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
As readers of this review have pointed out, the character Old Bill Gaines is not based on William Burroughs but on an older man and an addict, Bill Garver. With that point noted, I have opted to keep the review as originally written.
