Visions of Cody
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Visions of Cody is a novel by Jack Kerouac, perhaps his most stylistically free and varied. It was written in 1951-1952, and though not published in its entirety until 1972, it had by then achieved an underground reputation.
Like nearly all of Kerouac's works, Visions of Cody involves a "mythologizing" of his life, here as "Jack Dulouz", renaming characters and imposing grander themes on actual events while rapturously describing the mundane around him. It is also heavily focused on his perception of and relationship to Neal Cassady, renamed "Cody Pomeray."
The first section of the book is essentially a collection of short stream-of-consciousness essays, many simply describing elements of Dulouz's (Kerouac's) post-World War II New York City environment, from the texture and smells of a lunch counter to St. Patrick's Cathedral, or minor events like the decision to masturbate in a public restroom—all interlaced with Kerouac's internal dialogue. Along the way through these descriptions, Dulouz meanders towards a decision to go visit Cody in San Francisco.
The third section consists mainly of the transcription of taped conversations between Kerouac and Cassady (and occasionally "Evelyn"—Cassady's last wife, Carolyn) that extended over five nights as they smoked marijuana. This is followed by a brief section entitled "Imitation of the Tape," a writing experiment by Kerouac in which he attempted to work from the spontaneity and speech patterns of the tape.
Some of Visions of Cody is a fast-forward recapitulation of the events described in On the Road, which was also about Kerouac and Cassady.Template:Book-stub