Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.
-Jack Kerouac, On The Road (all pull quotes below are from On The Road)
The London Library is full of writers. I ran into one of my regular acquaintances in the lobby and we exchanged pleasantries and I mentioned I had been listening to Jack Kerouac’s On The Road on audiobook on my long walk in from Notting Hill. “What is it that was said about Kerouac?” he said. “That isn’t writing at all—it’s typing.”
On the Road is a 1957 novel by American writer Jack Kerouac, based on the travels of Kerouac and his friends across the United States. It is considered a defining work of the postwar Beat and Counterculture generations, with its protagonists living life against a backdrop of jazz, poetry, and drug use. The novel is a roman à clef, with many key figures of the Beat movement, such as William S. Burroughs (Old Bull Lee), Allen Ginsberg (Carlo Marx), and Neal Cassady (Dean Moriarty) represented by characters in the book, including Kerouac, himself, as the narrator, Sal Paradise.
The idea for On the Road, Kerouac's second novel, was formed during the late 1940s, in a series of notebooks, and then typed out on a continuous reel of paper during three weeks in April 1951. It was published by Viking Press in 1957.
The New York Times hailed the book's appearance as "the most beautifully executed, the clearest, and the most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac, himself, named years ago as 'beat,' and whose principal avatar he is." In 1998, the Modern Library ranked On the Road 55th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. The novel was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.
At first I thought my writer friend was referring to the initial, breakthrough review of On The Road in The New York Times. The regular literary critic was on holiday and by chance the book hit the desk of the stand-in reviewer, Gilbert Millstein, who proclaimed, “Its publication is a historic occasion…an authentic work of art…The writing is of a beauty almost breathtaking.” And he quoted what would become the canonical lines from the novel: “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...”
When the regular reviewer came back he was scandalized that something so complimentary should be said about a writer not included in the approved, commonly accepted set and wrote a counter review damning the book, but it was too late. Kerouac’s career was launched. Millstein, for his punishment, was never allowed to write reviews for the paper again.
"What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? - it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.”
But my writer friend was referring to another critic of Kerouac, someone else who felt threatened by his attempt to create a new, experimental voice— the famous writer Truman Capote.
Capote’s novelist friend Normal Mailer was a fan of the Beat writers, he recognized their attempt to create a new voice to express the tide of creative post-war energy that filled America’s youth, the sense of being free of constraint and a conservative culture that had, after all, led to the world nearly destroying itself. Capote dismissed them all, specifically Kerouac, with a sweeping verbal critique, an appeal to ignorance and status quo: That isn’t writing at all—it’s typing.
I tried to talk my writer friend around but his uncle had edited the Beats and didn’t rate Kerouac, so the nephew’s mind was made up. What a shame to miss Kerouac. It made me wonder what it was that his uncle didn’t think was worth rating?
On reflection, I’m certain it was the same thing that threatened the reviewer at The New York Times, Truman Capote, conservative commentator William F. Buckley and many others who tried to write Kerouac off as drunk, a hippie, a beatnik, a bum.
Someone like Kerouac is confronting to the conservative, established voices of every generation because it threatens the prosperity and foundation of prestige that they’ve established for themselves. Kerouac felt that hostility keenly and on the few American television shows where he appeared for interviews he appears drunk, even when helped out by his friend Steve Allen. The exception in the Steve Allen show is that once he gets reading from On The Road (maybe he chose the preface in a drunken error on live television, but he still makes a masterful poetic rendition of it), the poet in him hits its stride and you get a sense of what moved through Kerouac, electrified him when he captured his time on the road in one three week writing session on a continuous roll of paper.
A drunk? A down-and-out hippie? Someone who types, but can’t write? Kerouac was a student at Columbia University, was lauded by the best of the Beat writers like William Burroughs and Alan Ginsberg and inspired Bob Dylan and his music. He also studied writing and American Literature under Elbert Lenrow at The New School. I’m currently reading Kerouac Ascending which includes Kerouac’s essays on his hero, the author Thomas Wolfe alongside Wake Up, Kerouac’s biographical retelling of the life of Buddha.
"I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it, the senseless emptiness.”
Kerouac was bilingual, his first language was French and there are new academic studies that demonstrate how French affected the musicality of his writing along with the use of bilingual wordplay
“The deep rich fat grass lies in serried heaps along the trail of his machine.”
-From Kerouac’s spontaneous poetry collection Book of Sketches (“gras” or “grasse” in French means “fat”)
There have recently appeared previously unknown Kerouac novels written entirely in French. Here he is being interviewed for the French-Canadian television show Celine, where he appears much more comfortable than he is facing American hosts, perhaps because they were more willing to embrace him for who he was, rather than try to force an ill-fitting constructed image upon him.
In terms of this review of On The Road, I haven’t really delved into or attempted to analyze the contents of the book as much as tried to provide a framework for who the author was, why it’s worth your while and what to keep in mind when reading it.
What happens in On The Road? A gross, superficial reading might be: "Some hippies roam about America living the best lives they can with not very much money. Shit happens."
There's more to it than that, though, much more. What Kerouac is trying to capture is the energy of the moment, the electric quality of being on the road and not knowing what tomorrow will bring, an American Zen. In Chinese thought, the word “dao” literally means the road or the way, but also has the meaning of “the way of being in life that sees the harmony and chance of opposites”. There’s no doubt that Kerouac has this in mind when he chose the title. The way is spontaneous, electric, sensitive, and that’s what Kerouac explores in his recounting of his adventures.
An interesting comparison can be made between 19th century American poet Walt Whitman and Kerouac. Whitman met a similar pushback from establishment figures in 1855 with the release of his breakthrough poetry book Leaves of Grass.
Leaves of Grass is also notable for its discussion of delight in sensual pleasures during a time when such candid displays were considered immoral. The book was highly controversial during its time for its explicit sexual imagery, and Whitman was subjected to derision by many contemporary critics.
But with time :
Leaves of Grass as a poetry collection changed the course of American history politically, artistically, and perceptually. It's famous today as one of the most influential texts on perception of the American wild.
“Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you. You must travel it by yourself. It is not far. It is within reach. Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know. Perhaps it is everywhere - on water and land.” ― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
Walt Whitman (1819-1892), age 35, frontispiece to Leaves of Grass, Fulton St., Brooklyn, N.Y., 1855, steel engraving by Samuel Hollyer from a lost daguerreotype by Gabriel Harrison.
To touch the electricity of a country as it’s changing course and channel its energy is no small thing. In this way Kerouac is the rightful inheritor of Whitman. Restlessness, energy, optimism, freshness, spontaneity, Kerouac had his finger on the pulse.
“Sal, we gotta go and never stop going 'till we get there.” ''Where we going, man?” “I don't know but we gotta go.”
Kerouac is America’s drunken Zen prophet, like the Chinese Zen monk Ji Gong:
Jìgōng (濟公) was born in 1130 CE (other accounts say 1148). After the death of his parents at the age of 18, Li was sent to Hangzhou and was ordained as a monk in Lingyin Temple, a temple of the Chán (Zen) school. He was mentored by the Vinaya master Huiyuan and was given the monastic name Dàojì (道濟, which could be interpreted as "Helper on the Way"). Unlike traditional Buddhist monks, Dàojì did not like following traditional monastic codes. He had a penchant for openly eating meat and drinking wine; his robes were often tattered and dirty from traveling from place to place, and he stumbled clumsily as he walked from intoxication. However, Dàojì was kindhearted and was always ready to lend a helping hand to ordinary people. He would often treat the sick and fight against injustice. The monks, bewildered and fed up with his behavior, expelled Dàojì from the monastery. From then on, Dàojì roamed the streets and helped people whenever he could.
This statue is of Ji Gong, a Buddhist Monk of which many Chinese tales are told. This is located in a Zhuhai park (where the Macau water is stored) and is closed all but twice a year.
According to legend, while cultivating Buddhist practices, Dàojì attained supernatural powers. Many who noticed his eccentric yet benevolent and compassionate nature began to think that he was the emanation of a bodhisattva, or the incarnation of an arhat. He was widely recognized by people as the incarnation of the Dragon Subduing Arhat (降龍羅漢, Xiánglóng Luóhàn), one of the Eighteen Arhats. Later he became known as Jìgōng (济公, "the Honorable Helper"), a title of respect derived from his monastic name, Dàojì (道济).
Later syncretic Taoism began to revere Jìgōng as a deity. Not long after that, Chinese Buddhist institutions began to recognize his compassionate efforts, and he was incorporated into Chinese Buddhism. He is also featured as an interlocutor in many classic kōans of the Chán (Zen) school.
A Ji Gong spirit medium drinks alcohol from gourd at temple festival, Taitian Temple of Nankunshen, Kun Chiang Village, Beimen District, Tainan
Ji Gong can usually be seen smiling in tattered monastic robes and oversized bead necklaces. He usually carries a bottle of wine in his right hand, and a fan in his left hand. He wears a hat with the Chinese character Fo (佛), meaning "Buddha". He can also be seen holding his shoes in his right hand. Because of his carefree nature, he is rarely ever shown with a serious facial expression.
I guess this article could be subtitled “Fear of the New” which reminds me of fellow Australian Robert Hughes who wrote a book called The Shock of the New, trying to educate a conservative art audience about new artists like Picasso and de Chirico, only to be caught out and shocked himself when a new wave of artists arrived in the 1980s.
When artist Jean-Michel Basquiat died in 1988, Hughes took the opportunity to mark his death with an article titled “Requiem of a Featherweight”, I suppose a kind of coffin-nail critique designed to bury Basquiat’s contribution along with his body.
“If any artist may be said to have parodied, not just illustrated, the contemporary-art boom of the 1980s, he was Jean-Michel Basquiat, who died of heroin in New York last August at the age of 27. Basquiat was living proof, and not only for the freshmen at Cooper Union, that one could make it straight out of the egg—no waiting. One marveled at such innocence. For the truth about this prodigy was rather less edifying. It was a tale of a small, untrained talent caught in the buzz saw of artworld promotion, absurdly overrated by dealers, collectors, and, no doubt to their future embarrassment, by critics. This was partly because Basquiat was black. The otherwise monochrome Late American Art Industry felt a need to refresh itself with a touch of the “primitive.”
What a dickhead. Thankfully, Kerouac’s critics, who likewise tried to dismiss him as a kind of irrelevant caricature, are fading out of cultural memory while Basquiat and Kerouac continue to shine ever brighter.
The Buddha tells us that if we wish to achieve enlightenment we must divest ourselves of fear and desire. Hughes, Buckley and other critics are establishment figures, filled with fear, desiring to protect their own platform, trapped in their time by timidity. Kerouac was not only a new voice but someone seeking to blow open conservatism to a new view of spirituality that fused East and West, an experiential model derived through poetic expression.
Shine on Jack!
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Bonus Content: Bob Dylan reads from On The Road, Kerouac Records + Novel Excerpts
“I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was - I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost.”
“Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk — real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious.”
"...the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all the rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.”
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