Here we are for the latest installment of The Year of Kerouac. Which is likely now the Year-and-a-half-of-Kerouac since it’s already November. Let’s ignore twisted temporal tiddlywinks for the moment, though, and focus back on the mission: I have set myself the project of re-reading (and in many cases, reading for the first time) the works of Jack Kerouac in one(ish) year(s). As a quick refresher on the ground rules, I’m reading them not in the order of when they were written (the years on the left below) but rather in order of the subject matter most of them cover, Kerouac’s own life (the years to the right below). For your further edification, I’ve highlighted what I’ve read thus far, and put in links to my earlier reviews. 

Visions of Gerard             1956       1922–1926

I’m not going to lie to you. The Year of Kerouac may well become the Year-and-a-half-of-Kerouac. Especially given that this is my first post since May, which I can at least partially blame on the whole “I just moved to Vermont” thing. Which I should probably also write about some time! But in the mean time, I have been continuing my year-long project of re-reading (and in many cases, reading for the first time) the works of Jack Kerouac. As a quick refresher on the ground rules, I’m reading them not in the order of when they were written (the years on the left below) but rather in order of the subject matter most of them cover, Kerouac’s own life (the years to the right below). For your further edification, I’ve highlighted what I’ve read thus far, and put in links to my earlier reviews. 

Visions of Gerard             1956       1922–1926

I’ve sort of been avoiding The Town and the City throughout my whole Kerouac-inspired literary life, knowing that it was his most conventional novel. It is indeed conventional in language and structure, and feels very like “proper” 40ish-50ish American Literature. I.e., a little formal and stuffy, but with some beautiful passages along the way, places where you can almost feel his later prose style being born. And despite the formalism, I found it very engaging. It is one of his most thoroughly fictionalized works in a sense, presenting the sprawling story of the brothers and sisters in a Franco-American family from the fictional Galloway, Massachusetts. Of course, Galloway is a lot like his actual home-town of Lowell, and the parents are a lot like his real parents. And, having read the novels that covered his actual early years, and his other early writings previous to this, I was most struck by how non-fictional much of what’s presented is. It’s as if Kerouac has spread his own character out across the various fictional Martin brothers, and given each of them pieces of his actual biography. It made me aware of how much contradiction there was within the man himself- dreamy mystic, severe intellectual, family-bound boy, restless wanderer- here they all get to be actual separate characters. I also noticed that only here in all his writings, safely behind the veil of fiction, does he describe his father’s death, and tensions between father and son. Once spotted, you can see it hanging around in the background throughout On The Road and Visions of Cody. I also found it fascinating how he has the oldest brother, Joe, end up with the life he always thought he should have lived, settled with wife and child near ancestral home, but ends the novel with the main protagonist, Peter, literally getting on the road, about to hitch across the country. Cue the segue…  

It’s a popular theory in arm chair Kerouacanalysis that he became so embittered by the gap between this first success in 1950 and finally getting On The Road published in 1957 that he never really recovered despite later success. It certainly is true, as you can verify by looking at the dates above of when things were written, that his productivity dropped off markedly after 1957, and the works that were produced after that were darker in tone. The book itself, of course, was the first flowering of the breakthrough of his prose style (and, for added effect, obliquely chronicles at several points his finishing the manuscript of The Town and the City, and in its original form even began by referencing the death of his father that the earlier book chronicles towards its end). This is my third time reading it, and one of the things I observe is how what I saw in it each time depended very much on where I was in life. At 19-20 I was primarily keyed in to the adventure of the drugs, the sex, the travel, seeing it as a road map (all puns intended) for what I wanted to find in life. Much mayhem ensued from this line of thinking. Reading it again in my early 30s, as I was really seriously diving in to writing myself, I paid most attention to the prose, both in appreciation and in evaluation of the “how did he do that?” nuts and bolts aspects of the writing. Now, reading it at 42, besides noticing how I keep getting 10 years older every 10 years or so, what really stood out for me was the man behind the prose and the wandering. I have absorbed a lot of Kerouac and other Beat biographies over the years, and recently loaded up on his earlier writings, which definitely informs my sense of it. But, more than that, I myself have absorbed enough life now to really feel the internal contradictions, the restlessness, and the weariness and disappointment of the man behind the story. Not to mention that recovery has given me a whole other perspective on Kerouac as the alcoholic who still suffers. If I read it again in another 10 years or so, I’ll be older than he ever lived to be. I wonder what I’ll see in it then?            

Kerouac himself described Visions of Cody as a companion to On The Road, in which he covered “vertically” the heights and depths of the relationship with Neal Cassady which he had portrayed in a horizontal, chronological fashion in the earlier book. This is indeed the next batch of material he wrote after On The Road, although it was only published after his death. Even before publication, though, underground copies of it circulated, and had a profound effect on writers in the 60s. It’s easy to see why, as this is some of Kerouac’s writing at its most experimental. I actually found it to be a little thick reading at several points, and kept thinking of the dense and opaque prose of Proust and Joyce. Kerouac himself references them at several points, and I think was deliberately invoking this style of the plumbing of consciousness and all its contents, focused, sometimes very tangentially, through meditations on Cody Pomeray, aka Dean Moriarty from On The Road, aka Neal Cassady. As such, there are parts that are tedious, parts that invoke a cringe (especially where the inner monologue of Kerouac the misogynist “lover” of women is on full display), and parts that glow with nearly prophetic insight and absolutely amazing prose. And that in itself is the point- he’s presenting all the truth of his mental life, without fear or favor. The literary feat, in a way, is as important as the content, the feat itself is its own content. An additional bonus is a 30-page end-note section in which Allen Ginsberg documents his reactions upon reading the manuscript for the first time in the early 70s in the wake of the loss of these two men that he loved.  

So now you’re caught up on my literary journey of this year, and I’m caught up. Further installments to follow…        

Presented here for your edification (and possible emancipation) is the latest installment of The Year Of Kerouac, my year-long project of re-reading (or in some cases, reading for the first time) the works of Jack Kerouac. As a quick refresher on the ground rules, I’m reading them not in the order of when they were written (the years on the left below) but rather in order of the subject matter most of them cover, Kerouac’s own life (the years to the right below). I’ve highlighted what I’ve read thus far, and put in links to my earlier reviews. 

Visions of Gerard             1956       1922–1926

Vanity of Duluoz is a book I’d actually been quite curious about. I knew it was one of the last things Kerouac wrote, finishing and publishing it the year before he died. I had also heard that it was one of his worst books, and showed the signs of having been written by a late-stage alcoholic. So what’s the verdict? No. And yes. At first I actually quite liked it for perhaps exactly those qualities that others had keyed in on- a relaxed informal flow, rather like hearing a story from the guy on the bar stool next to you, asides, garrulous outbursts, and all. And it really is an interesting text in some ways- presented as an explanation of his younger days to his wife, Stella, and keeping many of the trappings of fictional narrative, but continuously aware of the author as a subject, even occasionally pausing to give the real names behind the “fictional” characters. I found it to be quite engaging much of the way through (despite the preoccupation with football stories in the author’s younger life), but eventually it turns and starts to feel sloppy. This actually reminds me of my own experience of writing while drinking in days gone past- at first it loosens up the flow and actually improves things, until you hit the inflection point where impairment starts to outweigh dis-inhibition. It’s especially unfortunate that the sloppiness really starts to set in around the time period I was most interested in, the formation of the proto-Beat movement in the late 40s. It does give you quite a sense, though, of the ambition and innocence of the younger man behind the bitterly burned-out older man, and the beginnings of the restless wandering that would dominate his life. Which becomes even more heartbreaking when you read…

Atop an Underwood. This is one of a few select violations on my reading list of a policy of only reading things Kerouac actually published in his lifetime. Especially as interest in Kerouac re-grew in the 90s, there have been a string of posthumous releases, some of which have a great deal of integrity as literary products. And some of which, well… In this case, we have a collection of his work as a neophyte writer before he began work on his publishing debut, The Town and the City. It seemed worthwhile, as I was interested in this phase of his development, and it is, after all, what he was actually writing while living the life covered in Vanity of Duluoz. Some of it is certainly stilted and formulaic, and shows the signs of the imitative “how do I do this?” stage that young writers often go through. It reminded me of my own teens and early 20s writing in that way. But it also shows that, even as a very young man, he was amazingly talented, and possessed of an impressive depth of mind and broadness of vision. It is also shot through with a desire to achieve great things and produce something new in the world. It makes quite a contrast with the narrator of Duluoz, embittered with life and thoroughly disenchanted with his own literary legacy. I think he could have benefited from reacquainting himself with the optimism, vision and drive of his youth. Perhaps we all could!      

The Year Of Kerouac, my year-long project of re-reading (or in some cases, reading for the first time) the works of Jack Kerouac, continues. I’m reading them not in the order of when they were written (the years on the left below) but rather in order of the subject matter most of them cover, Kerouac’s own life (the years to the right below). You can read my review of the first book at the link below…

All caught up now? Good! On to the reviews of the next two…

Doctor Sax is a weirdly wonderful book, one of the most unusual, and best, of all of Kerouac’s works. On one level, it’s an account of boyhood daydreams, and a particular historical event (a great flood in his hometown). In this way, it’s a natural continuation of the haunted childhood depicted in Visions of Gerard. On another, it mixes in himself as the present-day narrator, along with dreams from his contemporary life. And on a third, it’s a mythic struggle between the mysterious Dr. Sax and a Great Serpent that clearly exists in the realm of fantasy and fable. Along with the subject matter, the narrative too shifts back and forth between straightforward narrative, and more fantastical sequences full of neologisms and nonsense words. It certainly shows the influence of William S. Burroughs, with whom he was staying when he wrote much of it. It’s a joy to read, and definitely shows Kerouac at his most creative and most fictional, in fact creating something very like the “metafiction” that became popular in the 90s and 00s.

Maggie Cassidy is in a sense the most readable of the three books that I’ve covered so far, in that it is an extremely straightforward narrative and also the most grammatically “proper” of the three. Despite that (or maybe because of that) it’s the one I’ve liked least. It may be that the writing is too prosaic for my taste, or it may be that a lot of the subject matter is about sports and adolescent boyhood, two subjects I don’t much care for. The main subject of the narrative, the blossoming of his first love with the title character, also highlights one of Kerouac’s least admirable points- his co-mingled mythologized idealization of the feminine with his fear and misogyny toward the same. For all that, there are some really touching passages, particularly involving his relationship with his father, and the by the end of the book I appreciated it as a bridge between Lowell and the boyhood world of Dr. Sax and Visions of Gerard, and the New York and restless wandering of the adult Kerouac.

(As a final note, I read it as an e-book, so I didn’t get the 50s pulp-cover in the picture, but that is pretty damn spectacular.)      

Do you know what a New Year calls for? A new literary resolution! For this year, mine is to read the full works of someone who’s long been one of my muses, Jack Kerouac. I remember late nights up in my parent’s living room while home on college break, reading his works, and biographies of him and the other Beats. Sneaking vodka from the bottle I had hidden in my suitcase, mixing it with kool-aid at 1 AM and reading, my head aswirl with the words (and the vodka), dreaming of literary greatness.

That, of course, was an adolescent dream, and not coincidentally a preview of bottoming out myself nearly two decades hence. But it was also significant in awakening my literary ambitions and poetic vision, and he and the Beats remain a touchstone for me to this day. It is impossible to overestimate the influence they’ve had on creative output in all genres since the 50s, the way they made space in American literary life for subjects and points of view that had been ignored and/or forbidden. And personally, I’ve found that the depths of their vision, and meaning and warnings of their lives, keep revealing new facets to me as I get older.

So here I am at 42, only a few younger than Kerouac when he died, and at the perfect age to discover the secret of Life, the Universe and Everything. It seemed like an opportune time to look back. In brief, what I plan to do is read all the works he meant to publish (as opposed to the flood of sometimes questionable posthumous editions), plus a select one or two more. Furthermore, I’m going to read them in the order of the main subject he himself choose, the chronicle of his life. That is, I’ll read them by the period in his life they cover, rather than when they were written.

In more depth, the works I’m going to try to complete are (with the year they were written, and the period of his life they cover, listed after):  

I’ve just completed the first of these, Visions of Gerard. Though written in the mid-period of his career, during his mid-50s peak of output, it actually covers events in the earliest period of his life, the death of his older brother Gerard when he was four. It is a profoundly melancholy little book, just 130 pages. I actually had trouble getting in to the reading at first, since it comes from one of his most experimental periods, but once I was in, it had amazing depths. It is equal parts nostalgic childhood reminiscence, exposition on the ephemeral nature of life, and exploration of the birth of his own psyche. He presents his dying young brother as a sensitive youth prone to mystical vision. But of course, he’s also presenting himself in this portrait, as he even says, “At that age I was Gerard.” I’m realizing reading it that Kerouac’s sense of the bleakness of this life,  mystical superposition of this realm and realms beyond, and desire to let everyone know about how close liberation lies began at a very young age. Of course some of this is written on to events after, but he’s clearly getting at the root of how he saw the world here too. A special additional pleasure for me, now that I’ve been living on the North Shore of the Boston Area for a year and a half, is the portrait of Lowell in the 20s. I can feel, smell and taste things in his descriptions that might have escaped me before.

Next, I’ll continue his portrayal of early life in Lowell with Doctor Sax.