everythingisholy

I finished Tristessa by Kerouac several weeks ago. Another one of Kerouac’s exquisite love stories, about of all people, Mexican-Indian prostitute. Kerouac is able to describe the self-destructive world of Tristessa in devastatingly beautiful ways—a seeming contradiction you know well if you know Kerouac’s style.

Case in point: “Gorgeous ripples of pear shape her skin to her cheek bones, and long sad eyelids, and Virgin Mary resignation, and peachy coffee complexion and eyes of astonishing mystery with nothing -but-earth-depth expressionless half disdain and half mournful lamentation of pain.

The novella is also filled with Kerouac’s musings on religion, which I always find uniquely enlightening—his dogma as it changed throughout his life was fascinating, I could write pages about it.

I’ll leave you with this.

“Since beginningless time and into the never-ending future, men have loved women without telling them, and the Lord has loved them without telling, and the void is not the void because there’s nothing to be empty of”

Read this book, guys. It’s 96 pages. Do it.