Visions of Cody

Selections from the Novel

By: Jack Kerouac

Narrated by: Graham Parker

“To read On the Road but not Visions of Cody is to take a nice sightseeing tour but to forgo the spectacular rapids of Jack Kerouac’s wildest writings.”—The New York Times Book Review

“The centerpiece of all [Kerouac’s] novels.”—The Washington Post

Originally written in 1951–1952, Visions of Cody was an underground classic by the time it was finally published in 1972, three years after Kerouac’s death. Utilizing a radical, experimental form (“the New Journalism fifteen years early,” as Dennis McNally noted in Desolate Angel), Kerouac examines his own New York life in a collection of colorful stream-of-consciousness essays. Always transfixed by Neal Cassady—here named Cody Pomeray—along with Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, Kerouac also explores the feelings he had for a man who inspired much of his work.

Transcribing taped conversations between members of their group as they took drugs and drank, Visions of Cody reveals an intimate portrait of people caught up in destructive relationships with substances, and one another, capturing the members of the Beat Generation in the years before any label had been affixed to them.©1960 Jack Kerouac; ©1972 The Estate of Jack Kerouac, All Rights Reserved; (P) and ©1996 Penguin Books USA Inc.

Critic reviews

"[Y]ou will find some of Kerouac's very best writing in this book. It is funny, it is serious. It is eloquent. To read "On the Road" but not "Visions of Cody" is to take a nice sightseeing tour but to forgo the spectacular rapids of Jack Kerouac's wildest writing." —The New York Times Book Review

“Visions of Cody is [Kerouac's] greatest book, according to his own opinion, and its music is testimony to [his] verbal inventiveness and virtuosity . . . the range and variation of style within his remarkably growing bookshelf is just as remarkable . . . there is a grace, a majesty, and a tenderness to his language . . . both the inspiration and the content of this literature is of an intuitive, emotional, and mystical nature.” —The Village Voice

"The most sincere and holy writing I know of our age." —Allen Ginsburg

cool~~~

the best~~~

sit back and let it blow over you~~~

sit back and just dig it...really.

good reading by mr parker

a good follow up to the on the road scrolland akey part of the guloz saga

Graham Parker sparks!

Cheers to the person who produced this book and found Graham Parker to deliver. He celebrates this fantastic Kerouac collection with a theatrical pulse! This is instantly my current favorite book that will be playing time and again. If you like the flow of poetry that is truly alive, this is the book for you!

Wrong voice for the material.

The narrator may be a successful "Pop Star" but his cockney accent isn't exactly the King's English nor is it the right voice for this most American of material.
It's hard to take and I foud myself dragging through this book in fits and starts only because of my dedication to Kerouac and the story.

Performance is good, but not right

I have read Visions of Cody, I have heard audio of Kerouac reading excerpts. Kerouac has a very unique delivery and cadence that many have tried to emulate, some do it pretty well, some don't. Using his native accent, there is no attempt to imitate the sound of Kerouac reading; the issue being Kerouac's writing is essential tied to the cadence, timbre, and accent he developed being of French Canadian ancestry in Massachusetts. The accent may not be as jarring with another Kerouac book, such as Town and City or Dr. Sax, but this is not a narrative as much as a collection of visions and they just don't work with the cadence and pronunciations painted on them. If the accent isn't bad enough, there is an insistence on aura music in the background of the reading, such as pseudo-bebop jazz riffs, the required beatnik bongos, and japanese flutes wafting zen-like through the words, that just make this feel more of an attempt at performance art than the reading of a book.