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By Richard Modiano

 

 

 

 

 

Kerouac at 90

In the 43 years since Jack Kerouac’s death, he’s been the subject of at least 8 biographies and memoirs; his writing has been the topic of numerous Ph.D. dissertations, his meticulously kept archives have been acquired by the New York Public Library as part of the Berg Collection, and at least a dozen previously unpublished works have seen the light of day. March 12, 2012 would have been his 90th birthday.

The posthumous respect that Kerouac’s work receives today did not characterize its reception during his lifetime. When On the Road hit the bookstores in September 1957, Jack Kerouac ironically found himself in a most enviable position for an emerging author: by the time his second published novel made the best-seller list, he had at least four others ready to go, not to mention numerous poems, several religious works and a few experimental pieces. Though many of these works soon came into print, Kerouac was unable to parlay his fame into either literary or financial security. Instead of assuming his place as a distinguished author, he found himself vilified by critics whose respect he had hoped to win. Though he continued to write and publish until the end of his life, this twist of fate by which he attained celebrity in place of respect exacerbated his marginalization as an important American writer. Nevertheless, Kerouac’s work endures to the present day with new generations of readers re-discovering his remarkable body of work.

William Burroughs noted, “Kerouac was a writer. That is to say, he wrote. Many people who call themselves writers and have their names on books are not writers and do not write. The difference being a bull fighter who fights the bull and a bullshitter who makes passes with no bull there. The writer has been there or he can’t write about it.” Elsewhere Burroughs says, “Novelists are trying to create a universe where they have or where they would like to live. In order to write it they must go there and submit to conditions they may not have bargained for.” Literature and the arts often realize human truths well before other branches of human endeavor. Art, like religion, looks beyond historical truths. It explores particular "singular" events to uncover "philosophical" truths of what "probably or necessarily" happens as Aristotle put it. These universal or philosophical truths are manifested in poetry and art rather than history, and without art we do not see them.

“Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind,” Kerouac wrote as part of a list of maxims called “Belief and Technique for Modern Prose” at the request of Allen Ginsberg when he asked Kerouac to formally describe his spontaneous prose method. And in “Essentials of Spontaneous Prose” he says, “Begin not from preconceived idea of what to say about image but from jewel center of interest in subject of image at moment of writing, and write outwards swimming in sea of language to peripheral release and exhaustion – Do not afterthink except for poetic or P.S. reasons. Never afterthink to ‘improve’ or defray impressions, as the best writing is always the most painful personal wrung-out tossed from cradle warm protective mind – tap from yourself the song of yourself, blow! – now! – your way is your only way – ‘good’ or ‘bad’ – always honest. (‘ludicrous’) spontaneous, ‘confessional’ interesting, because not ‘crafted.’ Craft is craft.”

"Self-awareness is as much a disability as a power," the philosopher John Gray writes. "The most accomplished pianist is not the one who is most aware of her movements when she plays. The best craftsman may not know how he works. Very often we are at our most skillful when we are least self-aware. That may be why many cultures have sought to disrupt or diminish self-conscious awareness. In Japan, archers are taught that they will hit the target only when they no longer think of it — or themselves." Artists, who draw upon the mercurial undercurrents of the subconscious, face a truth about human consciousness. They are informed by the intuitive, unarticulated meanderings of the human psyche. This wisdom, which often lies beyond precise expression, transcends what is constructed by the plodding conscious mind. In American letters, Jack Kerouac above all writers tapped into that wisdom and made it his own.

On Sunday March 11 starting at 4:00 PM Beyond Baroque celebrates the 90th birthday of the father of the Beats with readings from Kerouac by Rafael Alvarado, Iris Berry, Eve Brandstein, Michael C Ford, S.A. Griffin, Doug Knott, Ellyn Maybe, Gerald Nicosia, Harry Northup, Marc Olmsted, Dani Roter and Aram Saroyan, followed by a panel discussion of Kerouac's life and works with Kerouac biographer Gerald Nicosia, Kerouac’s last interviewer Aram Saroyan, S.A. Griffin and Marc Olmsted.

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