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Looking for Jack Kerouac Barbara Shoup Books

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Looking for Jack Kerouac Barbara Shoup Books

This books moves in wonderfully unexpected ways. The writing is clear, specific, and compelling. The emotional resonance stays with you, long after you have closed the book and moved on.


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Looking for Jack Kerouac Barbara Shoup Books Reviews

An enjoyable read for those of us who connected with books as we came of age, even if Kerouac wasn't our favorite flavor. This book re-captures that kind of magic and ultimately takes on a greater quest than finding Jack.
I couldn't put this book down. I loved how the planned adventure turns into the unexpected journey of personal discovery.
A super read, filled with wit, humanity, and stellar prose. In 1964 I was very close to the age of Paul, the book's protagonist, and his self-awakening touched me in ways a novel has not touched me in awhile I loved Shoup's research, which is spot-on she weaves it wonderfully with the story. I plan to use this book in the 1960s class I teach--it nails the earlier part of that decade exactly. Highly recommended.
Spectacular!

If I had to use one word to describe this book, that would be it!

An intriguing, emotional and thought-provoking coming of age tale that will lift your spirits while tugging at your heart the whole way through. Shoup delivers a story that will hold you captive from page one, as you take to the road with Paul and Duke on a trip across the US that sees them come into contact with many different personalities, each with their own words of wisdom and advice, as well as having to face a number of different situations that left an impact on these two travelers, especially Paul, whose entire journey was one of self-discovery.

Well-paced and brilliantly written, this story played in my mind like a movie.
A story of love, friendship, heartache, desire and acceptance, this was an emotional rollercoaster ride, with many ups and downs, and a powerful message that will stay with me forever.

A stellar read with amazing characters who now each own a piece of my heart, this book deserves a place on the shelf with the greatest books of all time, some of which are mentioned in this story. Absolutely brilliant!
Oh, what a gorgeous book about growing up and being held back by life and grief and desire until the urge to move and break free becomes too much. I just loved it. So many dog-eared pages, but none more so as toward the end when Paul starts to come into himself and realize that those he holds in the highest esteem are quite possibly the most damaged "It's the noise of the world escalating in his increasingly frantic attempts to drown out the inner voice saying, You will never stop grieving for what you've lost," which is essentially what we realize as we become adults and yet, we can get to the point Paul does at the end of the novel where even within that knowledge there is the possibility for happiness, especially in recapturing that one perfect moment. It's a beautiful book.
Publishers Weekly’s starred review of Looking for Jack Kerouac, a novel by Barbara Shoup, says it's “a memorable, mature coming-of-age story.” As I found myself drawn deeply into this book, I recalled those wonderful, disconcerting, coming-of-age years, but I found the book to be even more. Losing one’s mother, especially if the one who suffers the loss is a child or teen, and regardless of whether the loss is due to death or desertion, is far more than a coming-of-age story. In Shoup’s deft hands, it is a gentle reminder that life goes on, memories remain, and healing happens. I loved it.
Looking for Jack Kerouac starts out in East Chicago, Indiana in 1960s, but naturally, it becomes a book about a road trip. What else can we expect from a book that invokes the author of On the Road and has classic cars on its cover? This is a trip you want to take, Esteemed Reader, and one I'm sorry to have finished so soon. I absolutely loved this book. I loved that it never condescends to its reader or attempts to patch a solution onto a situation for which there isn't one and I love that its honest and eloquent in its execution.

Paul Carpetti is in a period of transition many of us older readers will remember well. He's just graduated high school and now he's faced with the big question what next? His mother has died just before the start of the novel and his girlfriend has moved to take her place as much as possible. She's got plans for Paul to be her husband and father of 2.5 kids with a home in the suburbs and all the rest of it. Paul simply needs to show up to work at his dead-end job, put his brain on autopilot, and everything will simply fall into place for him.

Naturally, it's time for him to get out of town. His reasons for needing a road adventure are myriad, but number one on his list is the love of a great novel, which makes him my kind of protagonist

I wanted like Sal wanted, too—I didn’t even know what I wanted. I just wanted. Maybe everything. It was like an ache sometimes, that wanting. I never mentioned it. There wasn’t a single person in my life who’d have understood, even if I had been able to explain it—and I doubted I could. But lost in the pages of On the Road, I felt like…myself. Like the book knew who I was, knew what I wanted, and was speaking back to me somehow.

Actually, it Paul's new friend Duke Walczak I most identified with. He's got a head full of "dangerous" new ideas, the makings of a future alcoholic, and a dream of being a writer. Paul's girlfriend sees Duke for what he is from the start trouble. The story is a bit hard on old Duke, and to be fair, he's cruising for a bruising, but I felt more of a kinship to Duke as he reminded me of a foolish young Ninja I once knew many years ago) Duke's the one who learns Jack Kerouac is hiding out in Florida through an obituary listing and his motives in seeking out the great writer are far less altruistic than Paul's, though I personally found them more relatable

“It’s all there, ready to be made into the Great American Novel,” he said. The main character, Duke himself, was going to be named Jack Bliss, he said—Jack, of course. I was in it, too. Rocco Minetti.
“Rocco Minetti?” I said. “That’s idiotic. Jesus. Don’t name me that.”
“Rocco Minetti,” Duke repeated, firmly. “My book. My characters. You’ll like it just fine when you get famous because of it. Like Kerouac’s buddies did.”
“Yeah, right,” I said.
“You think that won’t happen? Hey! Put your money on it, man. It’s been ‘mutely and beautifully and purely decided.’ What I’m going to write in those Big Chiefs, starting today, will make Jack Kerouac look like old news.”
“If you think that, how come you’re so hot to find him?” I asked.
“To pay homage, man,” he said, indignantly. “To stand before him and, you know, get his blessing to carry the torch.”

The fellas hitchhike their way south, along the way encountering interesting people such as a sexy mermaid (a performer in a tail, not Ariel) in a convertible sports car who likes to party. And there's another girl later in the book, who may or may not be of particular interest to our heroes, and a certain famous writer who may or may not put in an appearance, though it would be spoiling to tell. Given that his name is in the title, it would be sort of weird if Jack Kerouac didn't show up, but maybe it's just a weird book--I'm not going to spoil it)

One of my favorite of Paul and Duke's many encounters is a trucker named Bud

“You got a truck, you got a rolling motel room.” He gestured over his shoulder, to a built-in bed between the seat and the back window.
“You’ll notice, the wife even made me up some nice throw pillows.” He winked. “I’m going to tell you something, boys In addition to all its other benefits, trucking is the secret to a happy marriage.”
“How’s that?” Duke asked.
“Simple,” Bud said. “You’re gone a lot, you see the world. You romance the occasional lady who doesn’t expect anything but a nice steak dinner and a few drinks for a roll in the hay. So you come home and find out the wife’s gone overboard with the Sears Roebuck catalogue? It’s a small price to pay to dodge the nine-to-five grind, coming home to tuna casserole, whiny kids, and mowing the grass every Saturday morning. There’s damn good money in it, too—if you can put together enough to get your own rig.”

What a charming fella that Bud is) But the boys don't buy it

But when Bud dropped us at a truck stop a few miles south of Clarksville and pulled into the truckers’ parking lot to sleep, Duke shook his head and laughed. “Poor old Bud. He thinks he’s got it knocked, but he’s just kidding himself. His leash is just longer than most other guys’, that’s all.”

Looking for Jack Kerouac is a fascinating read and worthy of closer examination, which I intend to give it, the way I might re-watch a magic trick in slow motion to catch the magician at work. One of the things I like about Bud is even though I wasn't alive in the sixties, I've met him. I've heard a similar spiel from truckers. But I picked his passage in particular because I believe its an example of Barbara Shoup at work.

Thematically, marriage is shown again and again throughout the novel as a force of coming unhappiness (better throw up an example), the likes of which I haven't encountered since Revolutionary Road

I flipped the TV channels for a while, coming up with nothing but moronic shows that only housewives would watch, which reminded me of dinner at Kathy’s house the night before. Mrs. Benson falling all over herself re-filling my plate of meatloaf, making sure I was happy in every possible way in between nagging Mr. Benson to death about chores that, if you listened to her, had to be done ten seconds after dinner was over, or the whole house was going to fall down around us. The sheepish grin Mr. Benson cast my way when she wasn’t looking, as if to say get used to it, buddy, a few years from now this will be you.

Paul's reason for skipping town in the first place is to avoid being herded into marriage. As I read, I couldn't help but notice the absence of any strong female characters except the conniving girlfriend and the overall picture painted of females is not particularly positive until late in the novel. I found myself thinking of how the female writers in my critique group would come after me if I turned in such a manuscript, and here this book was written by not-a-dude)

But as usual, I was missing the point and was later amused to find myself genuinely challenged by a clever story. After all, the world is presented to us from the limited perspective of one Paul Carpetti. Barbara Shoup may or may not be a marriage enthusiast, but Paul has reason to fear marriage and women. It was a woman who hurt him and he's so very, very angry

I was done feeling guilty about having a little fun, I decided. Seriously. I was so frigging tired of doing the right thing. Where had it gotten me? Where did it get my mom? Or my dad, for that matter? He was nuts about Mom, he treated her like a queen, and all he got was a broken heart.

If you're the sort of reader who needs to be spoon fed, Looking for Jack Kerouac may not be for you. But if you yearn for a more adult story about a young adult coming of age, Barbara Shoup has crafted a rewarding tale I'm glad to have read and am looking forward to rereading.

I should end my review there as it's really long, but I can't finish without commenting on Shoup's treatment of history. There's a bit of nostalgia for an era gone by--isn't that the fun part of reading a Jack-Kerouac-themed road trip novel? But it's tempered with an unblinking view of that world as it was.

It would've been perhaps easier to give us the 1960s lite, but less honest. Kudos to Shoup for having the courage to report the facts, including the rebellious ideas that were brewing in the citizenry. Duke has his suspicions that the Gulf of Tonkin was "a big scam to crank things up over there" in Vietnam and he suspects that maybe, just maybe, Oswald had help executing our President. You know I'm a conspiracy nut, Esteemed Reader, and I've told you Duke is the character I liked most. But it's quite something to see those events through the eyes of someone who lived through them and knew his government was lying to him. It shapes a very different view of history than the one we're taught in schools. Thank goodness all of that happened in the distant past and in no way impacts our present life.

In conclusion, Looking for Jack Kerouac is a terrific book to be enjoyed by readers of all ages) As always, I'll leave you with some of my favorite passages from Looking for Jack Kerouac

You couldn’t be halfway married any more than you could be halfway dead.

“Yeah, I was scared. So what? Hemingway said courage is being scared and doing the right thing, anyway. Did you know that?”
“Hemingway blew his brains out,” I said. “What kind of courage is that?”

I walked slowly, weaving a little, stopping to look in the window of a souvenir shop or listen to music drifting out from the other honkey-tonks. The bars were mostly set up like Tootsies, with a band in the front window. Framed by the open doorways, people writhed in the neon light, looking weirdly like the pictures of hell the nuns showed us in grade school to scare us straight.

“Jack Kerouac. The writer. He lives here, in St. Petersburg. Me and my buddy here, we’re looking for him.”
“Writer. No, I don’t know any writers. G.D. Reds, most of them.”

A guy at a nearby table glanced up from the newspaper he was reading. Disheveled, unshaven, not quite clean, he looked a lot like the guys we’d seen in Morris Park the day before. There were others, too, their heads bent over books or newspapers, their dirty green army surplus duffels at their feet—and it occurred to me that whatever had deposited them in this place, rootless, without purpose, might have seemed like a grand adventure at the start.
This books moves in wonderfully unexpected ways. The writing is clear, specific, and compelling. The emotional resonance stays with you, long after you have closed the book and moved on.