TOP93-DES90
This Old Poem #93:
Jack Kerouac’s Courage
Copyright © by Dan Schneider, 6/5/04
There is an irony to this TOP’s title because the ‘poet’ in question never displayed a hint of the titular quality- neither in life nor in art. But I won’t delve in to the manifest reasons that Jack Kerouac is a mediocre prosist since it is his terrible poetry that’s the issue here. But, 1st, a word from our sponsor (oh, not really- just the obligatory generic online bio):
Jack Kerouac was born Jean-Louis Kerouac, a French-Canadian child on
March 12, 1922 in working-class Lowell, Massachusetts. Jean spoke a local dialect of French called joual
before he learned English. His older brother Gerard died of rheumatic fever at
the age of nine. Jean was an
intense boy devoted to his mother and was driven to create stories from a young
age, inspired first by the mysterious radio show 'The Shadow,' and later by the
fervid novels of Thomas Wolfe.
Lowell
thrived as the center of New England's textile industry, but by the time of
Kerouac's birth it had begun to sink into poverty. Kerouac's father, a printer
and well-known local businessman, began to suffer financial difficulties, and
started gambling in the hope of restoring prosperity to the household. Young
Jack hoped to save the family himself by winning a football scholarship to
Columbia University in New York. He tried and failed to fit in with the military
(World War II had begun) and ended up sailing with the Merchant Marines. When he
wasn't sailing, he was hanging around New York with a crowd his parents did not
approve of: depraved young Columbia students Allen Ginsberg and Lucien Carr, a
strange but brilliant older downtown friend named William S. Burroughs, and a
joyful street cowboy from Denver named Neal Cassady. Kerouac had already begun
writing a novel 'The Town and the City,' which earned him respect and some
recognition as a writer, although it did not make him famous.
It would be
a long time before he would be published again. He decided to write about his
cross-country trips exactly as they had happened, without pausing to edit,
fictionalize or even think. He presented the resulting manuscript to his editor
on a single long roll of unbroken paper, but the editor did not share his
enthusiasm and the relationship was broken. Kerouac would suffer seven years of
rejection before 'On The Road' would be published.
He spent
the early 1950's writing one unpublished novel after another, carrying them
around in a rucksack as he roamed back and forth across the country. 'On The
Road' was finally published in 1957, and when it became a tremendous popular
success Kerouac did not know how to react. Embittered by years of rejection, he
was suddenly expected to snap to and play the part of Young Beat Icon for the
public. He was older and sadder than everyone expected him to be, and probably
far more intelligent as well. Literary critics, objecting to the Beat 'fad,'
refused to take Kerouac seriously as a writer and began to ridicule his work,
hurting him tremendously. Certainly the Beat Generation was a fad, Kerouac knew,
but his own writing was not.
He
published many books during these years, but most had been written earlier,
during the early 50's when he could not find a publisher. He kept busy,
appearing on TV shows, writing magazine articles and recording three spoken-word
albums, but his momentum as a serious writer had been completely disrupted.
Defeated
and lonesome, he left California to live with his mother in Long Island, and
would not stray from his mother for the rest of his life. He would continue to
publish, and remained mentally alert and aware (though always drunken). Despite
the 'beatnik' stereotype, Kerouac was a political conservative, especially when
under the influence of his Catholic mother. As the beatniks of the 1950's began
to yield their spotlight to the hippies of the 1960's, Jack took pleasure in
standing against everything the hippies stood for. He supported the Vietnam War
and became friendly with William F. Buckley.
Through his
first forty years Kerouac had failed to sustain a long-term romantic
relationship with a woman, though he often fell in love. He'd married twice, to
Edie Parker and Joan Haverty, but both marriages had ended within months. In the
mid-1960's he married again, but this time to a maternalistic and older
childhood acquaintance from small-town Lowell, Stella Sampas, who he hoped would
help around the house as his mother entered old age.
He moved
back to Lowell with Stella and his mother, and then moved again with them to St.
Petersburg, Florida. His health destroyed by drinking, he died at home on
October 21, 1969. He was 47 years old.
Of course,
this ‘bio’ facilitates many of the lies about JK- such as he was the 1 who
coined the term ‘Beat’ (many have claimed it & no 1 knows the real
originator), as well as the myth about writing On The Road without pause, when
subsequent info proved that JK, indeed, had heavily revised his mediocrity (for
whatever that’s worth).
Here’s a
typical ‘poem’- from his long book length poem ‘Mexico City Blues”:
3rd Chorus
Mexico City Blues
Describe fires in riverbottom
sand, and the cooking;
the cooking of hot dogs
spitted in whittled sticks
over flames of woodfire
with grease dropping in smoke
to brown and blacken
the salty hotdogs,
and the wine,
and the work on the railroad.
$275,000,000,000.00 in debt
says the Government
Two hundred and seventy five billion
dollars in debt
Like Unending
Heaven
And Unnumbered Sentient Beings
Who will be admitted --
Not-Numberable --
To the new Pair of Shoes
Of White Guru Fleece
O j o !
The Purple Paradise
Ok, a critique of government waste. Explain why Heaven & O j o ! (eye!) are on lines alone? If this were a well constructed Stevensian or Rilkean poem he might be able to get away with such throwaways- but this is not at that level- not even close. This next trip attempts stream of consciousness- but then why not a proem?
Bus East