The Subterraneans
First edition
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| Author | Jack Kerouac |
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| Cover artist | Roy Kuhlman |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Grove Press |
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Publication date
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1958 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | Approx. 111 pp |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 285385 |
| Preceded by | On the Road (1957) |
| Followed by | The Dharma Bums (1958) |
| The Subterraneans | |
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Film poster
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| Directed by | Ranald MacDougall |
| Produced by | Arthur Freed |
| Written by | Robert Thom |
| Based on | novel by Jack Kerouac |
| Starring |
George Peppard Leslie Caron Roddy McDowall Janice Rule |
| Music by | Andre Previn |
| Cinematography | Joseph Ruttenberg |
| Edited by | Ben Lewis |
| Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
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Release date
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1960 |
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Running time
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89 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $1,407,000 |
| Box office | $765,000 |
| The Subterraneans | ||||
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| Soundtrack album by André Previn | ||||
| Released | 1960 | |||
| Recorded | September 2, 1959 and January 11 & 12 and February 3, 1960 MGM Studios, Culver City, CA |
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| Genre | Film score | |||
| Label |
MGM SE 3812 ST |
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| André Previn chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |    |
The Subterraneans is a 1958 novella by Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac. It is a semi-fictional account of his short romance with a black woman named Alene Lee (1931-1991) in New York's Greenwich Village, 1953. In the novella, Kerouac moved the story to San Francisco and renamed Alene Lee "Mardou Fox". She is described as a carefree spirit who frequents the jazz clubs and bars of the budding Beat scene of San Francisco. Other well-known personalities and friends from the author's life also appear thinly disguised in the novel. The character Frank Carmody is based on William S. Burroughs, and Adam Moorad on Allen Ginsberg. Even Gore Vidal appears as successful novelist Arial Lavalina. Kerouac's alter ego is named Leo Percepied, and his long-time rival Neal Cassady is mentioned only in passing as Leroy.
Kerouac often based his fictional characters on friends and family.
"Because of the objections of my early publishers I was not allowed to use the same personae names in each work."
The novel, written as a first-person memoir, has been criticized for its portrayal of American minority groups, especially African Americans, in a superficial light, often portraying them in a humble and primitive manner without showing insight into their culture or social position at the time. The position of jazz and jazz culture is central to the novel, tying together the themes of Kerouac's writing here as elsewhere, and expressed in the "spontaneous prose" style in which he composed most of his works. The following quotation from Chapter 1 illustrates the spontaneous prose style of The Subterraneans:
Making a new start, starting from fresh in the rain, 'Why should anyone want to hurt my little heart, my feet, my little hands, my skin that I'm wrapt in because God wants me warm and Inside, my toes—why did God make all this so decayable and dieable and harmable and wants to make me realize and scream—why the wild ground and bodies bare and breaks—I quaked when the giver creamed, when my father screamed, my mother dreamed—I started small and ballooned up and now I'm big and a naked child again and only to cry and fear.—Ah—Protect yourself, angel of no harm, you who've never and could never harm and crack another innocent in its shell and thin veiled pain—wrap a robe around you, honeylamb—protect yourself from harm and wait, till Daddy comes again, and Mama throws you warm inside her valley of the moon, loom at the loom of patient time, be happy in the mornings.
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Wikipedia