50th Anniversary of Kerouac's "On the Road"

[RainDog]

NYTimes article on Kerouac

This must surely be the most quoted writing from Kerouac:

“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 centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!”

Kerouac reading from On the Road via YouTube.

The scroll Kerouac used to write On the Road is traveling the U.S. this year. Here's a museum video of the curators unrolling the scroll (again via YouTube)

Until Feb. 2008, the scroll is on display at the New York Public Library, but will be on tour for two more years.

"And for just a moment I had reached the point of ecstasy that I always wanted to reach, which was the complete step across chronological time into timeless shadows, and wonderment in the bleakness of the mortal realm, and the sensation of death kicking at my heels to move on, with a phantom dogging its own heels..." - - Jack Kerouac, On the Road

[SteppingRazor]

1. Bah. Kerouac was a hack.

:evilgrin:

[RainDog]

2. ahem

"Holy flowers floating in the air, were all these tired faces in the dawn of Jazz America." - - Jack Kerouac

:spank:

[Gabi Hayes]

17. I'm sure your avatar thought the same way.....

how ironic

[SteppingRazor]

27. Yes, it is ironic.

Particularly since I own a copy of everything Kerouac published.

[shadowknows69]

3. I first read it on a bus to California

seemed appropriate.

[taterguy]

4. Kerouac was secretly funded by GM, Ford, Exxon et al

One of the first and most successful examples of viral marketing.

[RainDog]

5. this is a joke, right?

it's hard to know sometimes these days.

[Lobster Martini]

6. Had it not been for Kerouac, I wouldn't have a degree in Lit...

I am sitting here with my old copies of On the Road, The Subterraneans, The Dharma Bums...without these books, I would have never graduated. On the plus side, I met some interesting people who were on the same bus...(I've switched from Kerouac to Ken Kesey...I can do that, since Neal Cassidy did the same thing...)

[Wiley50]

7. I read it at 16, packed a pack, walked to the interstate and stuck out my thumb

Everything that was truly significant in my life began at that point

Sissy Hankshaw's patron saint

[Lobster Martini]

12. There are only so many people to whom the Sissy Hankshaw reference will be meaningful...

But I can honestly say that I have never disliked a person who reads Tom Robbins. Sorry about the thumbs, though. Makes it hard to turn pages.

[City of Mills]

8. The scroll is on tour

And it's currently in, you guessed it, Lowell MA. About 2 blocks from my current location :bounce:

[RainDog]

10. oops, I mentioned the wrong location

I got the dates/place from googling online.

[Lobster Martini]

9. Picked a random quote from The Dharma Bums--

LM: I just happened to find this one first and liked it.

"I bade farewell to the little bum of Saint Teresa at the crossing, where we jumped off, and went to sleep the night in my blankets, far down the beach at the foot of a cliff where cops wouldn't see me and drive me away."

LM: That is the way to write. That is great writing. I can't help it, I could reproduce every one of Kerouac's books and love every sentence. I just love everything the guy wrote, in the same way that Kerouac loved every note that Charlie Parker played. In both cases, not all were good. But they were unique and whether you are listening to a Charlie Parker record or reading one of Jack Kerouac's books, you know while you are experiencing it that neither could have come from another person on this planet...

[martymar64]

11. Whither goest thou, America?

In Thy shiny black car in the night?

[RainDog]

13. Swimming in a Sea of Language

From Kerouac's "List of Essentials"

Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
Submissive to everything, open, listening
Try never get drunk outside yr own house
Be in love with yr life
Something that you feel will find its own form
Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
Blow as deep as you want to blow
Write what you want bottomless from bottom of mind
The unspeakable visions of the individual
No time for poetry but exactly what is
Visionary tics shivering in the chest
In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
Like Proust be an old teahead of time
Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
Accept loss forever
....

[JanMichael]

14. He was a conservative catholic.

Read his letters they will make you dislike him intensely.

[RainDog]

15. yeah, I know

..and he hated those dirty hippies who thought he was a role model. And he was a raving alcoholic and he had a thing about his mom and lived with her as an adult... (with his wife of the time...) --how many times was this conservative catholic married?

He was of his time. As were the hippies, imo. I wasn't part of those times so to me it's possible to look at his work from the point of view of writing.
I can also like his writing and Truman Capote's...even tho Capote was a self-promoting star-f-er lush. Their writing was diametrically opposite... but both were stylists according to their beliefs about writing. I like them both.

If you read Milton's Paradise Lost, you will dislike his misogyny intensely (or I did). But he also wrote amazing, life-changing work. In the century after he lived, he was an inspiration for the mother of feminism, Mary Wollstonecraft ... even tho his writing revealed that madonna/whore all women are evil because of Eve Ur. Lord Byron had an incestuous relationship with his sister, but that doesn't make Don Juan a bad poem. It is possible to separate someone's work from their life, esp. over time.

A recent example: I really, really detest what Woody Allen did -- married someone who was, basically, his common-law child. I wish he would stop making movies and move to Dubai with Michael Jackson or something. However, he made some great movies that I can appreciate for their art...he wasn't "himself" in those movies. He was a persona.

As a female, it would be hard for me to like most all historically interesting males because most all of them had whacked views of women...even Da Vinci, for example. and he could prove that women were "nothing" by his anatomical drawings. that's one area in which he was not forward thinking. in fact, he was down right stupid. but that doesn't negate his other work.

[Raskolnik]

16. Mediorcre book justifying an incredibly selfish worldview.

I very much dislike when people romanticize the narcissism necessary to live like the narrator.* People who live like that are assholes that go through life taking things from people that work hard for what they have, all the while feeling intellectually superior while they do it. Bah!


*that's a lot of "n's"!

[Gabi Hayes]

18. mediocre, numbingly narcissistic post

how many books have you published?

just curious.....

[Raskolnik]

21. You're right. Number of books published = quality of opinion.

Of course, by that logic Tom Clancy knows a *lot* more about literature than Dostoesvky.

Now, would you like to take issue with my assessment, or would you like to just make this a little pissing contest?

[Raskolnik]

22. Your attempt at snark reminded me of Mr. Show

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aF8wLg5Asgo

So that means that I'm better than Van Gogh and Galileo put together!

[RainDog]

23. what are the events in the book that make you say this?

I'm not trying to flame. I'm asking a question, because I don't see the whole idea of the book in the same way.

[Raskolnik]

24. I think the characters are users.

In their travels, the characters seem to take it for granted that its their birthright to follow their impulses and skim off of those who don't do likewise.

The underlying philosophy of that lifestyle has always seemed to me to be one of grift dressed up as romantic self-discovery. I've known people like the characters in the book, and without exception they would have benefited from a bar of soap and some actual work to get themselves outside their own head.

[RainDog]

25. Sal works

he's a security guard and a migrant farm worker, for instance. he's also an aspiring writer. things happen that are problems. some are Sal or Dean's making, but some not. this is one of the basic ideas of any story, right? -- very few stories about about people with no flaws or faults. even the cheesy Clancey characters surely have some sort of "issue." I've never read anything he's written, but I know the formula very well...which is why such books are not interesting to me. paint by numbers.

what are some of the situations make you feel that the overall book is about skimming off someone else? what do you think about the language of the book?

they're also in the 1950s -- the man in the gray flannel suit era. this take on existence, to take chances to experience life, wasn't exactly a widespread idea at the time.

[symbolman]

26. Must be a small world you live in

NO Dirty People, NO One without a JOB..

Jesus, it's a Big Planet. Did they TAKE from YOU? How about what they or HE GAVE to the world as opposed to what he supposedly TOOK from it?

The man was a Poet, read a little history, a lot of them LIVE in another world, and could care LESS what YOU and others of your ilk think. Is THAT what you don't like, really? Dirty Hippies?

Personally I never like the Hippies all that much myself, and BeatNiks were the progenitors of them if you take the time to look. Too bad none of them could afford SOAP :)

I did everything that he did and MORE, and I gave so much more back to many people than the odd sandwich or spare change.

And as a matter of fact I've written a book myself that I'm hoping if it spreads far and wide, will cause a sort of Shift in our sick culture, as well as get folks off their asses, and help the environment.

Called THE JESUS BOLT, and I'd LOVE to send a copy to RainDog, she'll "get it", and not complain about whether I was CLEAN while I laid drunk in a parking lot, frozen to the pavement, while Natives I'd been cursing a half an hour before PEELED me off that pavement, and gave me their coats.

Bar of Soap, takers? Strange way to look at ART, man..

So, Raindog? Are you Game? Up for a copy of The JESUS BOLT? All you have to do is promise me that once you've read it, you'll be HONEST about it, that's what I need, and I appreciate your artistic sensibility. You might find it Misogynistic as well at the start, but please remember that in order for the protaganist to be REDEEMED, they must have SINNED in the first place :)

You'd be one of the first to see it, and it would be my pleasure. Here's the link to the cover:

http://www.thejesusbolt.com

I spent two summers flying all over the northern half of Alaska in the 70's during the Pipeline, in helicopters piloted by crazed Vietnam Veteran pilots, from a mobile camp, and witnessed global warming, and the decimation of species in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge firsthand - you might even say that global warming saved my LIFE :)

Let me know if you are interested, and thanks for posting this, you might notice that Kerouac was one of my influences, along with Hunter S. Thompson (my 2 year old son's middle name is Hunter), Bukowski, Salinger, Hemmingway, Steinbeck, and a host of others. I like to think of The Jesus Bolt as "NewBeatLit" :)

[Raskolnik]

28. Um, I wasn't attacking your lifestyle.

I think the characters in this book are users who wrap their own selfishness in intellectual trappings, and I dislike people of that sort.

I don't know anything about you, so you don't really have to defend your personal life to me. Take care and good luck with the book.

[RainDog]

29. okay, I'm game

...but I'm not a writing teacher. I only played one in another life. I have to go for the moment, so pm me via DU since this thread will no doubt sink into the horizon.

[RainDog]

30. addendum

I thought about this the other day and you're just the person who could do it. So, may I ask you to make a video? what is it, you ask?

Rove with a south park-style mouth with his head on top of madonna's body when she's on the balcony in Evita singing "Don't Cry for me Argentina." -- not the entire song, of course, but also of course the famous chorus. the contrast would be too great, I"m sure, but it would be nice if there were some edits with Rove on the WH lawn with dubya, looking at him...or maybe just photoshop them into the video? I also saw on YouTube that someone posted the death scene from Evita. It has some great cut shots of people holding vigil outside a white wndow.

don't know why, but the thought of that as a video makes me so happy.

[Gabi Hayes]

19. I read it on the coast of Crete. here's a beautiful book:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/1582431485/ref=sib_dp_pt/105-7467682-3654060#reader-link

Poets on the Peaks: Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen & Jack Kerouac in the Cascades

by John Suiter

[RainDog]

20. thanks for the link

Diane DiPrima is also an interesting beat poet. Here's a portion of one of hers-the rest is here

"I see no end of it, but the turning
upside down of the entire world"
-----Erasmus

Rant, from a Cool Place

We are in the middle of a bloody, heartrending revolution
Called America, called the Protestant reformation, called Western man,
Called individual consciousness, meaning I need a refrigerator and a car
And milk and meat for the kids so, I can discover that I don't need a car
Or a refrigerator, or meat, or even milk, just rice and a place with
-------------no wind to sleep next to someone
Two someones keeping warm in the winter learning to weave
To pot and to putter, learning to steal honey from bees,
------------wearing the bedclothes by day, sleeping under
(or in) them at night; hording bits of glass, colored stones, and
------------stringing beads
How long before we come to that blessed definable state
Known as buddhahood, primitive man, people in a landscape
together like trees, the second childhood of man...


--and I was going to try to upload a jpg in a different way, but it won't work. I still cannot figure out why I cannot load a photo from a blogger blog. sigh.

[AnotherGreenWorld]

31. Kerouac: One of American literature's most overrated writers.