
'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.”
“…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.”
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!
8 comments:
Consider me teased!
Coupla things... Firstly, you call Kat Stewart Ella Caldwell in your Red Stitch review.
Second, I was sure that Jack's "roll" was teletype paper and really was continuous. But I can't find a reference. Where did you glean your factoid? From the roll's recent tour?
Interestingly the artist David Park (a beat generation painter perhaps?) due to ill health was unable to stand and produced a scroll using the, then, very new coloured marker pens (what we call textas) and drawing on shelf paper which was 13 inches wide and over 30 feet long. This was around 1959.
Thanks for spotting that, Chris - I'll fix that glitch later today.
As to the detail about the scroll, it's one of several fascinating references fleshed out in the four scholarly introductions to the new edition of 'On The Road'. Well worth reading!
Was the unedited first draft of the novel really as Kerouac intended it to be read? That seems a little unusual, to say the least.
That implies that it was censurious publishers and editors that cut out the sexual references, rather than Kerouac himself, playing an editorial role (as authors often do.)
From what I little I know of Kerouac himself (admittedly very little) he was quite conservative, and a little judicious self-censorship could have been quite in character. Maybe he intended those sort of references to act as an implied subtext?
(I'll look out for your essay, btw)
I used to keep a copy of Millstein's review taped up next to my work desk, I loved it - first sentence follows:
"On the Road" is the second novel by Jack Kerouac, and its publication is a historic occasion in so far as the exposure of an authentic work of art is of any great moment in an age in which the attention is fragmented and the sensibilities are blunted by the superlatives of fashion (multiplied a millionfold by the speed and pound of communications).
"...Kerouac should be considered a modernist prose stylist in the league of Joyce or Woolf."
Are you sure?
I've always considerd Jack as an adolescent pleasure a bit like the doors, you read him when you are 15, 16 and love him but as you grow older you realise he was a bit of a fraud.
ah yes, the greater the reviewer makes his subject does the greater the reviewer become
dave - out of interest, in what sense do you consider Kerouac a fraud? I'm honestly curious to know your reasoning.
I tend to side with the likes of academic Joshua Kupetz, who describes Kerouac's work as 'a new American prose form'; a literature that abandoned the traditional narrative structure and tropes of the European novel, and which - informed by several years of research and numerous false starts - crystalised into the fast-paced first person vernacular style in which 'On The Road' is written.
I'd love to hear your take on this.
Post a Comment