The Beat Culture and Jack Kerouac's
«On the Road»
Jack Kerouac’s “spontaneous novel” “On The Road» is renown as the most influential novel on the Beat Generation of the 1950’s, as a compass for many youngsters of this time, comparable to a Holy Script of who they were. This was only possible because Kerouac him-self was part of this culture, of this “movement.” As he wrote himself, he was travelling for a long time, not continuously writing on this book but only from time to time, not intending to finish it anytime soon. The writing process was a slow one, slowly but steady. What often goes unseen, on the other hand, is the diverse depiction of the zeitgeist in different regards – Kerouac’s protagonists Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty usually stop by in cities to visit clubs where various musicians jammed together, although they also coincidentally, but not seldom, happen to attend jam sessions with famous musicians of their time, musicians who obtained broad acclaim for having shaped Jazz music fundamentally.
But it was not the Jazz music that was Kerouac’s main focus on his book, it was not the leitmotif that draws a red line through his book. It more obviously was the Beat generation, as I mentioned it before. Unfortunately, nowadays, readers of this novel will barely remember this time, many of them are too young to remember, they have not lived through it, nor did they ever hear about it, although many of them might have heard music by the Beatles once or twice, musicians in whose band’s name the word “Beat” is interwoven, marking the main influence to their music. Thus, it will be necessary to especially reflect on this music, this culture that grasped upon an entire generation of young people who generally called themselves “Beatniks” to present their affiliation with this way of life.
The end of the book, to indicate but one thing before this text begins, shows us what could be called the downside of this movement: I mentioned in the beginning that when talking about the Beat Generation, it is being talked about a “youth” culture. Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty were travelling east- and westwards for months, always together, until Sal Paradise eventually decides to settle down with the girl he was looking for his entire life, Laura, while Dean decides to travel back to San Francisco for another time. This was when Dean Moriarty suddenly disappears without having said goodbye, without mentioning where he was going and when, if ever, he would return. Without interpreting this end of the novel too much, one could consider that this was Kerouac’s way of subliminally indicating that one could not be a Beatnik forever; once one would become an adult, perhaps had to follow by a job that required one to adjust to a certain etiquette, one had to lay down this rebellious culture and become a man, or woman. Down would be the fun and joy of not being told to take over any responsibilities, now would be the time to settle down, apply for a job and become independent from any caregivers. It would match the overall narrative of Moriarty’s loose life he followed by when he lived on the road – to work, he did not have to because his aunt usually sent him money; he did not have a job, nor did he have any private possessions he had to take care of, he was all fine with himself; whenever he could, he tramped with whoever would take him with himself. Moriarty wanted to enjoy his life, a life of ease and joy. Thus, it is no surprise that the Beat Generation was born in the United States’ post-war era, an era from which many youngsters were educated by parents who lived through years of war, uncertainty about their safety; especially fathers who may have fought the national socialists in Europe, traumatized and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), illnesses that were not examined and understood that thoroughly. After these hard times, the youth wanted to enjoy itself and therefore caused a liberal uprising: Hippies were protesting the Vietnamese proxy war, and students preferred to jive instead of following their parents’ footsteps. Thus, the Beat Generation is usually described as one form of adolescent counterculture, as a non-White cultural movement in poetry and literature, for which Jack Kerouac too was told to have studied respective non-White cultures, thus having featured Jazz music – a typically non-White music in its roots, although captured later by white men finally (vide Herbie Hancock, Peter Brötzmann, John Zorn, etc.), to define the culture he was confronted with and being aligned in inadvertently and without his personal con-sent. In fact, he lamented the Beat Generation as it was,
“[…] the unmooring of tradition and moral-spiritual ‘stability’ that had broadened his dexterity in arranging traditional-modern intellectual synthesis progressively, narrational-cultural-historical vehicle greater than anything that Karl Marx may have imagined.” (Chandarlapaty 2009, p. 107 ).
This surprising point of view on Beat Generation might have derived from his Catholic education and belief that gave him a more pietist attempt that differed from his contemporary fellows. To one who only read his most famous book, but nothing besides this, it is hard to opine on such theses. Preferably, one should only stick to the literature upon the topic. Yet, to make up one’s mind on it, it should be clear what has to be understood what is meant by the terminology, “Beat.” Without any context, the term does not tell anything about it. Moreover, the Beat Generation surrounds not only music and literature beside poetry, but also the fashion. The mainly Anglo-American cultural movement was, in shape of clichés, often depicted by young men with black turtlenecks, slim jeans and matching patent leather shoes. But their eccentric appearance was only one part of the Beat generation: The Beat Generation is often described as a postmodernist movement with its own terminologies, which also brought up further terminologies that seemingly describe the same but actually define other similar-yet-different movements which should be minded when talking about the Beat Generation. Be-side the original Beat Generation, existing from the 1940s to the 1950s, there also were the Black Mountain College, an “experimental liberal arts college” in North Carolina, the origin of the Beat Movement, which was a separated movement on its own, having emerged in the latter 20th century, starkly related to the “inceptions of the 1940s and 1950s to the present;” finally, there is also the Beatnik era – according to the “Historical Dictionary of the Beat Movement,” it can be described as “a media-made moment, and although some of the true Beats were certainly part of their times, it rarely coincides with the true Beat Movement.” (Varner 2012, p. 21). In this “Dictionary,” the references to all these terminologies and curt definitions put into quotation marks can be found.
As a quick overview, the abundant differentiations might appear confusing, because the topic itself would require an own, lengthier paper. For the record of this paper, it’s enough to remember that Kerouac is usually described as a spiritus rector of the Beat Generation, he also appeared in Allen Donald’s anthology, “The New American Poetry: 1945 – 1960.” He also is an example that the cliché description of members of the Beat Generation/Movement only applies for the Beatnik, therefore usually confused with one another in the media who focused primarily on the Beatniks to create an arbitrary narrative.
Now that we created a narrow understanding of what the Beat Generation is, it should be asked what let the literature and poetry of the Beat Generation stick out of the crowded field of prose and poetry. The question is more difficult than it sounds, since even during the Beat-nik era, intellectuals who detested nontraditional novels and poetry simply called it “Beatnik” in order to depreciate it. What also has been connoted in most poetry and novels of this era was the spontaneity, an aspect that can be spot in Kerouac’s “On The Road:” The missing red line, the volatility of the sceneries Moriarty and Paradise pass by or rest in, the hedonism of their undertakings. Contemporaries highlighted the similarities and preferences of Beats with Jazz music which featured the same spontaneity and volatility as their writings. One of the critics of the Movement is the Conservative literary critic Norman Podhoretz, as he is quoted in Gabriele Spengemann’s “Jack Kerouac: Spontaneous Prose. Ein Beitrag zur Theorie und Praxis der Textgestaltung von On the Road und Visions of Cody:“
“Not only does it [this prose] failed to “break through” into new vitality, but it is a style a thousand times more “literary” and derivative and academic than the writing produced by the most anemic instructors of English in our colleges. It is an inept imitation of Faulk-ner and Joyce done by a man who thinks that to be a Faulkner or a Joyce all you have to do is sit back and pour out anything that pops into your head – and the more mixed-up the better.” (Spengemann 1980, p. 65)
Just to remark on the quote I picked from Spengemann, I wonder whether she made the quote up herself or whether she read a different version of Podheretz’s essay, but I could not find it in there, so that I will just leave it as it is, and not further comment on it in regards to the content itself, and what she thought about his position on Podheretz.
In regards to his point of view generally, it is by far not surprising that Conservatives would condescend upon spontaneous prose as written by Kerouac, the Beats usually tried to break up with traditional conventions, which is the reason why many Beats did drugs in order to extend their minds. They ventured outside into the world, wandered to San Francisco and assembled with other Beats and joined writing groups (Kerouac lived together with Ann Charters who later became his biographer). Spontaneity, of course, stood strongly in contrary to the orderly form of traditional shapes of poetry and prose. Conservatives would usually detect the downfall of Western culture when it comes to the advent of uprisings in culture. Thus, Podhoretz’s critique, “The Know-Nothing Bohemians,” published in 1958 in the Partisan Review, simply matched with the Conservative persuasion.
It should be reminded that, even though his text might certainly be read as a polemic on the young, liberal-sounding movement of their time from a grumpy old man who stuck to his ambitions, Podheretz was no outsider to the main figures he was writing about: He used to be befriended with them all, and only parted from them after a long-lasting friendship. His development can be compared to the one of political thinker and publisher Irving Kristol, who used to be a left-winged Trotskyist before he turned away from his revolutionary ambitions to become a modern Conservative and writer of many seminal essays on foreign policies, political philosophy, but also on Jewish belief.
Beside the spontaneity that drew its red line through the Beat Generation, and the hedonist background, further aspects of its poetry can be listed. Due to the origin in postmodernism, the writings are highly introspective, focusing on the specific characters and their personality; conventions are being broken, thus, poetry is written more openly, verses no longer stick to rhyme schemes. From this movement, the “procedural” and the “serial” form have emerged. To now ask to describe how these two forms signify, how they differ from more traditional approaches as they were known beforehand would be a challenging demand not easy to accomplish. A closer look into Kerouac’s novel “On the Road” could help, instead. We shall observe a quote I will present hereby:
“Then, we called Carlo at his home in Long Island and told him to come over. Carlo arrived in two hours later. Meanwhile Dean and I got ready for our return trip alone to Virginia to pick up the rest of the furniture and bring my aunt back. Carlo Marx came, poetry under his arm, and sat in an easy, watching us with bleedy eyes. For the first half-hour he refused to say any-thing; at any rate, he refused to commit himself.” (Kerouac 1957, p. 107)
Without knowing the novel, not having read it at any time yet, one might wonder how much progress was going on in this piece of the novel. It seems to hang at poise, although this could also apply as a prejudice, to allege it of depicting a momentum throughout the 300 pages, a style of writing best known by Robert Musil’s famous novel “The Man without Qualities.” What the novel can possibly be accused of nevertheless is the lack of a certain plot in the novel. It would perfectly fit in the style of “spontaneous prose,” since there can be no plot when there is no structure in the writing itself. In secondary literature to the Beat-Generation, Kerouac and his novel “On the Road,” it seems to be accepted as an incomplete writing style, since Kerouac himself implemented his own terminology to describe his spontaneous writing – “sketching.” Vide Spengemann 1980, p. 89:
“Es liegt auf der Hand, daß die erste Methode – vorausgesetzt das Skizzierte wird als artifiziell vollendetes Konstrukt erachtet – dem Ziel Kerouacs entspricht, zwischen der Rezeption (gleich welcher Art) und der Produktion keine Spanne der Reflexion zulassen.” (sic!)
Kerouac chose to not reflect on his writing, what to improve and what to leave as it dwelled in the original writing. The outcome is a text that reads particularly loose, with no strict plot to follow by when reading it. Hence, Kerouac’s choice of scenery, the road, is an almost inevitable one, because the road only follows one way or the other, up or down. The road is a regardless line that merely ignores the encounters on the sideway, or the protagonist refuses to interact with figures on the sideway, so that he or she will not be disturbed while wondering the road. To make such a statement, on the other hand, is critical, because Sal and Dean do interact with other figures they meet during their journeys through the United States. The problem, nevertheless, is that their short usual interactions with other figures of the play become monotonous by time, repetitive, with little innovation. Comparing this idea of little artistic creativity with Kerouac’s “On the Road’s” status as a groundbreaking work of the Beat Generation doesn’t necessarily speak in favor of the Beat Generation as such. To again add a quote, this time from Podheretz’s “Know-Nothing Bohemians:”
Nothing that happens has any dramatic reason for happening. Sal Paradise meets such-and-such people on the road whom he likes or (rarely) dislikes; they exchange a few words, they have a few beers together, they part. It is all very unremarkable and commonplace, but for Kerouac it is always the greatest, the wildest, the most. (Podheretz 1964, p. 155)
Maybe it can be told that postmodernism is more than just the introspective behavior of characters, so that Kerouac’s novel distinguished itself through different characteristics rather than the introspective behavior. If this was the case, then, what characteristics did he include to fulfill the case of postmodernism? To understand this, it might be necessary to figure out what postmodernism actually means, what it is. Otherwise, a distinction is impossible to be made.
For those who have a vague comprehension of postmodernist visual arts, with artists like Duchamp and his “Ready-mades,” one might question if these works could really be called “arts,” mostly in the traditional understanding of the Raphaelite paintings, Michelangelo’s “David,” or Hieronymus Bosch’s depictions of hell. Yet this is one of the main features that were highlighted by postmodernists – their most essential claim is to rethink everything. Thus, they began to overthrow traditional assumptions, (allegedly) rejected scientific accomplishments to replace them by questioning the most basic foundation of human understanding of natural sciences, history, and, of course, the arts, visual as well as artistic. What else can be said about postmodernist art of any kind is the rebellious understatement, or what postmodernists themselves define as rebellious, or “avantgardesque” in their regards. Postmodernists attempt to wholly redefine society’s understanding of what they approach in their own ways. As Christopher Beutler wrote in his 2002 book, “Postmodernism: A Very Short Introduction,” postmodernism
“[...] is not particularly unified in doctrine, and even those who have most significantly contributed ideas to its manifestos sometimes indignantly deny membership – and yet the postmodern-ist party tends to believe that its time has come. It is certain of its uncertainty, and often claims that it has seen thought he sustaining illusions of others, and so has grasped the ‘real’nature of the cultural and political institutions which surround us.” (Beutler 2002, p. 2)
Now, how could Kerouac’s “On the Road” be explained as a postmodernist work? As it has been defined extensively, he wrote spontaneous prose that remained in a state of sketchiness, without a red line the reader followed by as in each other book that was written in the traditional understanding of literature. Instead, the reader only follows two protagonists who lived in the road, absolving joyride after joyride, meeting friends in cities like Denver, Colorado. It certainly was a completely new approach in literature, not fitting into any frame like the epistolary novel or the bildungsroman. Instead, a new kind of novel was born, closely affiliated to the “road movie,” as depicted in the famous film about two women fleeing the police and introducing emancipation to the social limelight, challenging classical role models of women being tied barefoot to the stove.
Beside overall shape of Kerouac’s novel, were there any other aspects that tell the reader that he or she is not reading a standard novel? Some critics highlighted the Beats’ interest in jazz, back then a exclusively “black” genre of music, meaning that all the famous musicians playing it were of African-American heritage. Some of them were mentioned in Kerouac’s novel, names like Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie. But more could be mentioned without going back any further, and even women could be mentioned, one of them being Ella Fitzgerald, although she practiced vocal jazz rather than the previously dropped names (Parker played the alto saxophone, while Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie both played the trumpet; remarkably was Gillespie’s trumpet, whose bell was bent by 45 degrees, therefore having a deeper sound). Louis Armstrong could be mentioned as well, as well as Thelonious Monk. Critics wrote that Kerouac redefined the “White-Otherness” of his contemporary culture. What this terminology is supposed to mean is hard to say, thus should be approached slowly and carefully. Terms like these function as umbrella terms, gathering under words like post-modernism. In this context, it is supposed to describe the internalization of one’s “white” character into an ethnic minority individual’s character. This sturdy description simply tries to say that one white person tries to understand an ethnic minority by internalizing oneself into this person to understand, for example, his or her grief, struggle, or cultural background. The term “internalization” derives from philosophy, especially in the philosophy of mind. The meaning is comparably the same, although in cultural studies, it tries to thereby attempt to understand a wholly different culture from oneself, not seldom sparking criticism from those shall be understood – for example, such some criticism emerged in literature concerning the border conflict between the US and Mexico, where especially white US-Americans like T.C. Boyle contribute to understanding the conflict from both points of view, the average citizen of the United States’, as well as the (illegal) immigrant’s, who travels hundreds of miles to then end up along the border, perhaps in a detention center. These white authors are alleged of not being able to understand the person of color’s point of view because they have not lived through what they have experienced throughout their life. Unfortunately, there is only few literature on general internalization of white people, much of the studies in this field are specified on certain works of literature or certain situations which were examined. To draw schemes from a compilation of such work would appear logical to some, but could be declared biased and, therefore, unscientific. Hence, it shall not be drawn such an argument as long as there is no apparent literature to refer to on this novel.
What can be done, on the other hand, is to ask whether Kerouac can really be accused of internalizing as a white man, especially in his novel “On the Road.” As Chandarlapaty wrote, “[…] characterizing ‘Dean Moriarty’ (Neal Cassady) as the image of the unemployed, vagrant-like and erratic caricature of the Black Bluesman; […]” (Chandarlapaty 2002, 104) Where he drew this idea from is unknown, Chandarlapaty himself too just cited a different academic, although on purpose, as one can imagine. Thus, which aspects do assemble in the person of Dean Moriarty that might justify comparing him to “a vagrant-like and erratic caricature of the Black Bluesman”? The question is what Omar Swartz, the man whom Chandarlapaty quotes with these words (from “The Views From On The Road,” published in SIU Press in 1999), assumed to be the characteristics. Unfortunately, I have got no access to the book currently, so I am unable to review Swartz’s assumption. Furthermore, it would be wrong to make own assumptions, so that it should be contemplated which characteristics could be made. Blues musicians such as Howlin’ Wolf were known to be rationally minded, living stoic lives and not living lavish lives in wealth and exorbitant spending. An (unverified) anecdote shall be mentioned, an interaction between Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters, another famous Blues musician known for songs such as “Hoochie Goochie Man” or “Long Distance Call:” Muddy Waters was said to receive a Cadillac as a gift, but Howlin’ Wolf advised him to turn down the gift because in the long run, it would cost him significantly, likely to ruin him financially, due to the costs of gasoline and maintenance. Assuming that such a behavior as Wolf’s was, it could be said that Blues musicians were self-responsible and rational beings, humble and socializing. Still, Swartz seems to have assumed that Blues musicians were mainly unemployed. Regarding the fact that most (if not all) of them were African-American and tried to make ends meet by playing music, he would be right. On the other hand, it should also be questioned whether recording music could not be regarded as a profession itself. In the outcome, professions can be separated into two main functions: To make a living, this would be the personal reason to work in a certain profession; and to keep a certain business running, depending on where one works specifically – this would be the businessman’s reason to employ someone. Freelancing professions such as writers (or artists generally) and musicians dedicate to, would fall out of the traditional scheme, because there would be no second lane, namely the businessman’s lane, although this lane would be followed by through the bosses of labels that dis-tribute songs, or editors-in-chief who publish books written by aforementioned artists. The only difference from “actual” workers would then be that they were not fully employed by their “employers,” but loosely, through temporary or individual contracts. Sal is such an “employee” – he too writes books, although he rarely sells pieces, which is the reason why he de-pends on his aunt to send him money. Dean, on the other hand, does not write, he indeed is unemployed. Does he play music then? It has not been said, he also does not carry an instrument with himself. Instead, he displays the common hedonist, the life of a rover, one could say. In the past, musicians like Bob Dylan, who could be called a contemporary of Jack Kerouac (and who also honored Kerouac’s book, stating that it “changed his life, just as it changed everyone else’s.”) used to live like Dean, but eventually, real life caught up with them and more or less, they were forced to settle down and end their life of travelling around like migratory birds.
To Dean, this day dawned eventually, at the end of the book. It might not be a popular theory, but there’s a likely chance that his life ended with their journeys. Dean could not settle down, but he also could not travel without Sal, and when Sal planned to settle down, he indirectly introduced Dean’s demise. Even though the novel suggests differently, it hardly was about liaisons, it was about how to continue living. Dean never knew it other than living as a tramp, to keep tramping, as, to support Swartz’s thesis, unemployed men were told to do it in order to earn money – keep tramping, tramping, tramping, and ask for work in each village and town they passed. More colloquially, Dean might apply for the description of a bum. But in the end, he knew he had to settle down. It is the same demise that prevailed for every Beatnik sooner or later in his or her life. As it has been said many times before, the Beat Generation was a youth movement, and eventually, one leaves adolescence to become an adult, take care of one’s own children, earn money in a job, pay fees. Sal and Dean were both very young as well, so that “On the Road” nowadays could be understood more like a Coming-of-Age novel, rather than the Holy Script of an entire Generation of artistic rebels. “On the Road” depicts the easiness of youth slowly departing into the hardship of adults, although the departure comes crashing and abrupt. Just as to many, the life of adults dawns.
List of References
1. Kerouac, Jack (1957). “On the Road.” London. Penguin Books.
2. Chandarlapaty, Raj (2002). “The Beat Generation and Counterculture. Paul Bowles, Wil-liam S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac,” in: “Modern American Literature, new approaches,” vol. 51. New York: Peter Lang.
3. Varner, Paul (2012). “Historical Dictionary of the Beat Movement.” Plymouth, UK: The Scarecrow Press, Inc.
4. Spengemann, Gabriele (1980). “Jack Kerouac: Spontaneous Prose. Ein Beitrag zuu Theorie und Praxis der Textestaltung von On the Road und Visions of Cody,” in “Kasseler Arbei-ten zur Sprache und Literatur,” vol. 6. Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Peter D. Lang.
5. Podhoretz, Norman (1994). “The Doings and Undoings: The Fifties and after in American Writing.” New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
6. Myrsiades, Kostas (ed.) (2002). “The Beat Generation. Critical Essays.” New York: Lang.
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