Kerouac Stuff and Pig Stuff
Did you see that the "unedited original scroll version" of Kerouac's On The Road will be published by Viking Press next year? I love the way this news story describes Kerouac writing the novel "hopped up on coffee and benzedrine". Hopped up? Isn't that nineteen thirties hep talk? Hey Foghorn Leghorn, you were around in those days - any opinion as to whether the term 'hopped up' was in use in the early Fifties? I have knots in my stomach today and I wish I didn't. Patrushka too. Our offer on the Spokane house was accepted; yesterday we played grown-up and talked to a mortgage broker. Closing costs and paydown discount points and 1% for this and .5% for that. Help! - I wanted to pack all our belongings in a red handkerchief on a stick and head for a cabin far off in the far off mountains.
But God is good. "He gives wisdom to the wise" - I read this in the Bible this morning. I hope he gives some to foolish pigs as well. Cause I need to be wise as a serpent for the next few days.
Labels: Jack Kerouac
posted by Christopher Newton at 7:56 AM
39 Comments:
"unedited original scroll version" of Kerouac's On The Road
I want Viking to publish it ON A SCROLL! That would be cool. Kerouac wrote it in a month. Apparently, the language and, gasp, sexually explicit writings were a bit too much for the day. Hey, even Lucy/Ricky and Dick van Dyke/Mary Tyler Moore slept in different TV beds...as marrieds. Yup, racey.
I agree with your moving plans...bindles for everyone. I can only imagine Paula dragging her Upright Bass onna stick...
God IS good!
Spoke, what a great idea! You need to go into publishing right away. The novel exactly as written, with all the scratch outs and everything. It would be the ultimate collector's item. It could come with it's own unrolling/rolling device so you could keep your place and wind it up when you're finished.
I'd write to Viking right now except I have to go see the home inspector for his house report. Then I have to pack my bindle and grab a freight.
Congratulations on finding a home! I hope all will go smoothly with the real estate transaction and the upcoming move. I don't envy you one bit, traveling with the pony cart piled high and teetering, across the mountains and the valleys and the fruited plains, from sea to shining sea. May the dear Lord bless you and Petrushka both through it all!
Tales of the new edition of Kerouac's book coming out reminded me of an incident that happened years ago. I had read a sci fi book I really liked ("A Matter For Men" by David Gerrold.) I raved about this book to several friends, going on and on about how great it was. What I did not know at the time was that I had an "edited" version of the book. Some of my more pious friends picked up the "uncut" version based on my recommendation. They proceeded to be thoroughly scandalized by scenes I had never read and had no idea would be included...one was down right indignant that I would refer her to such a book. So it goes....
Hey I'm just curious. I've not yet gotten around to reading "On the Road". How would you say it would compare to any of the following, which I have read:
The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe, Travels With Charley
by John Steinbeck or Bound for Glory by Woody Guthrie?
You have a home! It is a scary feeling, yes? But a good one, too.
And I wouldn't put my bass on a stick, silly. I'd attach a little wheel to the bottom peg and get mobile with it!
Hey, anybody have any comparisons for Belladonna? I sort of lived "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" back in the Sixties and never had any desire to read the book, but the other two have been on my reading list for years.
I think Kerouac's prose is charming. It puts a charm on you. There's something about his openness and innocence and naievity and plain foolishness that is ineffably sweet to me. Reading him tastes good.
So I don't think he's comparable to any other novelist that I can think of.
I think it might be a guy thing. Jack was a complete, unconscious, early twentieth century chauvinist - just like most men of his generation - he writes about guys doing guy things and has little or even zero insight into women's hearts.
But he writes so honestly and, to my taste, so beautifully that the reader can see right though his blindnesses. And sometimes he gets it right too, and suddenly there's some cosmic insight on the page in front of you.
I hate and curse his alcoholism. And I intensely dislike the world - the media, press conferences, adulation of the innocent, and ridicule of the intellectuals - like that bastard Truman Capote who said of Jack's work "That's not writing, that's typing" --the world that pushed him over the edge into hopeless blind alcoholism.
So I don't know if I could compare him to Steinbeck or Woody in any way. I admire both.
First off, many congratulations on the house deal - it is always a bit overwhelming to buy a house...the great thing about that part of the country, from what I understand, is that there is so much beauty - so even if you two might feel a bit "tied down" at first, you'll still have all that beauty to go out and discover, and take trips, and see the ocean, and BC and all the other wonders of the PacNW =) So again, congrats!!!
Hmmm, now as for that Jack feller =) ... I absolutely loved reading Dharma Bums - the simple language and visions his words painted, as well as that sense of awesome freedom are incomparable - but haven't read On The Road yet. I think I'll definitely be buying the "unedited original scroll version" - and I agree with Spoke, I want mine on a scroll too!
I think some comparison can at least be made to Woody. Bound for Glory is seemingly a stream of conscious narrative in a similar vein to "Road", though I don't think Woody was as conscious of style as Jack was. Yet both books are the kind you can randomly open and the spirit of life just leaps out in your face.
Hopefully the unedited original scroll will unlock the secret of the Jack/Neal and Sal/Dean connundrum that has haunted me for, well, since Pig's "Rebel" post of a few months ago.
Leo's unparalleled insight --that Jack chose the names for his On The Road characters from the stars of the ultimate teenage angst film, Rebel Without A Cause -- can be found on my April 5 post, http://oldwalrus.schraf.com/2006/04/rebel-without-cause.html Hopefully, it will still click through even if you can't see the whole link.
Well, that didn't work. You can also get there by doing a "Search this blog" in the little box at the top of the main page. Just put in Dean Sal.
I've got to organize the blog into categories one of these days so it's easier to find old posts. Anybody have tips on this?
So, dear pig, I'm considering your sentence that said:
"--the world that pushed him over the edge into hopeless blind alcoholism."
Ya think???
My jury is out on that one. I've been, through the grace of God, clean and sober for 25 yrs. But prior to that there was a seven year period where I spent about eight days straight, and those weren't by choice.
I think there were a lot of things that influenced my serious substance abuse years, but I'm one who believes that no matter what my genetic predisposition or my social environment, ultimately my behavior of excess and addiction was my own doing.
Others can be pressure or support, but ultimately we each choose.
Sorta like the
Sailboat Analogy on one of my previous posts.
Just a thought.
Here is a stable link to your April 5 Rebel Without a Cause posting.
Thanks for giving me an excuse to backtrack a bit...thoroughly enjoyed it.
I think you got me on that one, Belle. If we're not responsible for our actions, then life makes no sense and justice dies. Still, I pity Jack and I just hate what they did to him. So I cut him a lot of slack.
I have evidence by the way - it's in print. I read a book last fall called "Empty Phantoms: Collected Interviews with Jack Kerouac". It's the clearest picture I've seen of what exactly happened to him after "On The Road" hit so big.
William Buckley and Mike Wallace and guys like that - they treated him like a trained bear - an object for fun and ridicule. They crucified him with their cruel laughter and their mocking - I'll go that far.
Jack should have walked away. But he didn't. He just drank more.
Maybe he was already on the downhill slide, maybe he would never have written another great book after "Big Sur". We'll never know.
I was thinkin' about the pig's other day question about "hopped up". When I was a kid it was always used to talk about someone who was full of beer specifically or booze in general. I know it was around in the 20's because my step-dad Ivan would get wierd when he heard it. He thought it was black slang for getting high. But in the 50's I remember when guys would soup their cars up we called it that. I lived near Lansing and a lot of the guys working the plants would hop up their cars on the weekends.
It all sounds related, so I looked on the answers.com and one of the definitions was about getting high (opium)and the other was about boosting power. I found it at http://www.answers.com/topic/hopped-up.
I like the danish definition the best:
Dansk (Danish)
adj. - peppet op, under indflydelse af narkotika
It's true that we all have to decide how we're gonna handle things like drugs, booze, sex, emotional issues... ad infinitum. Some of it may be hereditary disposition, but the last word is always, "Whatcha gonna do?"
Self-medication is, in the words of the late Jerry Garcia, "a cul-de sac". It's a place you turn in for relief from your problems, and quickly becomes your problem. You end up just going in circles.
When demands are put on us or we are ridiculed or treated like the dancing bear, our choices are extra difficult. We need relief but where do we get it? Unfortunately the mistaken choice will probably kill us.
I remember hearing in AA and NA meetings that drunks or junkies dying out there are our saints, our martyrs. They die from it so we don't have to.
It's true we're all responsible for our choices, but what about when we are the victims of someone else's bad choice? Don't Buckley or Wallace have any responsibility for the fall of those they affect?
You're idea about Kerouac borrowing from Rebel Without a Cause and using it in On the Road is right on. I know from doing my research in Kerouac's journals for a book I am writing about Kerouac and On the Road. Good catch!!! Best, Paul Maher Jr.
Not to blow your cover, Paul, but to the the gang I must add that Mr. Maher is the editor of "Empty Shadows", the book of interviews with Kerouac that has so colored my understanding of his later years. He's also written an important bio of Jack - which was excoriated by some of the press for daring to present a point of view - I know this sounds corny - but it's an honor to have you drop by.
Dang, Pig. Just think. We were on to big stuff 50 years after the fact. I wonder if there's a future in this past we follow around so closely? Glad you called my attention back to this post. You are a prince.
Thanks to Brer Maher for the affirmation on the Sal/Dean thoughts. I wish I had the drive and tenacity of a real scholar to follow those whims and work them through. But, I guess, it's just nice to be on the same beat once in a while. Almost makes one feel like part of the Doulouz legend. Well, a bystander anyways.
Thanks . . . . I am writing a new book that will shed new light on the On the Road years as well as collecting interviews of Miles Davis.
The other thing is I was wrong about the Dean/Sal associations with James Dean, I misread my source. That film wasn't released until October 1955, Kerouac had already created his pseudonyms by that point, maybe mere months earlier.
Just a coincidence . . . . although Kerouac does call James Dean an "American Hero" whom was part of "America's New Trinity of Love," the other two being Marlon Brando and Elvis Presley.
Pertaining to the biography, I feel partially vindicated for in my book I asserted that Allen Ginsberg's comments over the years were an attempt to portray Kerouac (only AFTER his death) as some kind of depraved alcoholic anti-Semite. Ginsberg commenced to doing this only after he was turned away by the Kerouac widow from Jack's archives (as was Ann Charters who chose to quote Ginsberg verbatim). One case in point, Allen has quoted over and over again that Kerouac told his mother that her "cunt was filled with shit." In Bill Morgan's new biography of Ginsberg, due in October 2006, he states that Ginsberg TOLD Kerouac to tell his mother that, advice Kerouac did not take having held his mother in such high reverence. This is a minor point, but HUGE because it shows that I was on the right path despite more than one critic blasting me for making Allen Ginsberg look bad.
Best, Paul Maher Jr.
Paul:
While the scroll was written well before "Rebel" came out, the final publication was well after the movie release. I can't help but think the idea is still cogent. I haven't read the scroll, so my idea is pretty much one of those middle-of-the-night epiphanies, but I can't help but stick with it. Possibly Jack knew of the film and the casting? I don't know.
I have a source I'm checking with, so let's keep this going. Pig, we need this intellectual stimulation. While I do enjoy the forays to the beach and the Willa Cather chatter (now that's a name for a blog!), the world yearns, no, aches, for new revelation. Who are we to get in the way.
Now you got me started. How are we to know for certain how JKack felt about his mother? She comes off in so many different ways, the truth is hard to tell. I'm certain, as are you, that Jack would never say that to her, but why would Ginsberg tell him to say that? Maybe Jack did feel it and Allen was pushing him? I don't know.
One defining factor is that I checked with the estate who has all of Kerouac's materials (well, copies of them) and the other is that Sal and Dean pseudonyms were created in draft form long before the film, liek as much as one year. I suppose JK could have read a script, but casting for the film was still after the names were already picked. The anecdote is that Kerouac read a poem of Ginsberg's using the phrase "sad paradise." Kerouac read it as "sal paradise" and therefore got the name from that. I cannot confirm it with anything Ginsberg wrote, because JK may have seen it in a notebook of his; the Ginsberg archive is simply too extensive to ever research a thing like that.
Per how JK felt about his mother. For one, I read all of his notebooks. I never seen one single negative thing about his mother written privately in a notebook. The fact of the matter is that JK was always grateful that his mother worked while he was traveling and writing, always made a home for him to go to when he sought to escape or elude the press, the beats, and fans. Ginsberg was just bitter that he wasnt allowed in the Northport home. The new biography of Ginsberg will clear this up; it was written using Ginsberg's personal journals and notebooks and, in no way, does it make him look like a saint. That will be out in a cpl of months. In the end, I suppose, people can choose what they want to believe. I, however, go by facts and, other than what Ginsberg and Charters say and write, i choose to not believe them. Each of them had an agenda, both concerning their being turned away from using JKs papers after he died. Kerouac even caught Charters rifling through his personal papers when she thought he was passed out. She denies this, but I dont see why JK would ever lie. He didnt lie about anything ever as far as I can see.
It is true that Kerouac was sick with alcoholism and did use rather salty language, but most people report that he never directed it at his mother. I cannot say that he never said anything to her in a fit of rage or depression, just that he never told her that her "cunt was full of shit," or to go "fuck herself." Orf that she called him a "cocksucker." That's all hogwash meant to heighten the drama in those bogus biographies published in the 70s and early 80s.
Well, I wrote to my friend Dennis McNally ("Desolate Angel: Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation, and America") and he was almost equally as non-committal to my thoughts, though he said, "In the end there's no way to confirm, of course, but I'd say your guess was quite reasonable."
With a release year of 1955 on the movie and a publication copyright of 1957 on the book, who knows the real truth of the situation? As you say, the estate provides you with "copies". Who knows what the originals really said.
For my part it's just foolish conjecture and I am one that likes the occasional banter, even if I'm wrong.
I would, though, take some question with a thought you spoke in the last comment: "I, however, go by facts and, other than what Ginsberg and Charters say and write, I choose to not believe them. Each of them had an agenda, both concerning their being turned away from using JKs papers after he died."
My question is this. If you go by facts and, obviously, they were there, at least closer to the facts than we'll ever be, on what grounds do you choose to not believe them on? Of course they had agendas, as do we all, as do you. What are you trying to say and prove? Maybe Allen and Charters had no access to the papers, but they had more than papers. They had real-life experience which, in spite of agendas and personal emotional flaws, is ultimately more truthful than mere facts. As Ken Kesy intoned, "The truth is there even when the facts aren't right". I stole that from memory, from "Sometimes a Great Notion."
I don't believe Allen was a bitter man. I believe he truly loved Jack. My encounters with Allen in the late '70's and again in the mid'80's had always presented a sincere man. We were not friends by any stretch, but our paths crossed many times. Egotistical? Of course. Who could do what he did and not be? But he always seemed sincere and caring and it didn't seem fake in the least.
Maybe Memere was a hard woman. Maybe Jack respected and protected her. Maybe she was an enabling and controlling woman? Maybe not. So what? How would that information change anything? Is it really any more important than my thought about the Sal/Dean coincidence. At this remove, is it important at all? If so, why?
I'm not being nasty here, I guess I just don't see any reason to prove or disprove anything about it any more. History speaks and, eventually, we just have to let it go.
Hence, the "Doulouz Legend".
Maybe someday we'll be legendary too. Maybe, like the Pondering Pig, we should make our own legends. That would seem a better lasting legacy.
All I can say is that JK had his characters named before the film came out. I cannot interpret it any other way than that in the days before the internet, JK would have had no had access to a script or a movie set . . . he was a penniless unknown.
If you choose to believe, then believe. However, in my business, when you write a book, everybody checks your facts and they have to be straight. If you look at the back pages of my bio, I have pages of endnotes with sources. Valid sources. To use somebody's say-so is conjecture which, I assume, is okay unless it is damaging to somebody's reputation. Then it is only fair to get your facts straight before repeating what you heard from someone else.
Forgive me here - All my books are in storage including the Charters and the McNalley bios. (And I have GOT to read yours, Paul, Empty Shadows had a huge effect on me) - but I sort of remember Jack briefly had a job reading scripts. During the Town And The City era. Am I right?
I like the "sad paradise" conjecture. It's more beautiful and seems to make more sense than the idea that Jack caught a matinee of Rebel Without A Cause in Times Square one afternoon November 1955 and said, "Eureka! They're Sal and Dean!" (BTW, IMDB gives Rebel's USA release date as October 27, 1955)
But, as you say, we can't confirm either theory.
But the movie theory makes poetic sense too - in a weird way. Think of the hero worshipping relationship between Plato and Jim Stark (the Sal and Dean characters in the film) with the implied homsexual overtone on Plato's part. It sort of fits Sal and Dean, Jack and Neal too. Yet I don't think of Jack playing symbol games with his readers like that. Did he?
It would be interesting to go back and look at Jack's other use of pop culture icons (other than jazz of course)
One more thought, who was Sal Paradise anyway? What is his fictional backstory? Was he really Salvatore Paradiso, kid from Little Italy or Queens? I just never thought of Sal as having any kind an ethnic heritage. He's sort of like a Ray Smith in Dharma Bums. And what a perfectly bland grey screen name that was! None of that Canuck stuff riding in from the cold winters of Quebec. Just good old Ray from Peoria. But nice little cornfed Midwestern or New England kids aren't named Sal. Italian kids are named Sal. Like Sal Mineo! I think it's time for someone to write a prehistory of Sal Paradise.
My bio on JK will be in trade paperback in spring 2007 with corrections and added material.
trust me, i wanted to make it fit, I had all kinds of ideas as well. But it doesn't fit. Those characters came into being a long time before the film.
Kerouac synopsized scripts in 1950 for 20th Century Fox.
I don't know what Sal's ethnicity is, in OTR he mentions making a pose for a photo he took with Dean and Carlo Marx "like a thirty year old Italian" and that he has a brother named Rocco.
There are so many transmutations and fusings of people that it's hard to tell. The scroll version will be tons better than OTR anyway, OTR as we know it is a product of corporate publishing, not Kerouac. Reading Subterraneans, Doctor Sax, Tristessa, Book of Sketches etc. bring you a lot closer to the real Kerouac than OTR, in my humble opinion.
Well, once again, you're working on the premise of conjecture. I'm not posting here to argue with anybody. If it isnt stated as a fact, it has no place in my books.
Kerouac was unknown to the vast populace despite his first novel; he was known to writers and artists in NYC and among his friends and acquaintances, it doesnt make him connected to major film stars as James Dean just because he wrote a novel that flopped.
The early versions of OTR were totally different than the final version; so much so that JK regarded it as a separate work.
There is a Fall 1948 version using a character named Ray Smith, approximately 95-pages long in typescript form. It is the earliest and longest version, about 40,000 words. JK felt this to be an important work in itself.
The 2nd draft of OTR is a 297-page typescript. It is here that the scroll has been retyped, revised, passages deleted (hundreds of lines worth).
The 3rd draft is a 347-page typescript that is revised by JK and an editor whom was an assistant to Malcolm Cowley. These changes are moderate with additions and deletions.
On Oct. 9, 1951, JK wrote to Neal Cassady referring to a work he had written, the character's name was Dean Pomeray.
James Dean, at this time, was working on his craft, but by no means had acquired any semblance of fame. He had just started to attend acting classes in NYC winter 1951.
Hope that helps.
Minutia? So, following that line of logic, if you represent facts in a nonfiction work, then it makes the book a "flop"? I stated my case, you obviously rather swallow the myth.
It isn't that we're "closer," we're there! You have nothing left to refute what I have stated, not by guesswork or conjecture, but by primary source evidence.
Furthermore, the book isn't/wasn't a flop. It has sold out two printings, received critical acclaim and an endorsement from the Kerouac estate and is going into a trade paperback format in 2007.
The scroll won't have Dean nor Sal in it, it will have real names.
I'm done here. Best to you Pondering Pig.
This is gonna be another one of those running screeds, I sense. Tensions are high and laughs are few.
I mention this because this oughta be fun, no? I have reached a point in life where expending a lot of energy over minutia is really a waste of time. Reminiscence and new revelation can go hand in hand, but bickering over 60 year old facts is, for me anyways, an exercise in the absurd.
I guess to an extent I am to blame for some of this, and I apologize. The thought that someone would use coincidental names is not weird. Mr.Maher originally thought it interesting and Dennis concurred that it though not confirmable.
This is my thought in a nut. New ideas about old thoughts is/are cool things. But what's the purpose? If, as Paul says, all the facts are in, the issue is dead. Facts, after all, over-ride all supposition and conjecture. Besides, what if Jack would have named the characters Ed and Ralph? How would that have changed the complection of literary criticism?
Wouldn't have changed the story, just the nonsense we think a half century later.
Being a writer and a political scientist, I live my life around facts and substantiation. Statistics and their ultimate "truth" have ruled much, probably far too much, of my life.
Again, if I'm not having fun, I must be doing the wrong thing. Smoke and mirrors, illusion and, yes, myth, are important parts of the writer's art. It's not always (not always)about the facts, though it's always about the truth.
Even in the reporter's craft, as the Chronicler will agree I'm sure, the color and texture of the article relies, in different measure, on the facts, the myth, and the pre-conceived and pre-accepted notions of both the audience and the writer.
Objectivity, as much as we try and achieve it, is impossible. Better, in my mind, to accept the subjective nature of existence and just keep walking and laughing and grumbling. Ambiguity is far more interesting to me. I like muddy water.
If we were debating, say, the symbolic significance of the Shrouded Stranger in On the Road, or, what "IT" is, I'd be well out of bounds by dictating what Kerouac intended (unless he wrote it somewhere, which he hasn't as far as I can see), but the question was "Did Kerouac retrieve the names of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty from Rebel Without a Cause. I admitted that Kerouac understood the public's fascination with all things James Dean later on, the name had no impact in any way, shape or form toward the naming of those characters. The name evolution, from 1951 (stemming from an early version of Visions of Cody) is ; Neal Pomeray > Dean Pomeray > Dean Moriarty (and then Cody Pomeray for Visions of Cody) . . . Sal Paradise came from the Ginbsberg text according to Allen Ginsberg. To be frank, I don't know where the minutiae came in, I simply stated the progression of On the Road's composition which is important because it shows how the novel evolved . . . minutiae is counting commas, not pages . . . . and popping up with irrelevent aphorisms instead of admitting that you were wrong is a cop-out.
PM
It's interesting to watch you guys gabbling over the "minutiae". Personally, I will take Paul's opinion as the word of a man who has studied the subject. I am not kissing up, believe me - I just would rather learn from someone who has struggled to gain knowlege than argue with him. Paul's read the journals, we haven't. I can see no earthly reason why he would give us anything other than his best judgment on this small issue. Guys, he's right.
By the way, I also agree about his choice of Kerouac novels. My all-time favorite Kerouac book is Visions of Gerard. It breaks my heart everytime I read it. That scene where Gerard goes to the store in the snow for his Mom to get some medecine.... heartrendingly, ineffably beautiful.
Paul, since we are just chatting here, can I ask you about The Subterraneans? Being a native San Franciscan, I was astounded when I learned the story was orginally set in Greenwich Village. That story IS early fifties San Francisco (except for the hot night scene the story opens with, but even that could be true on an unusual September night).
I mean, what happened to spontaneous bop prosody? Nothing could be less spontaneous than recreating an entire novel in another city on another coast. I read that he rewrote the story because his editors told him San Francisco was hot now.
This may be a criticism of the theory but not of the finished product, which is a brillian evocation of a doomed love affair in bohemian early Fifties San Francisco.
I feel like I want to write something for Jack, but I don't know what. He's not a normal writer. He is for the ages. I mean, what egotism to write a series of books called, in effect, "The Legend of Me". Except it's true! He did it!
Thanks Pondering . . .
The Subterraneans, like his other novels, has an original format, that is, the way it was originally conceived and written by Kerouac. Then there is the retyped typescript for the publishers. The original was written from October 21-24, 1953. The work ended up being 173-pages and, on that, he had made numerous deletions and additions in Kerouac's hand. On that typescript, there are also suggested notes and changes by an editor which Kerouac ignored. Jk then added twelve additional pages of manuscript in his hand. After he did all this, he made another clean copy on his typewriter, again 173 pages, this one is clean and uncorrected. So, in short, Kerouac typed The Subterraneans in three days, an editor by the name of Donald Alle had the gall to mark it up for Kerouac to change (adding commas, periods, sentence reconstruction, etc.)Kerouac ignored the changes and, to quote from his letter to Allen: "if I let editors take my sentences, which are my phrases that I separate by dashes when "I draw a breath," each of which pours out to the tune of the whole story in its own rhythmic yawp of expostulation, & riddle them with commas, cut them in half, in threes, in fours, ruining the swing, making what was reasonably wordy prose even more wordy and unnaturally awkward (because castrated). In fact the manuscript of Subterraneans, i see by the photostats, is so (already) riddled and buckshot with commas and marks I cant see how you can restore the original out of it." Kerouac, instead of waiting for Allen to do this, typed the whoel thing clean and submitted it with the instruction through his agent not to touch the work at all. And we the readers are all the better for it. I love The Subterraneans more than On the Road.
Kerouac stood by how he wrote the work but was smart enough to know that he had to prevent himself from libel. No publisher in the world would touch a novel based on real people for fear of losing their hats over it.
Ok. I surrender. You are correct, Brer, Pig. Paul is right. I was wrong. It was a pretty good idea though, no? I kinda always figured I was not quite on the money, but I liked the banter for a while. Now we just gotta get Ted to settle down.
I like the thoughts on The Subterraneans shared here and, like the Pig, I thought, on original reading, that it was San Francisco.
Jack's process, if you can call it that, always fascinated me. Any thoughts on how Jack felt about the film treatment? Leslie Caron as Mardou, as much as I liked her in the movies, was a bit of a stretch. I guess 1960's America wasn't quite ready for the real thing, eh? Roddy McDowell as Yuri/Allen, for some reason, worked a little better.
The Subterraneans was my favorite too, at least in the early '70's when I finished High School. I was young and silly, and even went as far as signing personal correspondence as Leo Percepied.
But for some reason, "Vanity of Duluoz", as funky as it was, touched my heart. Maybe because it was the last gasp of a dying man? I don't know. What do you guys think?
"Hic calix. Look that up in Latin, it means 'Here's the chalice,' and be sure there's wine in it..."
Your dismissive response speaks volumes about your character though . . .
JK hated the movie version; the fact that it contained violence, Mardou was changed to a white woman and that it all works out in the end for the cpl that was otherwise doomed in the book . . . . . actually, the whole point of the novel is lost in the film.
I fell that Kerouac's books are unfilmable . . . the essence of who Kerouac was lies in the storytelling, not the subject matter that isn't all that original. I actually have no desire to see On the Road as a film like most people do. Then again, I just don't feel Kerouac's presence in On the Road as we know it, not after seeing the other versions that he put so much of himself and his vision into the work and to have it all excised and chopped up by Viking's editors really ruins it for me.
I synopsized the plot of the film version last April. Should you care to read the Pig's take, you can find it at http://oldwalrus.schraf.com/2006/04/terrible-truth-about-beatniks.html
I haven't yet learned how to put a link into a comment correctly, so if this doesn't work, the post was called The Terrible Truth About Beatniks. I hope you'll get a laff out of it, anyway. It was certainly the most ridiculous movie of all time (hyperbole alert).
You know, I think WE could do "On the Road". We got the beat, daddy-o! We got the chops!
Chris has a treatment and a big screen vision. He can do storyboards. Ted could take his reporter's art and script it, make it documentary-style, almost Ken Burns like. Paul has all the technical/historical knowledge on our characters and, as technical advisor, can keep us on track. We can co-produce. I could be the guy that goes to the deli for sandwiches at lunchtime. That covers pre-production pretty well.
How about a crew?
Between us, we've got plenty of photographers and musicians. We are masters of light and sound and smoke and mirrors! Piece of cake! Now we just get Louie B. Mayer to loan us some mobile equipment.
Now for the cast.
I think Pig would have to play Sal and, since this is my cranial methane moment, I would need to play Dean, a role I've been studying for since childhood. I just gotta work on my zen driving and bomber rolling.
Nitsa could play Camille, Foghorn could portray Old Bull Lee, and Luther could do Carlo Marx. I see Paula as Mary Lou and Spoke as Ed Dunkel. Larry, who never visits anymore could play Remi. Genevieve could do Sal's aunt, Patrushka could be Jane, and Peggi could be Laura. Hannah and Kirstie could be the Moriarty girls. I see Chris's brother Gary as Tom Saybrook.
Tom/John Clellon Holmes, by the way, was author of the first Beat novel, "Go." It was in a discussion between Jack and John that the term "Beat Generation" was originated. Who better than the Pig's older brother to play that role?
We'd have to do auditions screen tests for the rest of the roles, unless someone else at the sty has other ideas.
Babbs and the boys up in Eugene have resurrected "Furthur" from it's swampy grave and, though not part of this legend, it could act as our road worthy base of operations on this cross-country event. Besides, it already knows all the roads and weirdness.
Production starts Friday September 1 in Frisco. I see us as filming this backwards since we already know the end, and the reversal could be the adventure. Sorta like the legend of Merlin in "Once and Future King", where he was born old and grew younger as the years went on.
Once we get Martin Scorsese on board, we're all set.
Forward In to the Past!
Wow! About 3/4's of the way through the comments my mind kind of gelled over.
Here's a thought. Pure conjecture.
Maybe the script-writer of Rebel Without a Cause read JK's book and named the characters after the ones in the book.
Hmmm??
Let's set up a time-machine and travel back there and find out once and for all. LOL!!
The source for "Sal Paradise" is theorized by most scholars as coming from a misread of this line from an early poem of Ginsberg's:
"Sad paradise it is I imitate / and fallen angels whose lost wings are sighs." That was in a letter to Ginsberg on August 26, 1947.
Hey, thanks, Anonymous. Sounds like the last word to me. Now we can get on to serious stuff like...well, like what?
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