Somewhat unusually for a book on Jack Kerouac, his role as “King of the Beats” is largely underplayed in Kerouac in Ecstasy. Rather, Thomas Bierowski draws on Mircea Eliade's Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, to contend that reading Kerouac as writer–shaman provides a new paradigm for approaching his work. He positions Kerouac's writing style, particularly his spontaneous prose method, as an ecstatic technique, a ritual of performance that offers transcendence from the profane human condition. In Bierowski's reading, Kerouac's “words become a post-shamanic drum on which he works out, practices, and plays at the ecstatic potential of language so that his readers might participate and be transported (that is, ecstatic)” (5).

Bierowski's book covers a wide range of Kerouac's texts, including some of his more neglected works. He devotes a chapter to each of Visions of Gerard (written 1956, published 1963), Doctor Sax (written 1952, published 1959), Visions of Cody (written 1951–52, published 1972), The Subterraneans (written 1953, published 1958), Book of Dreams (published 1960), Old Angel Midnight (written 1956–59, published 1973) and Big Sur (written 1961, published 1962). Bierowski uses the notion of Kerouac as shaman as a method of interrogating and critiquing the texts, and although this becomes somewhat constricting at times, it does allow for some original interpretations. He presents fluent close readings and detailed textual analyses that are still all too rare in Kerouac scholarship, and this work is therefore a welcome addition to the field.

Bierowski asserts that Kerouac's “career traces a distinctly shamanic arc” (26). It is notable, however, that he chooses to present Kerouac's novels slightly out of chronological order. He begins in the first chapter with an analysis of Visions of Gerard, the subject of which is the childhood of the narrator, Ti Jean, but which was written later than several of the books that Bierowski discusses later on. This “arc” is thus an artificial construct and by purposefully beginning with a novel of childhood, Bierowski also immediately conflates Kerouac's fiction with autobiography. This conflation is also evidenced at various points throughout the work where he presents quotes from Kerouac's fictional characters as though from the author himself, tending to the autobiographical and problematic (mis)readings that so often permeate critical analysis of Kerouac's work.

Bierowski's analysis also tends to propagate some common misconceptions regarding Kerouac's spontaneous prose method, rehearsing the mythology of Kerouac's writing process as that of speed over form and regarding this as authentic and original. There is also a tendency simply to dismiss those parts of Kerouac's writing that do not readily fit into this reading. So for example, in chapter 3, on Visions of Cody, Bierowski concludes that the “Frisco: The Tape” section of the novel “is a very conscious and conceptual artistic move in this otherwise spontaneously written performance” (84). Rather than going on to examine precisely why this might be and using it to interrogate his premise that the remainder of the text is a “spontaneous performance,” he instead chooses to disregard this section of the novel as merely a disappointing aberration, noting how “[n]umerous times I have read these conversations … all in the hope of discovering a profanely inspired scripture revealing a treasure trove of Beat insights” (84).

Whilst his critical approach is therefore not always effective, there are some points where Bierowski's framework of shamanism fits extremely well with tropes in Kerouac's fiction, particularly those of death and spirituality. Shamanism enables him to explore many different and seemingly disparate aspects of each text, and to thread them deftly and lightly together without becoming overly constrained by his critical underpinning. This leads to some outstanding sections of close reading and it is here that Kerouac in Ecstasy is most successful. Bierowski's analysis is especially effective in the chapters on Doctor Sax and Old Angel Midnight, where the notion of writing as an ecstatic shamanic performance enables him to open up the texts and to put forward some fascinating, detailed readings that provide new and remarkably fresh insights into Kerouac's writing. His extended analysis of the use of parentheses in Doctor Sax as “a kind of time and space travel enacted on the page” (50) is just one example of the many places that he beautifully captures Kerouac's immense creativity as well as his constant (and often playful) experimentation with language and the limits of writing.