I watched On the Road on one of the cable channels last night because I had writer’s block and couldn’t sleep. It was a pretty terrible movie, hardly distinguishable from dozens of stupid grifter/drifter movies also inspired by Jack Kerouac’s most iconic novel. It’s a weird thing that I haven’t actually read that book. I’ve read everything even passingly related to it. As a serious Grateful Dead fan, I knew about Neal Cassady/Dean Moriarty totally independently from reading Kerouac. I’ve read pretty much everything ever written about Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. I always had the intention of reading On the Road, but somehow never got around to it.
Still, it seems that I’ve carried around a picture in my head about what the book is about. As soon as I was old enough, I packed up my blue 1982 Ford Escort and left New Jersey for Los Angeles by the southern route. Even before that, I toured the country following the Dead with my own band of Merry Pranksters. I have always understood the call of the road. Maybe I learned it from Bruce Springsteen, who grew up down the road from me in Freehold. Maybe it’s a New Jersey thing. There is a hardly a soul I grew up with who is still living in my hometown. We all had to get out while we were still young.
In any case, the movie version of the book wasn’t very flattering or romantic, and it certainly provided little that I would want to emulate. Both Kerouac and Cassady died grim, early deaths. Were they false prophets? Or did their lives really have the meaning so many have attributed to them?
So in 1982, you packed up a 1982 Ford Escort and went on the road. What made you do that? What did you expect to find? What did you actually find?
What exactly is a false prophet? A bad predictor? Or someone who glosses over the contradictions of their society and times?
I find the word “romantic” and “flattering” to be as far from the intentions of the Beat movement as to make me wonder the frame in which you first encountered Beat literature. For my generation it was definitely extra-curricular and most of us became aware of those works at least a decade after they were published.
So we have a book that was started immediately after World War II and written by a member of what marketers call the Silent Generation. He does not succeed in publishing it until 1957, when it becomes a cult classic for the Beat movement. And the Beat movement is so threatening to mainstream culture that it is satirized in the character of Maynard G. Krebs, who was able to occupy a park (with the statue of Rodin’s “Thinker” in it) and seduce the minds of middle class kids in the same way as Fonzie in Happy Days 20 years later. (But Fonzie wasn’t a Beat.)
So what are those journeys in early adulthood about? On the Road is not the first “road trip” buddy novel. And is the function of a novel to provide models for emulation? Especially a post-World War II novel?
For some reason, a noticeable number of artists die grim, early deaths regardless of the period of history. Musicians in the late 1960s are striking for my generation. But there was also Poe and Hemingway in earlier generations. And many others.
If it’s America and American culture, the first impulse of youth is to get out of town. Is it the perception that staying in one place stultifies, numbs, routinizes, or is it just a matter that familiar surrounding are devalued and novelty is attractive?
Before there was the road trip, there was the frontier.
Right.
I believe Chaucer holds that honor.
Unless of course you go back to Homer.
AG
Kerouac was a bullshit writer. He was blown way out of proportion by the American hottest-thing-ever star machine. Compared to any number of his contemporaries, his writing stumbles along like a drunk on amphetamines. He was lucky to have been born good-looking.
Why do I say this? Besides having read and re-read all of Shakespeare, all of Steinbeck, all of Faulkner, all of Joyce, all of Pynchon and all of Burroughs just for starters? I am a jazz musician. I know what really happens on the bandstand because I played with some of the musicians that Kerouac so hero-worshipped. He wrote some of the lamest “jazz” descriptions that have ever been put to paper.
Like this from “On The Road”:
Clomp clomp fucking clomp.
Or this:
What hero-worshipping, wanna-be-hip-but-squarer-than-shit tripe!!! Man, if that shit had happened when Mingus, Miles or any number of other players…myself included…was playing there would have been some good ol’ jazz ultraviolence in the works.
Compare that to Thomas Pynchon’s take on Bird. (Oh, by the way…”Red” is Malcolm X and the initial setting is The Roseland State Ballroom in Roxbury, Boston’s Harlem at the time.)
Pynchon swings like a great jazz soloist.
“…his trip, by `39, well begun: down inside his most affirmative solos honks already the idle, amused dum-de-dumming of old Mister fucking Death he self…
Lord!!! Bird’s whole story compressed into in one life sentence!!!
Or Leonard Feather’s ongoing love affair with the music, also started at the Roseland:
But at least Kerouac was honest.
Bet on it.
He didn’t know shit.
Bet on it.
AG
Stylizing yourself as the arbiter of what is great music and literature is sort of boring since your taste is rather narrow. I’ve slogged my way through mid-twentieth century jazz, Pynchon, and Burroughs and still don’t like any of that art. Kerouac never interested me enough even to try.
Shakespeare, Steinbeck, and Faulkner are in different categories from those above; so, are accessible to rubes like me. While I have never been able to get through Joyce, I’ve also never met anyone that’s read all that William Gaddis wrote. Plenty that claim “The Recognitions” is the best first half of book they ever read and not one that finished it. (In fairness, the second half isn’t very good.) His masterpiece is “JR” – but it’s not an easy read until one gets the rhythm – it’s both very funny and prescient.
Thankfully, there no shortage of good and great lit and music outside your box.
Kerouac was a hack. “Mid-20th century jazz” was the work of a number of flat-out geniuses and a whole bunch of really talented people who kept the flame alive. Still do, despite tone-deaf/rhythm-deaf fools like you and the governmental media complex that misedumacates them in the name of officially enforced mediocrity. If you don’t hear Bird, Diz, Gil Evans, ‘Trane, Miles, Getz, Brookmeyer, Bill Evans, Mingus and their many allies and descendants, if you do not get Burroughs and Pynchon (among many other writers and artists) then you have been left behind. But take heart…at least you are not alone. Not by a long shot.
Not by a long shot.
AG
Music is a pretty subjective thing. The entry points for jazz for me were largely thanks to an interest in aspects of punk and postpunk. I can put on recordings by Gang of Four, Cabaret Voltaire, Black Flag, and of a number of No Wave artists and so on from back in the late 1970s/early 1980s and then put on records by Human Arts Ensemble, Defunkt, Blue Humans, Lounge Lizards, Ornette Coleman’s Prime Time, etc., and it seemed obvious to my ears that they must have been all listening to some shared influences – very funky, very angular, very strident sounding. Loved it. That was a great era to be around. There are some contemporary jazzers I love to recommend, such as Matthew Shipp, Susie Ibarra, David S Ware, Steve Reid (especially his duos with Kieran Hebden), Chicago Underground, Electric Barbarian, Medeski Martin & Wood, who all have something to say. And of course one can never go wrong with Miles Davis from any era (even his attempt at jazz rap was interesting). Just my two cents.
Gang of Four- what a genius band. This white boy’s mind was blown when he heard “Damaged Goods” and “Contract” for the first time. Same goes with most of the songs on the “Entertainment” album, for that matter:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmiwPZczUy8
And yes, art in general is often experienced subjectively. That’s why those who click the link may be displeased by what they hear. I’m still glad to have shared something with those who will enjoy what they hear. I’ll check out some of your references here as well, Don.
It’s BooMan’s blog, so he sets the snob standard here. All the same, what insufferable snobs we have on this thread. Kerouac succeeded with “On The Road.” He captured wispy frames of mind and types of experiences often enjoyed and suffered by young, irresponsible people when they’re being young and irresponsible. And, he entertained many millions while doing it.
It’s not a great novel; I don’t feel the desire to reread it. That doesn’t take away from Jack’s achievement. If others on this thread didn’t enjoy “On The Road”, that’s fine. Claiming Kerouac was an artistic failure is another thing entirely.
I struggle mightily with iambic pentameter, but you won’t see me claiming Shakespeare sucks. And yes, snobs, I know Kerouac wasn’t Shakespeare’s equal.
The thing about snobbery: it kills scenes. I’m not surprised that the jazz scene all but disappeared here in the US. It isn’t that the music became inaccessible, but that there were just too many very vocal assholes who were bound and determined to chase off anyone who wasn’t considered “cool” enough. I love the music – heck I used to even have a college radio jazz show many moons ago. I could make the same observations with the punk scene or the indie-rock scene back in the 1980s. At some point, folks like me walked away in disgust because of all the dickwaving among the most vocal of the scenesters. The music was fine, but the baggage that came with it – not so much. I figured that any revolution where we couldn’t have a good time in the process was not worth having. There’s an old Dead Kennedys song called “Do the Slag” that should be required listening (or at least the lyrics should be required reading).
But yeah, I like what you said – and that Gang of Four album is one of the classics. 🙂
Thanks for the thoughtful response, and for the music tips. Enjoying what I’m hearing from many of them- Human Arts Ensemble could put up an entertaining cacophony! I’m pretty middlebrow these days so I’m less willing to go into the far regions with some of your recommendations, but so far so good.
And yeah, East Bay Ray laid down a nice solo in between Jello’s truth-telling:
Don’t let new people in our scene/It’s more fun than having a friend
on point, and you can slam-dance to it!
Oooh! You should exactly like the Conservative writers!
Don’t read the book. It’s awful, badly written and chock full of self-flattery and egotistical pseudo-romantic posturing. Kerouac, the original hipster poseur. The “lure of the open road” seems, IMHO, to be an individual acting out the Hero’s Journey Myth. You set out to “find yourself”, hoping to prove your uniqueness, confront an epic battle, i.e., slay the dragon, and win the prize of your identity. In Kerouac’s case, he lost the battle. The dragon ate him.
It’s right there between the lines like an unintended cautionary tale. Because when the Journey fails to bring out the Hero, the road trip is exposed as a reckless waste of time and a delaying tactic to avoid being an adult. And you might not survive being so completely self-absorbed. Those who glorified these wastrels were seeking to glamorize their own failures to achieve Hero status, to make that failure itself an heroic achievement.
Excessive self-indulgence is not heroic. The Beat persona was characterized by apathy and ennui. They looked into the abyss of Existentialism and declared life to be meaningless and boring. But no one can be a Hero without believing their efforts can make a difference, making that effort, and actually caring. Kerouac did not care about anything but wallowing in his own self-inflected angst and contrived torment. He lacked the Hero’s courage to summon hope out of darkness.
Ken Kesey, OTOH, knew how to have FUN! It’s not an entirely wasted trip if you arrive with happy memories. You might not achieve Hero status but damn, you have a good time failing to be exceptional.
“In Kerouac’s case, he lost the battle. The dragon ate him.
It’s right there between the lines like an unintended cautionary tale.”
I admired this about “On The Road.” Kerouac’s characters pay prices for their self-absorption. I wouldn’t even say that it’s in between the lines; it’s on the page. Kind of like Bukowski that way, but yes, Charles, like Ken, had a better sense of humor than Jack.
And, self-flattery? Say what? Sal Paradise is a morose wreck who desperately tries to run away from his problems and looks to others to carry his weight. Sure, the attempts to romanticize the adventure of the road trips are there, but so is the pain. So, when we see that “He lacked the Hero’s courage to summon hope out of darkness,” it rings with truth.
BTW, isn’t everyone’s angst self-inflicted?
For offbeat, check out Gene Kelly and Deanna Durbin in Christmas Holiday. Have no idea how this ever got made nor who the intended audience was. If Kelly and Durbin, and the happy sounding title, packed them into the theater, the audience likely left scratching their heads saying, “wtf was that?”
Marie, I clicked the link and watched that. The whole hour and a half thing. Yes, WTF was that? :0)
War on Christmas? Might be the only truly subversive movie ever made. A possible total antidote to all the treacly Christmas fare that inundates us every year. Too bad it fails on that and every other measure.
But you have to admit that it has to be seen to be believed.
Funny that Kerouac has become the poster boy for the Beats when he was the least representative. Not as funny is outside of academia the women are almost unknown and unread.
“Poster boy”
Precisely.
Precisely.
Thank you.
AG
A lot of voices well worth recommending. A good start:
Women of the Beat Generation
Kerouac’s On the road was my own on-the-road read in the summer of 1978 headed from California to the Alberta Rockies for a month of geologic field work. The book was boring as hell. But I was almost wishing I had packed it with me when I was sitting out a torrential rain in my tent and reading Ayn Rand’s The fountainhead, given to me by my tentmate, who thought Rand’s rapist hero, Robert Roark, was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Digby likes to refer to Rand’s novels as “bodice rippers”, a rather accurate description.
The world will always have its self-appointed arbiters of taste like Arthur Gilroy. Some of them even think Ayn Rand was a good writer.
Just read the book. There’s a reason Ken Kesey and Iain Sinclair regard Kerouac as a seminal writer–although not necessarily a great one.
I read On the Road years ago, when I was in my early 20’s. It was pressed on me by someone who just adored him. I liked the book well enough at the time, tried reading some of his other stuff and didn’t get very far. But I still recall being in my 20’s and the appeal of writing that described the call of the road, even if I don’t recall the writing.
Oddly, though, reading the excerpts Arthur Gilroy has quoted here, I’m struck by the almost complete absence of cliche! It’s arresting. A difficult thing to manage and make seem so effortless. And reading the excerpts, I also see (and recall, I think) why Kerouac didn’t really capture me: his writing is also pretty much meaningless. He didn’t know what he was about. He knew what he was drawn to and he wrote it down well, but any meaning the reader is going to take from it has to be almost totally constructed in the reader’s own mind. And when all you have to work with is fleeting images zipping past the passenger window, well, eventually you move on.
If you want to try a writer who is also completely without cliche (which is what made me think of him in connection with this discussion of Kerouac) and who also wrote at least one book about the rootlessness of that time period (but Latin American rather than U.S.) — but who will haunt you with the “secret story” (as Francine Prose put it), read The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño. As another critic put it: “I am addicted to the haze that floats above Bolaño’s fiction.” As am I.
Anyway, I was going to say maybe Kerouac could’ve “broken through” or something if he’d lived longer… but Bolaño died at 50. So I don’t think that’s it.
There was a biopic on Neal Cassady that came out around 2007 or so – used to get shown on Sundance channel from time to time. The portrayal of both Cassady and Kerouac was far from flattering. Cassady just seemed so much like a lost soul, more of a novelty to the counter-culture of the mid-1960s, and Kerouac was portrayed as an out of touch, socially inept drunk, whose best years were way behind him.
“On the Road” was a good enough read back when I was a teen at the start of the 1980s. I don’t know how I would react to it today. It did open my mind up to a lot of existentialist novels, short stories, and plays from a similar era (roughly the 1930s-1950s), and also some of the American Transcendentalists from an earlier century.