Jack Kerouac - The father of The Beat Generation

Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
— Jack Kerouac

The conflict is whether or not Jack Kerouac was a visionary. I suppose the answer lays in your definition of visionaryism. I happen to think the answer is Yes. Is this because I am a writer? Perhaps. Is it because  I am spiritual? Perhaps. the truth holds for me that Jack paved away for any uncensored, uncaged voices to be heard.  For those “not fond of rules”. He started the whole ‘Beat Generation Movement. Which remains in practice today.

 Jack had a big big voice. Beyond all the ones he heard in his head and in his own private helldom. Some will argue that alcohol may have been his main voice. Who can say. It remains true that his light seemed to dim after his success reeled and his alcholism gave way to new doors that Jack seemed to despise.  Still he kept writing and inspiring. His following is still somewhat underground and under appreciated…but those who see his brilliance consider it a beacon in the world of revolutionary poetry. Jacks work has inspired the way that I write and has had a quiet influence on how see the ways of the world we create. “….because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

The world lost an amazing voice, and visionary October 21, 1969.

Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.”
— Jack Kerouac

Non è difficile comprendere perché Sulla strada sia così rappresentativo del movimento della Beat Generation. Il termine beat, nelle sue diverse accezioni, è l’essenza del romanzo stesso. L’emarginazione di Dean e Sal e di tutti gli altri personaggi è scelta esistenziale, volontà di distacco rispetto ad un ben preciso mondo. Beat come diversità ma anche come ritmo, battito, ritmo frenetico che scandisce un vivere forte e all’unisono. Beat – da beatific – come condizione estatica di distacco dall’io e dal mondo, di beatitudine, di santità. C’è poi nei personaggi di questo romanzo – chiaramente autobiografico – molto di quelli che furono i “Daddies”, i Padri del movimento, da Ginsberg a Corso, da Burroughs a Ferlinghetti. Ogni personaggio è ritratto di ossessioni, teorie, atteggiamenti di quelli che furono in concreto i compagni di vita di Kerouac. Dean Moriarty è infine la figura che compendia tutte le altre, il ritratto definitivo del modello intellettuale per eccellenza. Dean Moriarty in cui si riconosce Neal Cassady, personaggio quasi mitologico per tutti i seguaci della Beat Generation che qui riceve la sua consacrazione come maestro. Folle, allucinato, avido di vita con l’energia di un anfetaminico, imbroglione, ipnotico, ciarlatano. Dean Moriarty, letteratura e carcere, furti e fascino, mogli e puttane, il “Daddy”, il Padre per eccellenza. Il maestro di un’intera generazione che Kerouac profetizza destinato ad esser rinnegato dai suoi stessi discepoli, condannato da ciò che lui stesso ha contribuito a creare.

C’erano stati giorni, a Denver, in cui Dean metteva tutti a sedere al buio, anche le ragazze, e poi parlava, parlava e parlava senza stancarsi mai con quella sua voce di allora ipnotica e strana, ed era diventata leggendaria la sua capacità di conquistare le ragazze con la sola forza della persuasione e il contenuto dei suoi discorsi. [...] Ora i suoi discepoli erano sposati e le mogli dei suoi discepoli lo processavano per la sessualità e la vita che aveva contribuito a creare.

Dean Moriarty il Padre che non sfuggirà al giudizio dei figli. Sulla strada il Padre simbolico che Dean e Sal, Neal e Jack, non hanno mai trovato durante la loro vita sulle strade degli Stati Uniti.

Il secondo conflitto mondiale aveva lasciato macerie fuori e dentro l’anima. Negli anni dell’immediato dopoguerra un’intera generazione percepì una necessità, quella necessità che lo stesso Cassady definì origine dell’arte buona, l’origine che ne «garantisce il valore». La necessità era quella di rifiutare tutto ciò che sarebbe stato col tempo un mostruoso establishment destinato ad espandersi nel corso dei decenni, il nuovo ordine mondiale costruito sulla pax atomica e basato sulla società dei consumi. Nel viaggio sulla strada, nel rifiuto di qualunque certezza e stabilità, di ogni dove, si compie la più grande ribellione al conformismo. Sulla strada ne è manifesto. È manifesto di un’esperienza, quella del viaggio per il viaggio, destinata a non raggiungere mai la sua compiutezza ma tale da racchiudere qualunque vicenda umana, dall’amicizia alla solitudine, dall’amore alla morte.

Nel Messico dell’ultimo viaggio insieme si perfeziona il distacco, la beatitudine di cui soltanto Dean si rivelerà capace. Al di là della frontiera il mondo sembra essersi fermato, sembra esser rimasto estraneo al compiersi della Storia. Una dimensione senza tempo, premoderna, fatta di accettazione rassegnata, malinconica ma mai triste di una condizione di povertà immanente alla vita. Neanche l’approdo quasi orgiastico ad un mondo agli antipodi di quello delle grandi metropoli americane segnerà il compimento del viaggio, il raggiungimento della cosa ultima, della «perla».

E così in America quando il sole tramonta e me ne sto seduto sul vecchio molo diroccato del fiume a guardare i lunghi cieli sopra il New Jersey e sento tutta quella terra nuda che si srotola in un’unica incredibile enorme massa fino alla costa occidentale, e a tutta quella strada che corre, e a tutta quella gente che sogna nella sua immensità, e so che a quell’ora nello Iowa i bambini stanno piangendo nella terra in cui si lasciano piangere i bambini, e che stanotte spunteranno le stelle, e non sapete che Dio è Winnie Pooh?, e che la stella della sera sta tramontando e spargendo le sue fioche scintille sulla prateria proprio prima dell’arrivo della notte fonda che benedice la terra, oscura tutti i fiumi, avvolge le vette e abbraccia le ultime spiagge, e che nessuno, nessuno sa cosa toccherà a nessun altro, allora penso a Dean Moriarty, penso perfino al vecchio Dean Moriarty padre che non abbiamo mai trovato, penso a Dean Moriarty.

Un pensiero che è chiedersi dov’è, da che parte, in chi, quello spirito che può chiamarsi casa.

Jack Kerouac, Sulla strada, traduzione di Marisa Caramella, con un saggio di Fernanda Pivano, Mondadori, 2006

• On this Thanksgiving, Glen E. Friedman tells you to celebrate the holiday with a little reality check.  We will oblige.

• Long before Jonathan Safran Foer wrote a book about it, “vegetarianism was a Victorian ‘lifestyle’ with several vegetarian restaurants in London in the late century“.

• The Faster Times review Safran Foer’s latest book, and call it “a real downer.”

• For all you carnivores out there, The Young and Hungry have their turkey, and Felicia Sullivan has a chocolate caramel cheesecake to go with it.

• The case for a weeks worth of meals involving your Thanksgiving leftovers.

• 100-proof turkey (thanks The Rumpus)

• If you have conservative relatives, here are some conversation tips for Thanksgiving.

• Jacket Copy are thankful for Jack Kerouac.  “as much as the pilgrims and the codifiers of American holidays, Jack Kerouac showed us America in a way.”

• We are thankful for people who teach us about crime and mystery novels.  This article on Lit Kicks, and the blog Nerd of Noir.

• Neon Indian were not part of the first Thanksgiving, but they did remix Grizzly Bear.

Happy Thanksgiving to all you navel gazers out there, American and non-American alike.  I’ve been thinking about a vague promise I made sometime ago to post something on roads and I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t really have anything terribly interesting to say on that subject at this point in time.  I have come up with a somewhat experimental and, I hope, satisfactory alternative.  Earlier this year I gave a conference paper on the characters Dean Moriarty and Raoul Duke as American versions of the divine idiot.  Both were characters who spent lots of time on the road and the product of real-life minds who themselves were rather well-travelled.  Over the next few days I’m going to post the text that I spoke from.  Questions, rants and objections in response to my thoughts are welcome.  Do keep in mind that this represents me just beginning to flesh out an idea that could potentially be much larger.  It could also be nonsense.  Enjoy.  (n.b. I’ve done my best to include my footnotes in this posting in a way that will enable readers to navigate from the text to the citation if they wish to do so.  My works cited and works consulted lists will make up part of the final posting)

Holy Goofs: Dean Moriarty and Raoul Duke, Two Holy American Idiots

Jack Kerouac’s depiction of Neal Cassady as Dean Moriarty and Hunter S. Thompson’s autobiographical alter ego, Raoul Duke have aroused interest and debate since they first greeted readers from the pages of On the Road (1957) and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971). While part of their continuing popularity lies, at least among undergraduates and adolescents, in their rebellious indulgence of excessive appetites and extreme exercise of personal freedom, Moriarty and Duke are more than drug- and drink-fuelled iconoclasts driving at high speed across the American landscape. Instead, closer consideration of Duke and Moriarty on their own and as a pair reveals that they are in fact two American examples of the holy fool, divine idiot or, as Dean is branded in Kerouac’s book, “the HOLY GOOF.”¹

In an insightful 2003 article entitled “Holy Fools, Secular Saints, and Illiterate Saviours in American Literature and Popular Culture” Dana Heller argues “that the divine idiot in American cultural history is an overlooked site of contestation and meaning production in our myths of nation, a chiasmatic figure who occupies the in-between spaces where U.S. cultural authority is fought over, negotiated, and renegotiated.”² By offering an examination of the pair as holy fools whose actions and behaviour question core American values and myths my comments seek to redress a small portion of the oversight Heller identifies. Though both Dean and Duke have a strong basis in the biographical realities of the men on which they were modelled they remain the fictionalised creations of their authors. As a result, their alignment with defining American myths and assumption of the fool’s role begins to emerges as a potentially powerful a means of exploring and critiquing the United States through which they move.

That Dean Moriarty and Raoul Duke are consciously aligned with totemic American figures and myths is, perhaps, more rapidly apparent, than their status as holy fools of an American stripe. Recounting his first impressions of Dean, Sal Paradise the narrator of On the Road, reveals “My first impression of Dean was of a young Gene Autry – trim, thin-hipped, blue-eyed, with a real Oklahoma accent – a sideburned hero of the snowy west.”³ Though readers may rightly question how much of a hero this former “jailkid” may actually be, the comparison with Gene Autry and his description as a western hero firmly aligns Dean with that archetypal hero of the American west and rugged individual freedom, the cowboy.⁴ Not only does the fact that Dean has actually spent time working as a cowhand further cement his position at a crossroads between American myths and realities, but a brief look at this same description in the infamous scroll version of the novel which omits the phrase “a sideburned hero of the west” suggests that in addition to substituting the name Dean Moriarty for Neal Cassady Kerouac sought a greater emphasis of Dean’s mythical standing.⁵ While later events and Dean’s propensity to what might be considered stunning selfishness may reveal the character as an ambivalent hero at best, his alignment with mythical American figures remains uncontested during his peregrinations with Sal Paradise. In fact, it is only by recognising Dean’s status as a holy fool that the continuing valorisation of Dean can be reconciled with Sal’s candid admission that Dean “was a con-man. . . .”⁶

Like Dean, Hunter S. Thompson’s Raoul Duke quickly emerges as a figure aligned in some way with defining American myths. Not only is the subtitle of Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to Heart of the American Dream heavily suggestive of the possibility that in Duke readers encounter a figure standing at a point of intersection between American myths and realities but, like Dean, he is quickly connected to a particular figure or trope in the form of the rags-to-riches individual of the Alger mythos. As Duke tries to explain to readers and himself why, at the book’s outset, he is speeding toward Las Vegas with a car full of drugs he asks: “But what was the story? Nobody had bothered to say. So we would have to drum it up on our own. Free Enterprise. The American Dream. Horatio Alger gone mad on drugs in Las Vegas.”⁷ Where Moriarty’s status as an ambivalent American hero emerges alongside the insistence that he embodies the cowboy archetype, Duke’s association with the nation’s defining myths in the form of the American Dream and Horatio Alger are destabilised from the outset. That being said, though Duke does confound reader expectations of what it means to be a Horatio Alger in search of the American Dream achieving massive inebriation rather than impressive wealth and social achievement, at the narrative’s close Duke can still insist “I felt like a monster reincarnation of Horatio Alger . . . A Man on the Move, and just sick enough to be totally confident.”⁸ As with Dean Moriarty, in order to reconcile Duke’s status as what Heller describes as a “chiasmatic figure,” one standing between more conventional American myths and values with his extreme, even criminal behaviour it is necessary to consider his role as an American type of the holy fool.

While it is not possible in an argument of such brevity to adequately survey the historical, social and literary evolutions of fools, divine or otherwise, it is worth mentioning that the tradition of such figures is both widespread and of significant longevity. Though Dean and Duke are not divine madmen seeking to reconcile the temporal world with a spiritual Christian order there is good reason to view them as American outgrowths of a tradition that stretches at least as far back as Paul’s commentary on divine foolishness in 1 Corinthians 1:25 where it is written “Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” John Saward helps to sum up nicely the long story of divine foolishness that includes this verse with his assessment that “The holy fool is a commonly encountered figure in the folklore of many cultures and religions. In Jewish-Christian tradition perhaps the earliest example of a religious form of folly is the ‘symbolic action’ of the prophet, the strange, sometimes quite outrageous form of behaviour imposed upon him by the Lord to shock the people into perceiving the truth of their situation.”⁹ Moriarty and Duke may not be called upon to behave as they do by the Lord, but I would like to suggest that just as their more devout forebears they do have the capability to startle others into new channels of perception.

Significantly it is possible to view both of these characters as clownish versions of the fool rather than simple madmen; agents who pursue their desires and adhere to certain values with such intensity that, in the final estimation, their apparent recklessness and idiocy undermines the assumed good-sense of more conventional behaviours. Not only does “holy lightning” flash from Dean who is elsewhere described as “having the energy of a new kind of American Saint” but, at one point we are informed that in its most mature form Dean’s role of as a fool assumes the form of a “W.C. Fields saintliness.”¹⁰ Descriptions such as these emphasise the inseparability of Dean’s Beat saintliness from his role as a ragged clown. As a holy goof he may play a serious role, but it is not one of measured restraint or even careful argument being characterised instead by an intense spiritual energy and clownish kineticism. Nor does Dean achieve the status he does because he rejects the values of the nation and generation he plays jester to. Stephen Llano aptly describes what motivates Moriarty and what kind of figure he becomes with the words “Dean, through his desire to fully enact American values, tries to push them beyond their own logical extreme. Dean is trying to be too American and in doing so he becomes a clown and presents a powerful critique of capitalist society.”¹¹

1Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Penguin Modern Classics, intro. Ann Charters (London: Penguin Books, 2000) 176.

2 Dana Heller, “Holy Fools, Secular Saints, and Illiterate Saviours in American Literature and Popular Culture,” CLCWeb: Comparitive Literature and Culture, ed. Benton Jay Komin 5.3 (2003), 24 Nov. 2008 , <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol5/iss3> .

3 Kerouac, 2000, 4.

4 Kerouac, 2000, 3.

5 Jack Kerouac, On the Road:The Original Scroll, Penguin Modern Classics, ed. Howard Cunnell (London: Penguin Books, 2008) 110.

6Kerouac, 2000, 6.

7 Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, Flamingo Modern Classics (London: Flamingon, 1993) 12.

8 Thompson, 204.

9 John Saward, Perfect Fools: Folly for Christ’s Sake in Catholic and Orthodox Spirituality (Oxford: OUP, 1980) 1.

10 Kerouac, 2000, 6, 35, 109.

11 Stephen Llano, “The Clown as Social Critic: Kerouac’s Vision,” Clowns, Fools and Picaros: Popular Forms in Theatre, Fiction and Film, ed David Robb (Amsterdam-New York, 2007) 202.

The Cat Piano: A City of Imprisoned Singing Cats

The Cat Piano is an award-winning 8-minute animated short film directed by Australian filmmakers Eddie White and Ari Gibson, featuring narration by the iconic Australian musician Nick Cave. The film is a remarkable animation, a visual marvel that’s a perfectly executed narrative, seamlessly coalescing its gothic influences into a hypnotically sinister aesthetic that is never at odds with itself.  The Cat Piano was named last week as one of 10 films to advance in the Animated Short Films category for the 82nd Annual Academy Awards.

The story opens in a city of musically talented singing cats, where a lonely beat poet falls for the call of a beautiful musical siren.  However, a mysteriously dark and evil human soon emerges and begins kidnapping the town’s singing cats to imprison them inside of a cat piano, intent on carrying out his depraved musical plans to perform a twisted feline symphony.  At that point, the poet realizes that he must save his muse and put an end to the nefarious tune that threatens to destroy the entire city.

The Cat Piano: A City of Imprisoned Singing Cats

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What did we learn from Ted Berrigan, Jack Kerouac, and Allen Ginsberg?

By Aram Saroyan
Poetry Media Service

It’s been more than a decade since the death of Allen Ginsberg, but in the interim I’ve found that he’s stayed with me as an informing, tempering, guardian-like presence of a stature equaled only by my late father. He looked me up and down and looked me in the face, taking my measure for good or ill, and then informed me, on several critical occasions, where I had gotten it right or wrong.

As a teenager in Manhattan, I turned to poetry because I couldn’t understand what life was about and thought I might uncover some clues in such writing. Howl, which I found during high school, was like an encyclopedia of the emotional and psychic life that had been driven under in me, with the result that I felt restless and bored a lot of the time. Life is big, it said. It has a lot of colors. It’s serious. It’s funny. It’s full of suffering that is also like bread, nurture, on a journey of the soul.

Allen called me from Naropa one year, trying to track down a photograph of Kerouac that I’d used in Genesis Angels: The Saga of Lew Welch and the Beat Generation. My father had died recently, and Allen told me a story about his father, the late poet Louis Ginsberg, who had been a high school teacher in New Jersey. When he’d visited his father in the hospital during his last illness, Allen said Louis told him that as a little boy he’d lived near a magnificent building, a great tower with chimneys from which, at certain hours of the day, huge plumes of smoke billowed. Louis had dreamed of this building and wondered what went on inside it.

“Do you know what it was, Allen? That great tower that set me dreaming?”

“What, Pop?”

“It was a glue factory.”

During the same call Allen lightened my spirits by telling me how much he liked Genesis Angels, which had received mixed reviews.

During the ’60s, in my minimalist phase as a poet, I ran into Allen one afternoon on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Eighth Street in New York. I’d just purchased some bell-bottoms and a hippie shirt, thinking I’d take the plunge into my generation’s attire, and Allen looked me over seriously.

“What’s going on?” he said.

“Well, I think the clothes are beautiful, so why not wear them?”

He nodded and made no further comment about it, and we got to discussing my one-word poems.

“Are you lazy, or what?” It was the sort of comment that could have come only from Allen or from my father.

“No,” I said.

Ten years later, Allen attended a reading I gave. Afterward, he commented to me that a poem I’d read took an “us-and-them” stance that he considered incorrect. This was priceless information, not about the quality of the poem so much as about how it is one continues to write. It was, as I see it today, part of the higher literary physics that he and Kerouac reinstated, so to speak. The moral example of literature wasn’t judgment, that is, but empathy, which is why Shakespeare is our greatest exemplar. Allen was telling me, in his way, that I had turned down a cul-de-sac.

* * *

The Paris Review interview with Jack Kerouac was the brainchild of Ted Berrigan at a time when, hard as it is to believe, Kerouac was an almost forgotten man. It was a few months before the fabled Summer of Love, 1967, and Ted invited me to accompany him up to Lowell to interview Kerouac. I accepted the invitation on impulse—at that moment of the ’60s I’d very nearly forgotten Kerouac myself.

Ted’s impromptu choreography: Jack had loved my dad’s work, Ted knew, and he also knew I’d be reluctant to come as the ambassador of William Saroyan, as it were, and made his invitation spontaneously casual—and off we went.

During the interview Jack, perhaps intrigued that the son of one of his first literary influences was now looking to him, asked me to repeat after him, line by line, the words of a poem of his from Mexico City Blues:

KEROUAC: Delicate conceptions of kneecaps. Say that, Saroyan.

SAROYAN: Delicate conceptions of kneecaps.

Concluding:

KEROUAC: Like kissing my kitten in the belly

SAROYAN: Like kissing my kitten in the belly

KEROUAC: The softness of our reward

SAROYAN: The softness of our reward

I stumbled once or twice—there were some complicated lines—but a thick-skinned, hardheaded 23-year-old writer was getting some basic training, not in literature per se, but in repeating the words of a master. That is the correct existential posture in the lineage of mystery—surrendering to it—that the Beats revived. So, my young friend, it was as if Kerouac was saying, Let’s appreciate it together; even though I wrote it, it’s both of ours now. When I’d completed this exercise, Jack rewarded me with a modest encomium that has traveled with me down the years and that I’ve tried my best to be worthy of. “You’ll do, Saroyan,” he said.

Aram Saroyan’s Door to the River: Essays and Reviews from the 1960s into the Digital Age will be published in March 2010 by Black Sparrow/Godine. This article first appeared at www.poetryfoundation.org. Distributed by the Poetry Foundation.

© 2009 by Aram Saroyan. All rights reserved.

Dear A,

I’ve been writing emails to plenty of people now and since I am currently on an email writing frenzy and that I cannot control myself anymore because of my apparent OCD… I’ve never actually asked my doctor if it was OCD but sometimes I go crazy on simple things like this ( and actually I like it because i always feel fulfilled once I’m done… 3 hours later ).

You kinda gave me an idea. I don’t know if I told you about this but I am seriously considering hitchhiking Canada. I would start from here in the province of Quebec, then I would go to Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta and then I would come back. If I have more time on my hands and everything is right I also consider checking out Yukon. I started planning stuff. I began thinking about what I should bring and what I shouldn’t bring and what kind of craziness might happen. In between this I began to realize that I needed something to attract drivers in order to be picked up easier and faster so I don’t stand like a wounded dog under the rain for five hours. I almost immediately thought that I should bring my guitar ( and that means I have to re-learn how to play it ) but then I thought that it would be too big so I thought of the ukulele you kept mentioning and now I am considering buying a cheap ukulele!!! Wouldn’t that be the coolest thing!?!? I mean I would be known as the legendary ukulele wanderer!!! I would make the news like ” Have you seen the Uke Traveller?! ” and ” The Ukulele Wanderer strikes again! “. Ok, ok, I’m dreaming here… But I do think about bringing a ukulele with me.

So yeah I’ve started planning this thing. I subscribed to a hitchhiking forum where experienced people will probably be able to give me some advice. I plan on doing this in two years from now on june 2011. I will try not to spend money during this trip and I expect to spend most of the summer travelling this way. I still have to tell my family about it and I am pretty sure everybody’s going to freak out so I have to choose the right moment or unless they will believe I am in some sort of state of distress or something… Frankly I have no idea how I will present this idea, most especially to my mom, because I’ve been there forever for her and she has been there for me as well.

I see this as a personal journey rather than a travelling experience. I will write my daily experiences in a journal that I will bring with me. I will also bring my Canon camera that is neither too expensive neither too crappy so I will bring some great pictures ( I think ). I’ve started thinking about some “tricks” like putting two 200$ in two plastic bags and hide them in my two shoes for desperate measures. I also plan on bringing my cd player and some amazing cds like Sigur Ros!!! I will try not to go in hotels and rent rooms and I will try to camp as much as possible and for this I expect to deal with cops and thugs so I will bring my best smiles with me for the cops and my little handy knife for the thugs…

I think what’s triggered me to think about this seriously is Jack Kerouac’s book titled ” On the Road ” which is all about hitchhiking. The guy in the story is pretty messed up and I am different ( I think ) when compared to him, but I still need that freedom I can’t seem to find in here. Plus, this Jack Kerouac guy, well, the “hero” in the book, is him and it’s mostly an auto-biographical novel. I don’t know if I told you about this, but I have always had some sort of love for the 50s and when I found the Beat Generation writers like Kerouac I immediately associated myself to them and Jack Kerouac seems to have some sort of link with me. He was french canadian too! I don’t know what the hell is going on between him and I.

I’m pretty sure that what I am searching for won’t be found during this trip but I have been sick enough in the recent years to see people around me are living in a daily routine and I don’t want to live that. I’ve spent some time in hospital beds and when I would talk with other sick people the topics were really different. We would talk about simple things. Things you don’t think of when you aren’t sick. I remember I spoke to an old man while we were eating that horrible hospital food and we were wondering what we would eat and drink when we would get out. I remember I wanted a good bloody steak with mashed potatoes and some green broad beans. It was enough to make me feel happy and I wanted to get out of there just to eat that. Nowadays I’ve begun to fall back into routine and I almost forgot about that desire I had back in the hospital and I don’t want to forget about that and that’s why I want to leave this place with a feeling of uncertainty so I can enjoy everything I see, taste and touch. It’s like in my favorite book, “The Little Prince”, when he goes to the well in the middle of the desert and he drinks water with the aviator. The water would be ordinary to other people who drank water everyday, but to the aviator, it was the product of their desire to get water, the fact that they walked so long and the fact that they had to use the pulley in order to ultimately get it! That’s why it tasted so good to him and to the little prince.

The fact is that I am doing this knowing that I will probably find adversity. It’s not like I am going there with an improvised bag using a red cloth with white spots on it, all of it attached to a wooden stick like in the cartoons. I know I’ll probably be unable to sleep during some nights. I might get robbed or beaten or whatever. I’ll try to avoid this as much as possible, but I still have to hitchhike the way I want to or else it won’t be hitchhiking anymore. Still, I have to train my body for this because I’m pretty sure I’ll be dead tired most of the time so I have to be in the best shape possible.

That’s why I’m going to walk practically everyday from now on. I’ve already been walking pretty often but it was only for entertainment purpose or to go out with friends. I don’t have a car and when I have to buy stuff or whatever I just WALK to the store and bring back the goods home. I still don’t get the car thing and I don’t understand why so many people have cars. I don’t know if I missed something here. So, yeah, from now on I’ll walk a lot. Next summer I’m planning on walking from home right to the camp ( which means about 250 kilometers… and seriously I won’t do the math to explain how long that is in miles because you americans need to use the metric system ). I will bring the usual stuff I bring when I go there ( clothes and books and some cds and other things ). It should give me a preview of a hitchhiking experience without drivers picking me up ( which should be the hardest days ).

So, yeah, I’m going to write a book on this. I don’t expect it to be published by anyone but I’ll try to if I feel like the material is somewhat worth it. I’ve never studied literature ( so my curriculum vitae in that department would be pretty short ) but I think I’m pretty good ( in french, at least ) and I know a couple of authors in the area who might be able to help me.

I’ve recently met very old friends who were in classmates in primary school and high school. When I was really sick I lost sight of them and back then I thought that they were really ahead of me in studies and jobs. I mean, they are. Some of them are going to be doctors and pharmacists, others already have great jobs and live a steady life. But somehow I feel like I have something more inside my head that they don’t have. They don’t question society like I do and they don’t see the things I see. They don’t know how to write either ( I found that out on Facebook ). I think that all these years of illness I’ve spent reading and listening and watching others is finally paying off. I feel like I am stronger inside. I also am sad to see that these young minds who sometimes were breaking laws and questioning so many things in life ended up as ordinary human beings with very little imagination, ideas and hopes. Of course they still have these things but it’s hidden deep inside now and it will only bloom when it will be too late.

I can’t believe I wrote so much stuff! I don’t even know how much time I spent on this email! Ok, I have to stop myself now. I guess I had to tell someone about this and since I’m too chicken shit to tell my hitchhiking plans to the people who live next to me and I wanted to tell them to someone like you who can’t really judge me or anything. I guess this is the good side of internet? I don’t know, really. This place is both full and empty at the same time. It’s confusing.

Thanks for reading my “dreamer’s melodrama”,

X

SCOOTERBOYS

La pasión por las motos, en concreto la Vespa y la Lambreta, junto con la música es lo que más caracteriza tanto a los modds como a los scooterboys. Su lugar de reunión serán los “rallies”, circuitos para las motos. Al igual que su precendente, la generación beat, no cuentan con una ideología vinculada por lo que se podría decir que es una rama del anterior.

Los modds son los primeros grupos con letras críticas hacia el sistema pero su objetivo no es el de cambiar el mundo; “el modd duerme en la cárcel pero es el que duerme en la litera de arriba”.

En cuanto a la estética, los scooterboys se diferencian de los modds en la preocupación por la estética, sobre todo en los chicos y en menor grado las chicas. Este interés hace que los jóvenes pierdan el gusto en el sexo opuesto ya que toda su atención se centraba en la imagen. Sus ingresos se destinaban al placer y poco se dedicaba para el vivir.

Será en esta época cuando se empiece a hacer Pop, pero el gusto de estilo musical sigue centrándose en el modern jazz, el Blues y el Rhythm Blues (género musical derivado del jazz, el gospel y el blues aunque más enérgico que éste último. Aparecen en este momento dos de las discográficas más importantes de la época:

                         Motown: creada por Berry Gordy y situada, en un primero momento, en Detroit se trata de una discográfica en la que pusieron una nota de color artistas como los Jackson 5, las Supremas, Steve Wonder y Michael Jackson entre otros. Creada por Jim Stewart, músico blanco.

                         Stax: creada por Jim Stewart curiosamente un músico de raza blanca con música negra norteamericana dirigida al “oído blanco”. Se trata de una de las discográficas más importantes del mundo en cuanto a música soul. Por ella pasaron artistas de la talla de Rufus Thomas con un continuo éxito en la década de los 60 y 70 y autor de mitos como “Do the funky Chicken”.

De la suma del Rhythm Blues el skiffler nacen grandes grupos de la historia como los Beatles o los Rolling Stones. Este nuevo tipo de música nace en la cuna de EEUU pero se configura en Inglaterra.

Jay Farrar & Benjamin Gibbard

One Fast Move Or I’m Gone:

Music From Kerouac’s Big Sur

(Warner)

As part of the first generation of adults to benefit from the Internet, I often have to remind myself that there were at one time a lot of mysteries in my life I could only unravel on my own. Much of that attitude was instilled through reading Jack Kerouac as teenager. His 1957 novel On The Road was essentially a guide for anyone contemplating self-discovery, as it beckoned readers to follow their desires wherever they may lead, and savor every experience along the way.

While that message continues to resonate within North American youth today, the question is whether it’s still Kerouac’s words getting that message across 40 years after his death. Ever since Bob Dylan took up Kerouac’s challenge and embarked on his own journey, songwriters have likewise echoed Jack’s prose. Yet, for the first time here, Son Volt’s Farrar and Death Cab For Cutie’s Gibbard allow Kerouac to speak for himself.

One Fast Move Or I’m Gone was made in conjunction with the film of the same name that explores the period when Kerouac (born near Boston to Quebecois parents) lived in northern California while working on the 1962 novel Big Sur. His decline into advanced alcoholism was already apparent, as evidenced by the dark – at times verging on hopeless – tone of his writing. Farrar and Gibbard, no strangers to pathos themselves, easily adapt portions of the novel, and its companion poem “Sea,” into a stark 12-song suite that sonically matches the sense of alienation Kerouac felt over seemingly having nowhere left to go.

Moreover, the pair performs like two seasoned travelers, each knowing they can’t go on alone, but barely acknowledging each other’s presence out of a need for self-preservation. Gibbard’s breezy vocal on opening track “California Zephyr” gives every indication that Kerouac’s dream remains alive, but by the time Farrar brings things to a shuddering halt with “San Francisco,” what we hear is the lament of someone who has seen too much, drank too much, and loved too much.

One Fast Move Or I’m Gone is thus an important exploration of the side of Kerouac that many choose to ignore. In some ways it’s a side that’s more in tune with contemporary society, at least with those of us who are likewise wondering where to go next.

I’ve long been vaugely interested in On the Road, as I am with most culturally significant books. But it wasn’t until my husband started reading — and recommending — Kerouac that I actually sought the book out.  I’m listening to the audiobook now, and I’m glad he encouraged me to get my hands on it.

I’m about a third of the way through it currently, and one thing I can say is that it’s certainly different than most things I read.  I am first and foremost a reader of fiction — no, I should say a reader of novels.  I’ve never really gotten into the short story as a literary form.  I like poetry well enough, but typically in small doses.  There are specific essayists and humor writers I like, but I don’t generally spend a lot of time in those genres. 

What draws me into reading is the overarching plot — the intricate story with developed characters and a compelling need to know what’s going to happen to those characters.  This is why I read novels (and, to some extent, memoirs); to get to know the characters, to understand their circumstances and take their journey with them — to find out what’s next.

But On the Road isn’t about what’s going to happen to the characters, or what comes next — it’s about what the characters are doing in the moment.  It’s about being where you are when you are, and not knowing for sure how long that will be or where it might lead you. 

That’s not to say there aren’t characters.  There are, and they’re incredibly distinctive at times.  But the narrator himself and the individuals around him seem largely aimless, which doesn’t make for much of a story or plot in and of itself.  The focus of the book is instead their interactions — with other people, with their surroundings — and on Kerouac’s vivid descriptions of both people and places.

All in all, it makes it an easy book to read at a relaxed pace.  When I’m listening to it, I’m perfectly content to be in the moment the book is describing, but at the same time, there’s no dire urgency to move forward.  I can come and go from it as I please without constantly thinking about what’s going to be happening next.  Like our narrator, I’ll find out when I get there.   

Nous changerons bientôt de décennie, l’an 2000 est clairement une chose du passé, on pourrait penser que les peurs et les phantasmes millénaristes sont derrière nous, et pourtant jamais l’Apocalypse ne s’est aussi bien portée. C’est particulièrement vrai à Hollywood. On pense à tous ces films sortis ces dernières années, parmi lesquels Le jour d’après, Prédictions, ou encore 2012…

Bientôt sur nos écrans, The Road (La route), adaptation du roman de Cormac McCarthy paru en 2006 dans sa version originale. Un roman qui a reçu de nombreux prix (dont le Pulitzer), une adaptation ciné qui ne peut qu’intriguer. Un acteur principal généralement convaincant (Viggo Mortensen, magistral chez Cronenberg : A History of Violence, Les promesses de l’ombre), une bande-son composée par les meilleurs musiciens australiens qui soient (Nick Cave et Warren Ellis, compagnon de route de Nick Cave au sein des Bad Seeds et violoniste du trio Dirty Three), un précédent ouvrage de Cormac McCarthy porté à l’écran par les frères Cohen avec brio (No Country for Old Men)… c’est presque trop d’ingrédients du succès réunis à l’avance.

Pour me faire une idée, je suis donc allé lire The Road dans le texte, quelques jours avant la sortie du film en salles (le 2 décembre en France). Il faut sacrément s’accrocher : aucune note d’espoir ou presque dans ce récit de la lutte pour la survie d’un père et de son fils, dans un monde post-apocalyptique d’une noirceur implacable. Si on ne sait rien de la catastrophe qui a plongé le monde dans l’état qui est le sien dans le livre (accident climatique ? feu nucléaire ?), rien ne nous est épargné en revanche des épreuves que traversent le père et son petit garçon. Le livre nous fait vivre, presque en temps réel, le calvaire quotidien de leur marche vers le sud, le long de la “route” (une ancienne autoroute dévastée par le cataclysme). L’auteur décrit avec beaucoup de minutie les moindres détails de la marche, des petits gestes du quotidien destinés à assurer la survie (chercher de la nourriture, réparer un réchaud à gaz, se fabriquer des vêtements…), mais aussi de l’horreur rencontrée en chemin (brigands cannibales, mises en scène macabres, troupeaux humains réduits en esclavage ou utilisés comme garde-manger, etc.).

Beaucoup de choses ont déjà été dites ou écrites sur la relation père-fils qui forme le thème central du roman, (et le us vs. them, good guys vs. bad guys) ou sur le questionnement éthique soulevé par leurs actions. On voit ainsi le garçon s’affirmer peu à peu dans le dialogue avec son père, jusqu’à marquer sa désapprobation vis-à-vis des méthodes parfois très (trop ?) égoïstes et sécuritaires que celui-ci emploie pour se protéger de ses semblables. Ils rejouent à leur façon l’opposition entre pragmatisme et idéalisme, entre survie nécessaire et élans de solidarité. D’autres commentateurs ont vu aussi dans cette sorte d’expérience de survie dans un milieu hostile à toute vie une mise en garde écologiste.

Avec ce roman, c’est en tout cas tout un pan de mythe de l’Amérique qui en prend un coup. On est bien loin du chant lyrique des grands espaces, de la conquête de l’Ouest, de la liberté du voyageur vantée entre autres par Jack Kerouac (oui, l’auteur de On The Road, Sur la route !) et les écrivains et poètes de la génération beatnik. Fait surprenant d’ailleurs, à la toute fin du roman, un des (jusque là hypothétiques) good guys recueille le petit garçon, trois jours après la mort de son père, et lui fait cette remarque :

“If you stay you need to keep out of the road. I dont know how you made it this far. But you should go with me. You’ll be all right.” (p.283)

Comme si, depuis le début, le père et l’enfant avaient toujours eu tort de se raccrocher à la route comme seul espoir de les guider vers le sud et son climat plus clément… On devine, à demi-mots, que le petit garçon va désormais cheminer, avec eux, à l’écart de tout, dans les forêts, les montagnes, les endroits les plus sauvages et les plus inaccessibles. Le livre se termine d’ailleurs, au tout dernier paragraphe, par une drôle d’ode à la truite de ruisseau, symbole de forces chthoniennes, ancestrales, d’un monde qui a été et ne sera plus, qui ne pourra être réparé. Les motifs figurant sur leurs écailles sont “des cartes, des labyrinthes”, et “dans les profondes gorges où elles vivaient toutes choses étaient plus anciennes que l’homme et bourdonnaient de mystère”…

“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.” (p.286-287)

Ici, le mythe de la route s’effondre, au profit d’une conclusion austère, quasi mystique, et qui pourrait même pencher du côté de “l’écologie profonde” (deep ecology). Un courant qui place l’homme et son environnement sur un pied d’égalité, et a même donné naissance à des mouvements hostiles à l’humanité, allant jusqu’à préconiser un sabordage de la race humaine comme seul moyen de sauver la Terre et les autres espèces…

My last post inspired me to post one of my new-favorite quotes. It is by Jack Kerouac, one of the pioneers of the Beat Generation. Before the hippies took over, it was the beatniks in the 50s-60’s who dominated the underground scene. I will reflect further on this movement and Kerouac in a future post (I am currently reading On The Road).

Personally, I find this movement inspirational. Aside from the drug abuse and some other elements, I can relate to several of the ideals of the time. It is they who changed society as our grandparents knew it. They were the ‘crazy, mad ones’ who went against the dogmas ‘society’ imposed, and voiced what they really felt and believed in. ‘They’ came together, and opened their mouths in a loud unison that still resonates today.

Here is Kerouac’s quote:

“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!”

You and I might have different opinions, but that’s what makes us great.

E.

Dags att återknyta till det vackra, för att kontrastera tröskverket.

Följ länken och kolla på hela Robert Franks film Pull my daisy från 1959, med Jack Kerouac som berättarröst. Efteråt kan Du se “the making of” på youtube. Gratis och fantastiskt bra!

Mycket nöje!

Se você curte a geração beat, ou tem um mínimo interesse pela turba de poetas e escritores viajantes e marginais, deve ter percebido que faltava um livro no mercado que sistematizasse a jogada toda, contextualizando e indicando outras leituras. Faltava. Agora, felizmente é fácil encontrar nas livrarias o título Geração Beat, de Claudio Willer, pequena pedrada-pocket da coleção encyclopaedia da editora L&PM.

Willer é um grande estudioso do assunto, e já verteu para o português vários  poemas de Allen Ginsberg, sempre com riqueza de notas explicativas e textos adicionais. Em “Geração Beat”, ele revela um texto impecavelmente conciso e organizado, e muito agradável de ler – as linhas simplesmente se desmancham frente aos nossos olhos e lá estamos nós ao lado de Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac e William Burroughs.

Longe de ser um tratado sobre o assunto, este é um livro introdutório para quem começa  a se aventurar nesta imensa praia de girassóis, assim como presta uma louvável função de discutir e organizar um pouco dessa  loucura toda para aqueles que já a apreciam. Mais dois outros méritos do título são: a preocupação de Willer em trazer nomes que se ligam de alguma forma ao movimento aqui no Brasil e na América Latina – há inclusive um capítulo que trata apenas de como se difundiu a beat no Brasil, e a discussão de como estes tortos caminhos percorridos por esta geração iriam desmbocar na contracultura.

Texto: Alexandre Lucchese

]]> http://cltlblog.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/thank-you-jack-kerouac/ Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:03:18 +0000 CLTL http://cltlblog.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/thank-you-jack-kerouac/

Eric Marshall is a graduate student of Professional Writing at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. He writes poetry and is currently working on his first novel, tentatively titled The Sleep Season.

When I turned nineteen in July of 2003, my mother gave me a copy of On the Road by Jack Kerouac. It was a paperback, the cover illustration was of a slick nineteen forties Cadillac limousine surging down a dark blue midnight highway. Having just completed an honors colloquium on the artists of the Beat movement, my interest in the work of writers like Burroughs, Ginsberg, and Kerouac was piqued. I had no way of knowing, however, the dramatic affect that the famous novel would have on my young life.

My first reading of On the Road didn’t begin as the eye-opening, spellbinding experience it would come to be. I struggled with the early chapters, the litany of names, my own ignorance as to which characters aligned with which key figures of the Beat movement. But by the time that Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty made their fateful passage over the border to Mexico, I was enrapt.

What I had discovered was an affirmation of life, a defense against darkness, a resonant cry of rebel freedom that pulsates through American life. You could drop everything and hitchhike to San Francisco if you wanted; you could find God in the beady, sweating eyes of a tortured blues tenor; you could live life at the speed of light, and it could all blow up in your face, but that could also be okay.

Most importantly, though, I learned that I could write wild, untamed things that would set the world on fire for my readers the way that Jack Kerouac did for me.

I made a pact with myself that I would read On the Road once a year, every July, for the rest of my life. My earliest re-reads were attempts to rekindle the burning fire of my first reading, to rediscover the overwhelming sense of possibility opened up to me by reading Kerouac’s work at age nineteen. At first, I was disappointed, discouraged, even. Just like anything else in life, the book just wasn’t the same the second time around.

As the mangled ethics of my favorite characters became more apparent, some of the magical sheen wore off of Kerouac’s prose. The real and palpable sadness of Sal Paradise stranded, broke, and abandoned in a Skid Row motel in Los Angeles came across as more than just a lull before the next great, mystical explosion of the American night. Dean and Sal’s final goodbye felt more final than in my first reading; it was sadder, more complex.  What I found was that On the Road wasn’t the same, but then again, neither was I.

I’m twenty-five, now, six years removed from my first reading of On the Road. I still read it every year, right around my birthday. The reading has become somewhat of a benchmark of my personal growth, like how my parents used to mark my height on the frame of the kitchen door when I was a kid. With each reading, I discover something new, about the book and about myself. I don’t live my life like Sal Paradise or Dean Moriarty; I don’t really write like Jack Kerouac.

There are still moments of life affirming catharsis, but I’ve come to terms with the sadness of Kerouac’s story and I’m okay with that. His book serves as a window to myself, to who I used to be. In that way, On the Road is an assurance that I’ll never completely forget the wild kid inside of me. And for that, I am ever grateful to Jack Kerouac.

Il mio interesse per la beat generation è sempre andato di pari passo con la necessità di smitizzare il movimento, proprio a partire dal suo scrittore più noto e celebrato. Così, eccovi Arbasino che scrive del suo incontro con Jack Kerouac, avvenuto a Roma il 9 ottobre 1966.
Il brano in fu pubblicato da «L’Espresso», ed è attualmente contenuto nella ricca e preziosa sezione on line del settimanale dedicata al Sessantotto.

di Alberto Arbasino

Roma – apriamo la porta della stanza d’albergo, e quest’uomo basso con gli occhi verdi sta ronfando e ringhiando strappandosi la camicia, mostra il ventre obeso alle due ragazze salite poco fa per fotografarlo e intervistarlo. La camicia a scacchi verdi vien via, la prima cosa che mi dice è di togliermi la giacca. M’afferra la cravatta: «Io non ne porto mai, si può anche essere strangolati, con una di queste». E fa il gesto. Vorrebbe che mi togliessi la camicia. Ma per far cosa, per lottare, che non ce la fa neanche a stare in piedi? Sui tavoli, i sandwich non toccati, le birre che succhia fra un cognac e l’altro. Le ragazze fotografano. Lui fa delle corse intorno alla stanza. Non gliene importa niente se si apre la porta, non si accorge neanche se vengono dentro dei curiosi invadenti.
«…Comprare automobili, sfasciare automobili, rubare automobili, fracassare automobili, prender su ragazze, far l’amore, bevute per tutta la notte, posti di jazz, orge sfrenate, posti scottanti…». Questo dice la quarta di copertina di Sulla strada, paperback di otto anni fa, epoca ancora di jazz, non ancora di yè-yè. E subito sotto: «Questa è l’Odissea della Generazione Beat, i giovanotti frenetici e le loro donne che corrono furiosamente da New York a San Francisco, dal Mexico a New Orleans in una ricerca forsennata: di Godimenti e di Verità». E sulla copertina: «Questa è la bibbia della “generazione beat” – l’esplosivo best-seller che dice tutto sulla gioventù selvaggia d’oggidì e la sua frenetica ricerca d’Esperienze e Sensazioni». Nella prima pagina: «I barbari dello zen, ecco i rivoluzionari sfrenati, dissoluti, non violenti, assetati di Vita, Esperienza, Sensazione, Verità… Sulla strada è la loro odissea, la cronaca esplosiva del rifiuto di due giovani d’inchinarsi all’autorità, di conformarsi a una società che non possono accettare. Ecco la saga della loro selvaggia, sregolata ribellione, raccontata dall’Omero hip della Generazione beat: Jack Kerouac!».

Dolci donne milanesi
Un po’ ostile, un po’ indifeso, si butta sul letto, si rintana negli angoli. Come un infermiere ottimista, o una tata soave, Domenico Porzio gli mormora «Caro Jack, guarda quante belle visite abbiamo qui!», gli domanda «E allora, ieri sera, com’è andata a finire?», ma lui beve la sua birra allarmato, come le nonne di Albee quando sentono dire «c’è qui sotto il furgone pronto». Fa due o tre smorfie. Scatti, scatti di fotografie.
Scrive il suo esegeta Seymour Krim, nella prefazione agli Angeli di desolazione: «Ricordo bene quando a New York, alla fine degli anni quaranta, girava la voce che “un altro Thomas Wolfe, un roaring boy di nome Kerouac, mai sentito?” stava per scatenarsi sulla scena letteraria».
Secondo Leslie Fiedler, «Allen Ginsberg ha addirittura inventato la leggenda di Jack Kerouac, con la collaborazione di certi fotografi di Life e delle riviste femminili, trasformando l’ex atleta della Columbia University, autore di un noioso e convenzionale Bildungsroman da nessuno ricordato, in una figura della fantasia capace di colpire l’immaginazione dei bambini ribelli con pretese letterarie, così come le corrispondenti figure un po’ più ordinarie, Elvis Presley, Marlon Brando e James Dean, emozionavano i loro coetanei meno letterati e ambiziosi». Per Alfred Kazin, «Jack Kerouac è uno scrittore molto meno dotato e intelligente di Mailer, ma nel suo recente best-seller, Sulla strada, si trova quella medesima solitudine d’emozioni senza oggetti di cui curarsi, quella stessa sfrenatezza di violenza verbale che, a guardare un po’ da vicino, pare innaturalmente remota dall’oggetto o dall’occasione. Kerouac, invero, scrive non tanto intorno a “cose”, ma piuttosto intorno alla ricerca di cose su cui scrivere…».

Sta cominciando una tirata contro gli ebrei. È una sua idea fissa. Ma subito dice: «Non sono affatto fascista». Aggiunge: «La politica falsa i valori veri della vita». Precisa: «Sono un gesuita». Un po’ in inglese affannoso, un po’ nel francese arcaico-cantilenante dei canadesi: «Sono il secondo Messia, un Gesù Bambino tutto d’oro, vado in Paradiso con la mia culla». Birra. Cognac. «Miller ha copiato tutto da Céline. Il vero genio tutto originale è Burroughs, che è mio amico. Ma lo sappiamo solo io e Anaïs Nin, che Henry Miller ha copiato tutto da Céline». Gli dico che se ne sono accorti in parecchi. Viene lì col pugno. Poi ride.
Si sa che la bohème americana degli anni venti era una fuga dai villaggi provinciali e ipocriti del Middle West verso le corride e i cubismi della vecchia Europa latina e sdata, ma carica di miti chic. Negli anni Trenta? La bohème americana era radicale, combatteva in favore di tante Cause, faceva del marxismo passionale insieme a un marxismo un po’ trotzkista, e si lasciava fiaccare dai Complessi a causa di un salotto troppo elegante o di un matrimonio tutto sommato felice. «La bohème degli anni Cinquanta» dice Norman Podhoretz «è tutta un’altra faccenda. È ostile alla civiltà; venera il primitivismo, l’istinto, l’energia, il “sangue”. Nella misura in cui possiede interessi intellettuali, vanno tutti per dottrine mistiche, filosofie irrazionali, e un reichianesimo di sinistra. La sola arte frequentata dalla nuova bohème è il jazz, specialmente del tipo cool».

In quanto al reichianesimo, la sa lunga ancora Fiedler. «È Wilhelm Reich che muove i giovani col suo gusto per il magico, e la sua insistenza sulla piena genitalità come scopo finale dell’uomo.
Il culto dell’orgasmo sviluppato in suo nome ha fatto molti proseliti negli anni recenti, perfino tra i membri delle generazioni dei Quaranta e dei Cinquanta, vicini alla mezz’età e delusi dal marxismo e freudismo ortodossi. Isaac Rosenfeld, Saul Bellow, Paul Goodman, e specialmente Norman Mailer, cercano di vivere una seconda gioventù, menopausale… Ma ci sono segni dunque che la celebrazione della “piena genitalità” ormai dèmodée continuerà a esistere solo a un livello middle-brown-bambinesco, in romanzi e film sempre più ovvii, derivati, via Jack Kerouac, dall’ultima folle efflorescenza del sogno del sesso utopistico…».
Ieri sera aveva detto a Porzio: in Italia vorrei visitare soprattutto Pavia, Padova, Bologna. E anche: il miglior poeta italiano è Gregory Corso. Adesso gli frughiamo nel taccuino, e troviamo scritto: «Se l’Italia deve diventare la custode della chiesa, secondo la profezia, che cominci subito». «Garibaldi ha freddo, il cavallo è scoperto». «Raffaello, così languido». «Te la ricorderai, una ragazzina un pò maschile di Roma?» E a Milano, dopo un incontro di traduttori: «Dolci donne milanesi con amanti crudeli».

Pazzi da vivere
Parecchi anni fa, in un saggio molto celebre, Philip Rahv ha stabilito una differenza fra gli scrittori americani “pellirosse” e quelli “visi pallidi”, ormai insegnata nelle scuole come da noi quella fra classici e romantici. Il viso pallido è colto, patrizio, bostoniano, simbolista, religioso, irreale, pedante, snob: Henry James, Melville, Hawthorne, Edith Wharton, Emily Dickinson, Salinger. Il pellerossa è ordinario, sanguigno, maleducato, realistico, emotivo, spontaneo, tutto-esperienza e anche come-viene-viene: Whitman, Twain, Dreiser, Anderson, Wolfe, Sandburg, Caldwell, Steinbeck.
Gli chiedo cos’è lui. Risponde: tutte cretinerie. Gli chiedo cos’è Burroughs. Per poco non mi picchia. Non riesco proprio a capire una cosa: la parola d’ordine beat era “cool”, cioè freddo, immobile, distaccato. Però scrivevano (Kerouac) cose tipo «noi pazzi, pazzi di vivere, pazzi di parlare, pazzi di farci salvare, avidi di ogni cosa nello stesso tempo, noi che mai sbadigliamo o diciamo un luogo comune, ma bruciamo, bruciamo, bruciamo come favolose candele romane gialle che esplodono come ragnatele fra le stesse e in mezzo si vede esplodere la luce centrale blu, e tutti gridano “aaahhuuu!”». Questa prosa è calda bollente, chi l’ha scritta senza rileggerla aveva la temperatura alta, altro che cool! Bisognerebbe proprio farsi spiegare questa cosa.
Ma lui corre intorno alla stanza e fa il cavallino, ha rimesso su la camicia ma spinge in fuori la grossa pancia, canta abbandonato e felice delle filastrocche arabe o indiane – o iraniane? lo dice, ma non s’è capito – beve la sua birra, rifiuta il pezzo di pane e non gli si può andar vicini non per i pugni ma per l’alito.
«Ancora un giorno a Roma!» fa, sinceramente angosciato, quando gli annunciano che la partenza per Napoli è domani e non oggi. E rifà subito un incontro di pugni, come una volta che è andato con Ginsberg a trovare Mailer, e Mailer li ha accolti coi pugni pronti tipo Hemingway, e allora Ginsberg si è tirato giù i calzoni, gli ha detto «guarda qui!». E aggiunge su Hemingway che non ha mai avuto voglia di leggerlo, perché «vuol far troppo il Grande & Semplice». E precisa su Ginsberg che certe volte, attualmente più no che sì, è un grande poeta e detesta gli ebrei anche se è ebreo lui stesso.
Deve aver letto qualcuno di quei libri antisemitici che circolavano anche da noi tanti anni fa. Ci torna sopra continuamente: una ragazza ebrea ha sposato un suo amico «per prendergli il nome»; e subito gli ha detto «manda fuori di casa quei tuoi amici mascalzoni». E anche Kafka ha rubato tutto da Dostoievskij; e Einstein da uno scienziato polacco: perché gli ebrei vogliono solo portar via tutto a tutti. Aizzano anche i negri contro i bianchi, per poi approfittarsene.
Questi autori americani sono molto diversi dai nostri; e quelli alcolici, tutti uguali fra di loro. Cerco d’immaginare delle analogie, quando racconta: per esempio, io con Sanguineti oppure con Testori, che andiamo a trovare Ottieri oppure La Capria, e lì invece di parlare del Gruppo 63 ci tiriamo dei pugni per giocare, e a un tratto giù i calzoni, e poi fuori le bottiglie, e poi giocare a dadi nell’alba con Parise…
Ma lui dagli ebrei sta facendo dei va-e-vieni continui con la filologia e l’onomastica: spiega le origini dei nomi della sua famiglia, Indiani e Cornovaglia, col gusto e la curiosità etimologica di Roberto Longhi. Sua madre si chiama L’Evéque, nome predestinato… ma ricade subito: nomi come Ferlinghetti o Alberghetti non possono essere che ebrei, perché finiscono in “ghetti”.
Forse lui non è Kerouac. Forse si tratta di un allegro ubriacone della Bowery che ha sentito in un bar il vero Kerouac raccontare di questo viaggio offerto da un editore italiano, e si è offerto di venire al suo posto. Il vero Kerouac pare un tipo di parecchie letture. Può fare dei paragoni indecenti fra se stesso e Proust: «Scriviamo tutt’e due le nostre autobiografie, in parecchi volumi: la differenza è che lui rielaborava dopo, in un letto di malato, mentre io scrivo mentre vivo» (lasciandosi dunque sfuggire la parte fondamentale, “critica”, del lavoro di un meraviglioso artificiere, nient’affatto naïf; e badando solo ai materiali deperibili, non già al Congegno che è l’unica cosa che conta). Però fa diverse citazioni appropriate di classici moderni: perfino Mario e il Mago.

Il formaggio con le mele
Questo qui invece non sa mica tante cose. Wilson, Kazin, Trilling, sì: i tre grandi critici gli vanno bene.
Però non gli viene in mente una storia famosa: Ginsberg allievo di Trilling alla Columbia, salvato da lui dalla prigione, oggetto della compassione curiosa di sua moglie, e poi protagonista dell’unico buon racconto di Trilling stesso. Dice: conosco tutti! E fa tanti nomi. Tutta gente che tutti conosciamo, del resto. E un motto di Auden potrebbe anche esser vero. Mangiava una mela su un sofà. E lui: «Buona col formaggio!». E Auden: «Col formaggio non è buono niente!». Possibile: Auden, vecchio topone, pur di non parlare di letteratura va incontro a qualunque leggerezza. Però poi imita Truman Capote, e qui fa una voce da basso, mentre Capote è tutto un falsetto. Forse non è il vero Kerouac. È un allegrone venuto al suo posto: uno scrittore sia pure degli anni Cinquanta non si conforma ai modelli Bowery per la sua rappresentazione alcolica. Generalmente ha modelli migliori. Questo ripete troppo «sono un gesuita»; poi aggiunge che non accetta dogmi, crede solo alla sua verità interiore, si dà alcune azzeccate definizioni di luteranesimo; ma poi soggiunge che no, è gnosticismo (un quarto d’ora per trovare la parola).
Ma forse invece lo è. Ha comprato tanti rosari per la sua mamma; e si sa che quando il vero Kerouac scrive della mamma, De Amicis al confronto diventa Pascal. Che imbarazzo, certe elegie sulla mamma patetica che rammenda le calze rotte del figlio tornato tardi, con aghi e ditali di tanti anni fa, e poi si alza per preparare sospirando delle minestrine che costano poco però tanto buone…
Forse lo è. Butta là, riattaccandosi alle questioni di prima, un «Henry James non è affatto cool, è cool William James», e se gli obbietto che Henry è un pesce freddo, in fondo gli va bene. Non ha dormito, vorremmo andar via tutti, ma non ci lascia, s’inalbera. In francese, in inglese, con qualche parola di spagnolo: «Solo Burroughs è tutto originale!». Salutiamo. Non vuole. Gioca con un rosario. Cosa pensa dei nostri beat capelloni d’adesso? «Ho quarantaquattro anni, sono troppo vecchio perché m’importi di quello che può fare un branco di giovani stupidi bohemians». Che sia davvero Kerouac? L’ostilità è cessata, pare ansioso. «Pellirosse e visi pallidi sono stupidaggini, cool significa “fermo”, come quando sta per arrivare la polizia; la verità sta nella spontaneità. È la prova del fuoco: come per i gladiatori nel circo. Il lettore o la lettrice “partecipano” solo se quello che scrivo è “sentito”, con eccitazione. Dunque scrivo solo quello che scrivo profondamente». Se lo sentisse Flaubert!… Forse è Kerouac: i suoi libri sono scritti proprio così. Ma odia qualcuno? Tutto sommato no: è una furia inoffensiva. Ogni volta che gli si butta lì un nome, alla fine vengono fuori delle mitezze..



“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.”

Photo taken by: Joanna Etshokin

Text written by: Jack Kerouac (1957, ON THE ROAD)

.

………………….Lucifer Sansfoi

Lacayo Sansfoi

…………………Rito judío Perdieu

…………………I. B . Perdie

…………………………Billy Perdy

.

Desenrollaré tus

…………………intestinos desde……… Durham

…………………….a Dover

…………………………y los enterraré

……………………en……………………… Clover—

.

Tus salmos te los he

………………….grabado

………………….en los dientes—

……………………………Tus victorias

………………….desvanecidas—

.

Estás enjaulado bajo

………………….la falda de una mujer

………………….de piedra—

.

Ciega mujer de piedra

………………….sin intestinos

………………….y sólo con una………………….. balanza—

.

Que tus pensamientos y cartas

………………….entre cerveza vayan a

………………………………….una Beth          (tumba, en gaélico)

.

Que tus filosofías

…………………………………..te broten……………. de la nariz

…………………..de nuevo—

.

Que tus secretos

…………………..y ensayos sean colgados

………………….en salas……………………. de baile

…………………………………………………….de puñal

…………………………………………………….a puñal

.

Que tu réquiem

…………………final sea con

…………………martillos—

.

Que tu secreto

………………….esencial quede enroscado

………………….a botones de oro

………………….y agonizando

.

Que tu guía para 32

………………….ciudades europeas

……………………………….quede cubierta de costras en……. Isaías

.

—Que tu barba roja

………………….algo snob desaparezca entre

………………………ruinas de dolmen

……………………………..de las ediciones

……………………..de………………………………………………….. Blake—

.

Que tus santos y

……………………….consuelos sean arrebatados

………………………………—un manual

……………………….enrollado en una

…………………………………………….urna—

.

Y tu padre

………y tu madre se manchen

…………………………………..al pensar en ti

……………………el inagotable nunca engendrado

……………………………………cosechador de gusanos

…………—tú yaciendo

……………………allí, tú

…………………………………..reina por un

…………………………………..día, esperando

…………………..que las “brumas

……………………………….del pantano”

……………………………….se echen sobre……………. ti

.

Que tu dulce belleza

………………….sea descubierta por el………………… Innombrable

…………………………en su escondite

……………………………….sésamo………………………. untuoso

……………………………………sale de…………………… ti

………………………………de la ausencia

………………………..de salida,

………………..tendón, todo

……………………………………lo demás-

.

Temblorosa jerga

………………………..cementerio…………………………… ¡Uuh!

………………………………Que el hospital

……………………………….que te entierre

……………………………………………sea………………………………………… Baal,

………………………………...el enterrador

……………..Yorrick

………………y el que te eche la tierra encima

………………………………………………un mulero—

.

Que tu perfil

………………….en otro tiempo

………………………..como el de la…………………………… Garbo,

…………………..se confunda con la tierra—

…………………anguilas de un

………………….fiordo

…………………………………..infernal—

.

Y que tu tímida

…………………..voz sea

…………………..estrangulada

…………………..por el polvo

………………………………….para siempre.

………………….Que las nubes de la

………………….promesa de…………………………………. Noé

………………….se licuen en pena

………………….sobre ti—

.

Que tiza roja

………………………………sea tu centro

………………..y quedes unido a cuellos

……………….de cerdos, verracos,

………………………………estafadores y ladrones

……………………………..y ardas con

…………………………………………………………..Stalin, …………………………..Hitler

……………………………..y los demás—

.

Que te muerdas

……………………el labio    para que

……………………no puedas

……………………reunirte con …………Dios

…………………..o

………………….Que me pegue un editor

…………………………………………………..—mén

.

El limosnero,

……………..su taza no tiene

………………fondo,

…………………ni yo

……………………un límite.

………………………………………………Demonio, vuelve

a las cavernas bermejas.

.

Jack Kerouac

Una maldición al demonio

EMPTY YOUR GAZE AND THIS WORLD’S BEYOND SILENCE

I thought it was about time I posted a link to some of Han Shan’s poetry. He was hermit and fugitive who lived on ‘Cold Mountain’ in 9th Century China, around the time of the T’ang Dynasty. It was rumoured that he was handicapped, and lived in a cave on the mountain side. He rejected the life he was born into and opted to live within nature rather than as part of the privileged classes.Perhaps he was the poetic version of Millican Dalton? Unable to afford paper or ink he etched his poems into tree barks and stone. After his death the local Taoist monks – who took pity on him and fed him whilst he was alive – discovered his poems and wrote them down. So goes the legend of Cold Mountain.

He was a big influence on The Beats –  Snyder translated him and Kerouac dedicated Dharma Bums to his memory. I find there is something timeless about his work which keeps making me return to his poems over and over again.

If you are looking for a place to rest,
Cold Mountain is a good place to stay.
The breeze flowing through the dark pines
Sounds better the closer you come.
And under the trees a white-haired man
Mumbles over his Taoist texts.
Ten years now he hasn’t gone home;
He has even forgotten the road he came by.

I would highly recommend any of David Hinton’s translations – his work on Ancient Chinese wilderness poetry is really quite something. Or check out Penguin’s Poems Of The Late T’ang which also features work by Tu Fu and Meng Chiao. Cracking stuff.

Drunk on Rice Wine (In Search of the Lost Elation...)