The Sea Is My Brother by Jack Kerouac

This is the first novel by Jack Kerouac, written after his first tour as a merchant marine when he was twenty-one, unpublished for 60 years. A formative novel about a man's revolt from society as it is, a search for spiritual meaning in a materialistic world, and the terrible beauty of loneliness.

Merchant Marine Wesley Martin wanders the streets of New York, having spent his savings on drinking with other sailors in jazz bars and dime-a-dance joints. Ending up in the Columbia University cafeteria, he joins a group of friends, one of whom is Bill Everhart, an Assistant Professor of English and American Literature. The group talks intensely about socialism and the revolution of the proletariat, international anti-fascism, and Marxism, searching for a "spiritual movement for the spirit." Everhart is enamored of Wesley's carefree life and, feeling he is lacking purpose, decides to join the Merchant Marines. The explorers were the American poets; Thoreau before the mast. The pair become friends hitchhiking to Boston, where the Winchester is being loaded with Army equipment bound for Greenland. After Everhart gets his seaman's papers, they have all they need—a quarter left for two beers and a cigar. Before shipping out, the crew meet, drink, and argue about the working class, union organization, the loyalists fighting fascism in Spain, capitalism, and communism, with handsome Danny Palmer admiring Jack Reed and anxious to join his comrades in Russia. Everhart has doubts, especially when Wesley disappears before sailing, but the Winchester slips into the Atlantic, the sky recedes, the sea surges.

Written in 1943, Kerouac explored his dual personalities, his need for adventure and direct experience. The wandering and the travel, the brotherhood of men accepted without fanfare or comment becoming his signature style. While not outstanding, it holds its own, and any fan of Kerouac will find all the hallmarks of his respected later work.

"Into this book I shall weave all the passion and glory of living, its restlessness and peace, its fever and ennui, its mornings, noons, and nights of desire, frustration, fear, triumph, and death."

2011 / Hardcover / 240 pages

My other reviews for Jack Kerouac:

Tristessa