☰Big Sur

Kerouac came to Lawrence Ferlinghetti's cabin in Bixby Canyon in 1960, trying to escape his fame and his drinking. He failed at both. The novel he wrote about it is darker than anything in On the Road — a portrait of breakdown set against a coastline that is indifferent to human trouble. The ocean at night, the fog, the isolation: Kerouac gets it exactly right even as he is coming apart.