>>24515175
Not OP, but I've been shilling OTR here for a while so I'm curious what you thought of it.
I think reading Satori in Paris after OTR and before the rest is helpful to understand how he was towards the end. It adds a layer of doom to all his previous writings, without which you could miss some of the impending tragedy that he foresaw for himself, yet kept shoving under the rug, as an extremely sensible man.
I've not yet read half of his books, and I do it by feel. I'm reading his journals and letters up to 1951 at the moment, along with Visions of Gerard which is heart breaking (the journals are very important, they tell us he can't remember anything about his brother as he died when Kerouac was 4 and Gerard 8, except a slap he received from him, yet in Visions of Gerard he's an angel, he rebuilds memories from mere illusions, pictures, his brother has been dead and unavoidably erased from remembrance for 30 years yet he builds him, with this book, an altar of unspeakable beauty).
