Concerning Kerouac, and 'On The Road'

'In one of the most famous, free-flowing, and deceptively careless paragraphs in his second novel, On The Road (1957), Jack Kerouac writes with disarming honesty about his relationship with ‘Dean Moriarty’ (Neal Cassady) and ‘Carlo Marx’ (Allen Ginsberg); each of whom were later to become, like Kerouac himself, central figures in the mythology of the ‘Beat Generation’:

“But then they danced down the street like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centrelight pop and everybody goes “Awww!” What did they call such young people in Goethe’s Germany? Wanting dearly to know how to write like Carlo, the first thing you know, Dean was attacking him with a great amorous soul such as only a conman can have. “Now, Carlo, let me speak - here’s what I’m saying…” I didn’t see them for about two weeks, during which time they cemented their relationship to fiendish allday-allnight talk proportions.”

In a new edition of On The Road, which reproduces Kerouac’s unedited first draft of the novel - written in a frantic three-week burst on a 120-foot-long scroll of paper in 1951 - we can read this paragraph for the first time as the author intended it; sexually frank and uncensored:

“…but then they danced down the street like dingledodies, and I shambled after as usual as I’ve been doing all my life after people that interest me, because the only people that interest me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing…but burn, burn, burn, like roman candles across the night. Allen was queer in those days, experimenting with himself to the hilt, and Neal saw that, and a former boyhood hustler himself in the Denver night, and wanting dearly to learn how to write poetry like Allen, the first thing you know he was attacking Allen with a great amorous soul such as only a conman can have. I was in the same room, I heard them across the darkness and I mused and said to myself “Hmm, now something’s started, but I don’t want anything to do with it.” So I didn’t see them for two weeks during which time they cemented their relationship to mad proportions.”

On The Road: The Original Scroll (2007) – named the after the carefully prepared roll of paper Kerouac wrote his first draft upon, which he made by taping together long, thin sheets of drawing paper - is significant for a number of reasons; not least because its publication celebrates the 50^th anniversary of the book’s original release on September 5 1957: an event heralded in its day as an ‘historic occasion’ by New York Times reviewer, Gilbert Millstein...'

Want to read more? You'll have to wait for the December issue of Australian Book Review, out later this month, which contains my entire 2,700 word essay on Kerouac's life and literature, and which argues that Kerouac should be considered a modernist prose stylist in the league of Joyce or Woolf.

Sorry to be a tease!