Big Sur

Lawrence Ferlinghetti's cabin in Bixby Canyon

In 1960 Kerouac took a train west to California. He was headed for the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti's isolated cabin in Bixby Canyon, on the Big Sur coast, and he stayed about six weeks. He had been struggling with fame and with alcohol since On the Road came out in 1957, and he wanted a place to dry out.

He found the place magical at first. NPR's 2009 report quotes his descriptions of a single flower nodding on a cliff, a knot in a redwood like the face of Zeus, and zigzag bugs in the creek pools. But he felt cut off in the cabin. His biographer Joyce Johnson, who had once been his girlfriend, told NPR that he was always safest when he was in transit.

In the novel the cabin belongs to Lorenzo Monsanto. The Library of America lists Ferlinghetti among the thinly disguised poets in the book, with Lew Welch, Philip Whalen and Michael McClure. Neal Cassady is there too, as Cody Pomeray.

Back and forth, then the crack-up

William Wiegand reviewed Big Sur for The New York Times in September 1962. He traced its shape as a series of trips, each more frantic than the one before. Duluoz goes to the cabin, drifts back to San Francisco, and returns to the cabin with friends. Then he goes back to the city again. Last comes a final, desperate trip to Big Sur.

On that last stay Duluoz breaks down. He is with his girlfriend and another couple. The Library of America calls the breakdown nightmarish and says Kerouac describes it without flinching. Wiegand thought the best scenes were the ones where the girlfriend tries to bring Duluoz round with secondhand Beat talk, which only pushes him closer to the edge.

Wiegand saw the book as a turn in Kerouac's work. On the Road and The Dharma Bums had argued for a way of living. In Big Sur the hero cracks up while doing the things he likes best, among his closest friends. Wiegand called it Kerouac's grittiest novel so far. Penguin quotes that line in its description of the book today.

"I am a Breton!"

Big Sur is a California book, but France is already on Kerouac's mind. His family believed it came down from a noble Breton ancestor. Penguin's 2020 article on that family story points out that Duluoz is itself a Breton name. At one point in Big Sur, Duluoz shouts at the Pacific that he is a Breton.

The book ends with a long poem called Sea, printed as an appendix. Its full title is Sea: Sounds of the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur. The poem tries to write down the noise of the waves on the rocks. Penguin notes that the poem is full of Breton sounds, such as "Ker plotsch" and "Kerarc'h".

Three years after Big Sur came out, Kerouac went to Paris and Brittany to look for that ancestor. The trip became his novel Satori in Paris. Gallimard published Jean Autret's French translation of Big Sur in Paris in 1966, the year after that trip.

Films of Big Sur

In 2009 the director Curt Worden made a documentary, One Fast Move or I'm Gone: Kerouac's Big Sur. Tom Waits, John Ventimiglia and Patti Smith are among the artists who read Kerouac's words in it.

In 2011 the Guardian reported that Michael Polish was filming the novel. The French-American actor Jean-Marc Barr played Jack Duluoz, and Josh Lucas played Cody Pomeray. Kate Bosworth, Radha Mitchell and Anthony Edwards were also in the cast.