Jack is in love with Tristessa, but he has taken a vow of sexual chastity which he reluctantly tries to honor. Tristessa appears to be in love with Jack. In the year that intervenes between the two parts of the novel, Jack works in a fire tower in the Northwest -- this story is told in Kerouac's "The Dharma Bums." When he returns to Mexico City as narrated in part 2 of the book, Tristessa's life has deteriorated as she has become more hopelessly addicted. Kerouac's friend Old Bull Gaines (William Burroughs) is also in love with Tristessa as is her supplier of drugs, El Indio. Jack tries to rescue Tristessa from injury,overdose and possible death as he stays with her through the streets of Mexico City and tries to find her a home. He loses her to Gaines and realizes the impossibility of their relationship -- which, in the published text, remains unconsummated. At the close of the book, Jack dreams of writing "long sad tales about people in the legend of my life... This part is my part of the movie". And he invites the reader "let's hear yours." "Tristessa" is a short, highly personal, and deeply moving novel. Kerouac told the story of his own troubled life in a series of novels that have stayed with me. Every person has their own story, albeit not necessarily that of the beats. Kerouac has told his, and he has challenged the reader to understand and to respond with sympathy and joy to his or her own story: "lets hear yours." Robin Friedman

What's Changed?

I remember reading this about three years ago as an undergrad and not enjoying this book. I'm not sure why. I just never much liked the Beats; their experiences just seemed so foreign to mine for me to relate. But I reread this book a couple of days ago, and everything had changed. I'm just guessing that I was an idiot a few years ago, and now I'm obviously wise and intelligent and crazy and depressed enough to like this. I read this straight through, and every minute of it felt so authentic. I felt the sorrow here. The longing the protagonist has for Tristessa and the desire he has to redeam her. The sense of despair and longing for spiritual fulfillment. I appreciated his engagement initially with Buddhism and eventually a reconsideration of Christianity. This was a nice read. Spare and sincere. I'll reread it again soon. I'm sure that I'll like it again.

Romance that could never Be

The first thing that struck me about this book was the way it ends. It ends with an ellipsis. How many books to you read that end like that? Not many would be my guess. As for the story this book is more about the voice of Kerouac. He is exposing more of himself than in any other book. The book is less about a story and more about to be Kerouac in Mexico, without anything to give him comfort. Rather he is lost in himself, drunk and confused. He finds a woman who he wants to be with. Someone he can hold someone her can touch, yet the problems lies in the fact that he can't tell her. Yet you can read between the lines and see a man who is giving up upon himself. Faced with uncertainty, wavering from his strong Buddhist beliefs. This book is more personal than I ever knew. This book can almost be seen as Kerouac moving against what he believed. Everything comes into question. The fact that Tristessa is addicted to drugs, plays on the point of what is he to do? On the one hand he loves her and on the other he can't bring himself to tell her that.I have loved this book from the first time I read it when I was a junior in high school. The beauty of this book is amazing can never be stated enough. This is a must read for any Kerouac fan.

Amazing romantic novel!

The basic story line in this book surrounded a junky Mexican prostitute named Tristessa of whom Jack(Kerouac's "alias") has fallen madly in love with. Jack can't find a way to tell her, and she sends him completely mixed signals, and is constantly too hung up on her drug addiction to care about love. At one point he leaves to go up to California(in which period of time "The Dharma Bums" takes place), and the story picks up a year later when Jack returns with his urgent need to see Tristessa.Another story line of Tristessa involves Jack sitting in the pad where Tristessa and her friend Cruz live, and his fasination with the animals that live there (a Chihuaua, a cat, a hen, a rooster, and a dove). He meditates and watches them, wondering what they're thinking and trying his best to earn their trust and respect. This was quite an amazing book, the second best book I've read this year after The Losers' Club by Richard Perez. I find any of Jack Kerouac's works hard to put down, as there is always something new and interesting and fascinating to read and learn from his writing. I would recommend this story to any Beat Generation or Kerouac reader.

Kerouac's most overlooked novel, and his best.

Kerouac has fallen in and out of cult hero worship, for many reasons. He was the forefather of the spectacularly popular Beat Generation, his books are full of raw energy and rebellion, and he died of a brain hemorrhage watching "The Galloping Gourmet". These are all wonderful reasons to read "On the Road" or "Subterraneans". Do not read "Tristessa" for these reasons. Read "Tristessa" for its pure Kerouac voice, for its wonderful hollow music which echoes the wildest romantic poets, the heroin-desperate streets of Mexico City, and the soul of Kerouac himself. This is Kerouac's most haunting, melodic, and starkly religious work, the story of true love and the lie of love, the story of hope and of the crush of drugs, poverty and despair. To read this book is to be Kerouac, to be crazy-drunk with no place to sleep and no money to eat, but to be crying with happiness because the woman you love is unconscious in the gutter beside you. You can hear the words inside your head long after you close the book... "shouldna done it Lord, Awakenerhood, shouldna played the suffering-and-dying game with the children in your own mind, shoulda whistled for the music and danced..." "I love her but the song is---broken---"