Paris Enlightenment
by Jack Kerouac
About This Novel
In 1965, in order to find the name "Jean-Louis Lebri de Kerouac", Kerouac went to Paris alone. During the 10 days in Paris (and Brittany), like a lonely traveler, he strolled along the straight boulevards of the Tuileries Gardens, crossed the swaying bridges on the lively Seine River, listened to the "Requiem" in the Saint-Germain des Prés church, and met all kinds of people at the same time: a Breton with blue-black hair and green eyes, who had a gap in his front teeth, just embedded in the lickable lips; the waiter in the gentle girl bar, who kept following "Paris is rotten," he said; a Napoleon-like guard wearing a bicorn hat and a bayonet stared intently at him as he lit a cigarette butt... Then at some point, he had a revelation, a revelation that changed him and allowed him to live in that pattern for the next seven years or more. To be precise, it was an "enlightenment": a "sudden enlightenment," a "sudden awakening," or, to put it simply, "a sudden opening of the eyes." It is with this epiphany that Kerouac tells us about this intoxicating trip to Paris.
What Readers Think
Rating
Community(0)
Rating
Community(0)
