On October 21 of 1969, with the grog-battered liver misshapen and warped and slumped around his gallbladder like the folds of a heifer's arse stretched about the head of a fried sparrow, with his skin yellowed and his skull afire, Jack Kerouac let fly his last lilting haiku from atween the sheets in St Anthony's hospital, Florida, or front the telly in his living room, depending on who tells it. Kerouac, who had spent the past twenty years etching the blueprint for an original, spectacular, incendiary, wholly holy form of writing, he died the predictable, depressing, sad, uninspired death of the Renegade Writer.
That this man who dedicated half his life to kicking and pulling and tugging and spitting and lashing and thumping at cliché should die a cliché himself… God above, the irony of it all. Sure wouldn't it have you chuckling something wicked if it didn't break your bastard heart.
But there you go, such is life.
Now, couple nights past I was musing along these lines with my ladyfriend, Beautiful Ms Gillian, debating the ins and outs of Kerouac's life and death and weighing up The Work against All The Other Guff and pondering off and on with regards the shower o' insufferable, stuck-up goons wandering the train stations at all hours high on every click and every other clack of Kerouac's much-mythologized typewriter. "Those individuals" I yapped in-between pulls on a Mayfair King Size, "Those elitist, pompous tools, they are surely The Establishment's revenge for the Beat Generation."
"Have your fun" The Powers What Be done glowered, "But by Jesus you'll pay for it, I tell you that. And your children will pay for it. And their children. And their children's children. Then, it'll take a break on account of the children of those children will most likely be too busy playing with their second willies. But their sprogs, oh boys-a-boys, they'll pay a thousandfold what you paid. And the price? The braying and blowing of a thousand yaps in unison all gibbering wild about how On The Road changed their lives and do you know who you are, I bet you don't and no-one knows nothing 'till they've heard it told 'em through a fugg of stewed 'shroom."
The final victory is that no one will ever again read On The Road or Big Sur or even Howl or Naked Lunch or The First Third and if they do, they won't mention it in public, and why?
"Why?" asks Beautiful Ms Gillian.
"Because one o' them bastards might overhear, and next thing you know it's 'Oh, but you've never read it until you've heard it read, and you've never heard it read 'till you've heard it read on acid, and…' Saint's preserve us, sure it'd turn your head."
Article comments
1 - Jon Sobel
Cerebral panty-weep indeed. Holy garbanzo beans! You've out-diddly-diddled yourself with this essay, my man.
2 - El Bicho
[with both hands snap out a rhythm of your chosing]
Duke, pay no attention to those faux elitst bastards, I say. They show how dim and phony they truly are because any true literary snob would know that instead of "you've never heard it read 'till you've heard it read on acid," they should be saying, "you've never heard 'On The Road' read 'till you've heard it read on Benzedrine," or "you've never heard 'Naked Lunch' read 'till you've heard it read on junk with a naked young man in your bed."
Regards,
A former reader of "On The Road" and "Howl" and I don't care who knows it.
3 - Duke De Mondo
Ha! Damn right, El Bicho. I dare say my bitterness was heightened somewhat on account of knowing full well the joy of hearing, say, ol' Will reading Junky through that fugg of a cracklin', slurrin' throat. But a man can hardly let anyone hear tell of it in public anymore.
by god, maybe it's time to reclaim the beats? and whilst we're at it, we'll reclaim Dylan and Revolver by The Beatles (the record most sorely put upon by those fiends) and maybe even some of Timothy Leary's scribbles. Certainly it's high time The Doors Of Perception by Aldous Huxley was plucked back out the hands of the Morrison Heads.
i smell a revoloution... A revolverlution. Isn't that a Public Enemy song? i dare say Chuck D's heard many's a man tell him about reading Heaven And Hell on Peyote.
And Jon! I'm altogether very glad you dug it, man! thank you!
4 - Howard Dratch
Your Review Card is safe, is surely good for a time more. It is, I think, a special edition of Review Cards honored for entertaining and finding something lost.
The Ms. Gillian knows her stuff, too, and makes me wish I was young and somewhere near Ireland, she does.
"I think you should watch it" she says. "You love Jack Kerouac. You dig the purple parpin' of a bop-fried trumpet of an evening. You're pretentious and self-obsessed. Go for it."
This story of the writer-poet of the Fifties sounds interesting and I will put it on my list of "bop-fried trumpet(s)" (a special, Irish dish, I presume), but I fear I might like the review better than the reviewed.
It is the reviewing of the reviewed that charms and "by God it has a right savage way with the words".
5 - Duke De Mondo
Mr Dratch, i am very pleased you found this screed to be pleasing to your eyes and ears. now, i must say, i think you might well enjoy yourself a right giddy while if you give that particular motion picture a go, and i can reccomend with no fear of comeuppance that you put it on one of thoes netflix lists or whatever folks do nowadays instead of heading down the VHS Dive of an evening.
And as to Beautiful Ms Gillian, it took manys a month and year of wandering to uncover the like, and so for this reason i will say nowt to her of the sophisticated lad by the name of Howard who sung her praises just this afternoon.
ach, i will indeed say, but i'll have a fine witticism waiting far-side of it so as she doesn't go bounding off for Mr Dratch!
thank you again, sir
6 - ms gillian
wonderful! as always! :)
7 - Fearon
I have read Howl thrice or more over and am amidst on the road and have naked lunch ordered as I intend to read everything that generation has to offer myself