– Notes and Quotes –
The Beat Generation (Beats)
Dr. Sax (1956), and On the Road (1957)
American writing
Post WWII
Zenith of congratulations
But what about…
The Poor
The Disenfranchised/ Unenfranchised
The Environment
The Soul
Response to socio & political
Materialism/Consumerism culture
Triumphalist America
Wandering in a post Christian/Judaeo reality.
Shift from conventional spirituality.
Spiritual dimension, not sectarian.
Literary traditions of Japan, China, and India.
Substantial, not an alternative.
Kerouac – Most innovative writer of the 20th Century
Truman Capote – said not writing, but typing.
Was right, but didn’t know what he was saying
What Kerouac made versus how he made it
Beat writing – Political, revolutionary, etc.
Radical of America and what it wants to be
Spontaneity & Velocity
An event rather than a product
The relationship of human and time
Kerouac – The obvious touch of time
‘“It’s happening now’” Abolishes fiction
This IS what happened
Not made up
Sufficient for art
Leave lousy life behind for art…
Kerouac – don’t feel diminished by art
Jazz – music as played now.
The production of its moment at that time
Cannot be reproduced, only played
Kerouac’s performance – in the midst of
The extent to pace of real, the writing.
Kerouac writing – in nature, challenge to conventional art.
Locates the writer among the readers
Restoring art to the mess of art
Novels put together in order
The legend
Sovereignty real time
We’re all in this together
Presence, how ever slight affects the music
You have to be there
The only authority you need
Be there while it’s played
Presence is authority directly from simple presence
– Not what you make of it, what it makes of you
Abolition of useless distinctions
You don’t know…because there is no difference
History, legends, fiction, truth, sacred, secular
Fictitious distinctions
Imagination / memory
Autobiography / fiction
Art / scripture
An entirety, wholeness, blessed, holy
Kerouac abolished dualism in his creation
The stuff of his art is stuff you know
Universal sanctity, writing scripture
Jazz and sacred music
‘“Bird Lives’”
Remove art from commodity and commerce
Eisenhower – uncomfortable with moving the conversation
Everything has a component of the sacred, large or small
Plot? Main event?
Each is its own plot / event/ realization
Where does it end?
It doesn’t
It stops
Like a car
No heavy explanations
Kids – the days end when you fall asleep
Alive until you’re dead
Sanctity perceived is sanctity present
The writer notices and cannot help but say
Trust in…the lord…whatever that means
Kerouac in rapture – on & on for pages.
From Doctor Sax (1922)
Starting from birth
Candidly
‘“Central’” experience
Alive to death
Only credential needed, birth certificate
‘“Centralville’” – In the middle
– Epics – Begin in the middle of things
– Man’s fist disobedience and the fruit
Everything emanates from powerlessness, helplessness
…Free people by imposing power…no
– At the center of the saga, where you are
The heroic is a status belonging to us all
Not based on exclusion
Heroism of everyone
Sanctity of everything
Once there is a center, many centers
No end to being born
Once you start, you can’t stop
Continuous, not singular
Events do not end because others begin
Books have no beginning, middle, end
Books start and stop
Come to all your senses
Being is itself, a simultaneity of events
Not incomprehensible
Why pretend to be less, saying it’s more
‘“One, two, three years old’” – too many adjectives?
Beauty / truth – products of exclusion
What if true because let it all end?
Who gets in the lifeboat?
Kerouac – Never shy of interruption, because he remembered it
‘“The Great Bathrobe Vision’”
A revelation is a revelation
Realization / revelation / vision
Everybody’s story
– Kerouac remembering the day he was born
‘“You can’t remember’” – oppressive
Language / martial arts
Hallucinations – Language, maturity
Every realization is a revelation
Author’s power comes from what we all know
Not from withholding
You already know
Conned, oppressed, abjected, revelations
Visions – vouched safe for interpretation
Every perception is a vision
Friendship – sacramental power in beat literature
Quaker – society of friends
Friendship – potent and subversive force
Goes outside the family
Arbitrary, powerful, passionate, not contractual obligation, the law can’t touch it
Among spiritual discoveries
Not of culture, society, law, but experience
Kerouac – first friend, brother
Choices that transcend – law, obligation
Friendship values – outlaw
Violation of family values
To a different kind of values
‘“Sacrilegious?’”
Gerard is Jesus, you too
Who has access to holiness / sacredness? Everyone.
Not a god, but a friend, and near
Play the song / notes, and the play the rest of the song / notes at the same time
‘“Goodness & advice’” – organized in attention
Kerouac wants to know how to go to heaven
New Jersey – The Garden State – Paradise Lost
– Blows until breathless
Stuff of a hundred novels, and he says it
The stuff experience is the book, the life, the man
Conjunctions without the need to comb them out
A headlong rush to say without need because of the next sentence
No rehearsals necessary
Nextness
To value because next
Not bigger, not better, but next
-Denial of simple truths – whole civilizations
-Catharsis is unpredictable
-Buddhism is anything
-Writing faster than mind can capture
-Writing in flight from mind
Purity through slovenliness
Candor
Pg.24
‘“Mechante’” – Human participates of the divine
The divine partakes of the human as well
-Leave it all in. It might be God
-Traffic moves both ways
Attention – The see is seen, also seen is seer
-’”Self-destructive’” behavior – in a hurry to heaven
-Saints tend to die on the toilet
-Life as it must be lived is unacceptable
Terms of survival, unacceptable
-Dog kills rabbit, has spiritual epiphany
-Samuel Beckett – ‘“We do what we can,’” ‘“We shouldn’t’”
Pg.31
‘“Like the protection’” – Helplessness
The art of helplessness
I cannot talk, look, hear…sense it
Holiness is temptation
-Martyr – can’t resist temptation, biggest sinner of all
-Helpless books that are resisted
Helplessness, necessary state of the artists
At the mercy of sanctity presented
Everything presented is sanctity
-Beat writing – reconsider helplessness
The next thing to godliness?
Godliness / power?
Godliness / helplessness?
Conundrum
-Self-help society
-Do-it-yourself dynasty
-Helplessness, dignified?
-Inability to resist self-destructive behavior
-Hopeful, rather than hopeless alcoholic, no despair
-Helplessness – the cure of despair
-Despair and ecstasy simultaneously
-Sanctity – all are helpless and…like god
Kerouac keeps typing
No separating his despair from joy
Accept suffering, what is suffering?
-The only way to be alive is if dying
Pg.32
‘“Endless future’”
-When do you stop praying? For prime time TV?
-When do you stop living and start writing?
-Bad faith? Vanity? Delusion? Always somewhere.
-Kerouac – Embedder explicit, that it shouldn’t be there at all
-Great jazz musicians played, didn’t write it down
-Conundrum
Pg.43
‘“Meanwhile, insanely’” – Boom!
Joyful noise unto the world; jazz, fireworks
-All syntax is a power structure
-Shaker hymns, no language
-Language has original sin
-Writing faster than mind and words, only syllables. Not sense, but sound
-Why seek the meaning of life in old words. Make new words.
-Real ecstasy expressed in sound, boom, beyond words
Pg.65
‘“Among these skaters’”
-Unique, based in a pattering of divine
-Can’t talk about love without god
-Divinity in everyone
-Sacred & secular, indistinguishable
-Kerouac’s writing loses typical tidiness
Confusion, remorse, retreat, betrayal, complicates
-Simplify / simplicity, different
Pg.66
‘“I accepted everything’”
Testimony of a kind of loving
Unfaithful to every element except all of them
Pg.70
‘“I see her head bowed’”
Interior / exterior
Circulation of emphasis & location
Substance / spirit
Though / nature
Think of divine, thinks mortal
-White / black, up / down, she /me
Inevitable consequences of each other
-Sometimes it just comes together
Pg.84
‘“I could see all the rooftops’”
-Be your entire self at the same time
Victory, idea, sensation
Coming to his senses
-Ideas as feelable as sensations
-Ecstatically insane in innocence
Not born but, good fortune, innocence
-Not writing, no names, not gonnna give em names
Soul making, soup unspilt, go to heaven
‘“Dig we must for a better New York’”
Ann Charter – saint of academic life
Dedicated to the life of Kerouac, rare purity
Of his intentions and soul making
Jazz – the only American art form? Religion?
Looking for something rather than asserting
Beat lit – a protest against ascertation
Imposition of soul, rather than looking for soul
Literature – corrective of aftermath of war
‘“Exporting our great democracy’” (Demoncracy)
Our culture corrects our culture, ‘“yes, but…’”
MLK Jr. – stepped out of the box and opposed war too
The news of Vietnam…coming attractions to death
On The Road, Part 1
I first met Dean…a fracture.
It might be repaired
Healing, mending
Serious illness
Anticipation of healing
Messianic/messiahs – soul gets saved by many kings
Not acknowledge themselves
What you write is also about what you don’t write
What are you thinking Jack?
Healing, wellness
Whitman – I will be good health to you
William James – the healthy soul
Interior/exterior, one in the same
Well, at home in the world & happy.
‘“Wont bother to talk about,’” illness, in the tradition of Whitman and James
Everything was ‘“dead’” – feeling
Looking for resurrection
When somebody notices, it means something
Resurrection – with the coming of Dean Moriarty
Civilization – based on…
Sick, dead, resurrected, put on the road
‘“Part’” of my life, increments.
Life – material. Not metaphysical/ghostly
You can talk about life
Life is defined
You can touch it
Dream, planning, take off
The vauge – clear, concrete
‘“Dean is the perfect guy’”
Advent of a messiah, fulfilling a purpose
If it saves you, it saves you. And if it saves you it is a messiah
Salt Lake City – where the real juice comes from
Home made religions – LDS, Mormons
Any life contains within itself the possibility of spirituality
Salt Lake City/Bethlehem – on the way to Los Angeles/The angels
Everyone – born on the road, LA, SLC, anywhere
Potential of everything
The things that turn our lives around.
Kerouac – the world is overflowing with salvation
‘“Chad King’”
High culture combines with low culture
Proust/baseball cards
Jean the Baptist/Comic books
Mary Magdalene/Mary Lou
The gospels/Chuck Berry
An individual character is the composite, the consequences of loves
Whitman – Leaves of Grass
Soul under construction
Pg. 143
‘“Yes!’”
Blossoming enthusiasm – religion lives in fear of it
Embarrassed by enthusiasm
Enthusiasm is temporary
The story – scripture according to Kerouac
The bible – no footnotes, no scholarly apparatus
Dont think about it, write it, and then let’s go out
‘“That’s right man. Now you’re talking.’”
Happening right now, not writing, you’re talking, talk literature
Enthusiasm – rather than craftsmanship
Our response – enthusiasm rather than admiration
Pg. 144
‘“Dean had already left’”
The most fantastic parking lot attendant in the world
Transient
Value as production is displaced by value as action
A new economy
Not the product, but the activity
The parking lot was empty at start
Empty at end
The attendant has nothing to show for it
Valet – essence of car theft
Take care, take money, steal & sell to someone else
Pg.145
‘“He only stole cars for joy rides’”
Make a joyful sound onto the lord
Having it momentarily
‘“We know time’”
In favor of time instead of spatial possession
Jim/Huck – ‘“Come back to the raft, honey’”
The river/road
Tom Wolfe – Of Time and Of the River
A call to the nation – come back to the time
I know what it means to miss New Orleans
On the road, crossing
Pg.146
‘“Somewhere along the line’”
Girls, visions, everything
Messiahs appear to losers
Disciples – fishermen scared of a boat
Kerouac – not shy about using words
Everything leads to anything
One piece of holy ground to the next
Pg.151
‘“As the sun was reddening’”
‘“I didn’t know who I was’”
Need to be reborn, again and again
Horatio Alger – make something of yourself
Here – the preface of life is to lose your name, not to know who you are
The shadow knows
‘“Right there and then’”
Kerouac – characters never develop, just move around. They do what they do. Development is an Insurance to time
Time – emerge from the reality that…
Shakespeare – diseased
In the middle
Walden – time – the stream I go fishing in
Pg.177
‘“Hollywood’”
American writers can be replaced by the movies
Heaven of purgatory
Nathaniel West – Day of the Locust
Hollywood – the end of spacial America
Supposed to be ‘“!!!’”, but when you get there, it was the end
Living in time, not nearly space
Open universe, not closed
You can always turn around
It’s okay to change your mind
It’s fun
Kerouac doesn’t go crazy the way Hollywood goes crazy
Zappa – what is the ugliest part of your body?
Pg.205
Bull Lee – helplessness
The gang cant do anything without thinking of things they’ve read; Dean comes, live your life, dont read/write it, live it!
The addict – the perfect American
Consumer society – cannot help but consume
Formed by consumption
‘“Is that what you want us to be?’”
Addicts. Will be it.
Everything exhorts us to addiction
These texts are a cultural critique
Bull’s extremity exposes the commodity culture that creates him
Things have worth, piece of wood, people
Emphasis on temporarily
How many days are needed to say a happy life was lived?
The pure value of being in time
‘“On the clock/cross’”
The river, not the trade center
Not up and down, but along, to and fro
Horizontality, where else do we live but time
No banks no source no delta
Affirm mortality
All things we rightly despise are insults to birth
Pg.224
Time is not a clock, but an emotion
Not only understood, but cared
Higher order
Fell back into ‘“somebody’s’” arms
A pimp in Mecca
Where there are no pimps
The temporality – what comes next
We don’t know what comes next
Because we don’t know what comes next
The artist is with the audience
Not writing the novel, but finding the novel together
Opposes Truman Capote – waiting to give the message from on high
They don’t hand out cough drops at jazz clubs
When isn’t it Mother’s Day?
Not from training, but feeling, enthusiasm
William Carlos Williams – ‘“The pure products of America drive Americans crazy’”
Ivory snow girl – Marilyn Chambers
Nicholas Ray
Vim Venders ‘“Lightning Over Water’” (‘“Wings of Desire’”)
The song doesn’t climax
The scene just ends
The experience is the meaning
Narrow-minded pseudo-fascist
Pg.232
‘“No end to the night’”
‘“That great roar of Chicago dawn’”
All happening at the same time
The night ends and it doesn’t end
Space becomes and emanation of time
Tim Hardin III – Live at Town Hall
‘“Whee’” – making noise we seek to find new phrases (not make new phrases)
Art – made/found
Commodity culture – emphasis on ‘“making’”
Kerouac – writes looking for the book
Looking for a hero/savior
Childlikeness of finding, phrases/money/ect.
New sound – making will come later
Go moan for man
‘“It’s the pathos of people that gets us down’”
Kingdom of heaven – endless Special Olympics
Pg.250
‘“She was in the alley’”
Alley – space between places, road, too
Identity between identities
Identity theft – if they can steal it, it isnt you
Being does not depend on identity
Not what you make of it, but having it
Being being squandered in search for identity
High modernists – strict limit on activities
Anguish department
Find the word that does the work of 10 (outsourcing)
Let all the words in
Art includes what it excludes
Every moment is an eternity
Opens composition to history/time
The sentence refuses to remit an ounce of its meaning
By living in time, we live in eternity
The sentence becomes the vehicle of the eternal
Blake – ‘“Eternity…’” Time
Keep writing until you run out of breath, respiration/inspiration
Pg.291
‘“In the street, where I meet all my bodhisattvas’”
The result of people he met in real time
Jaffe returns the quiet to the trip
Dean is a figure of crowds and noise
Expression/meditation
Being in time
Pg.294
Zen Buddhists
Not kindness, but confusing the intellect
They (Jack/Gary) disagree, creating change in agreeance
Changing their constellation
Kindness – looking for a way to be kind
Living in time, we suffer
Responding to time with kindness
Art – kindness, top of list of morals
Kindness replaces rigor
Structure without conflict – anti-conflict, ceases, leaves semantics
Serenity in the gaze of…gazelle in the jaws of a lion
We can’t use words without eventually involving conflict
Leave language for kindness
Pg.301
Semantics?
Abandon tradition
Why write?
Democratic National Convention – ‘“New Reasons for Spitefulness’”?
Kindness – the willingness to pay attention when the story is affected
