The Unknown Kerouac

by Jack Kerouac

  I sat an hour in the grass to mourn my follies.

  Many of the amusement park buildings were covered with boards for the winter; that’s sad, also it makes you cold thinking of the winter coming; you put your hands in your pocket, you bow your head. The places for cotton candy, popcorn, for ragdolls, rollboards, and all the people who came and went in the general unreward of the ground covered with gray papers. Well, the merrygoround was still open. The last turn; the little children took advantage. They had their little coats, not for summer but for winter, and they rode silently as though they understood the end of the end, the end of the day, the end of the summer, the end of their mortal infancies. Ah the music!—it broke my heart, it came from out of the pines and it went out over the water, way out, way towards the grievous boats in the bloody water, further yet towards the blue form of Long Island and all the damned world in back and the great city too. I ate my leaf of grass, hands in pockets, listening to that calliope in the air that began to be cold, I watched the water, the brown sun, and the children. I died all kinds of little deaths. A fog of dusk descended on everything. I understood nothing, I have never wanted to understand anything else since.

  I went home in the dark; the leaves fell, the sea made tender sighs. The star of evening burned in her bed of blue.

  I went down the little street of boarded houses towards home. The light of my mother’s kitchen shined on the shore alone. What good people, what an unknown and mortified son.

  We had a big argument. But there was a letter for me, it came from my old chum Jack, postmarked Hartford. He had a job for me.

  Translated by Jean-Christophe Cloutier and Jack Kerouac

  JOURNAL 1951

  Journal 1951

  Typing frantically across three weeks in April 1951, Kerouac wrote the scroll version of On the Road, the 120-foot-long manuscript that would serve, after much significant editing, as the basis for Viking Press’s 1957 published version. While his journey to the scroll manuscript had been marked by a number of false starts and disappointments, including the lukewarm critical response to The Town and the City, by April 1951 Kerouac had moved on decisively from the naturalist grandeur of his early literary idol Thomas Wolfe. He was now exploring new terrains of literary experimentation consistent with what his friend the critic and anthologist Donald Allen later identified as the Cold War period’s overriding interests in “instantism,” chance, and spontaneity.

  Kerouac’s relentless and sometimes vexing search for literary forms capable of expressing the energy and breadth of his artistic ambitions finds eloquent expression in his sixty-two-page handwritten journal of August–November 1951. After suffering an attack of thrombophlebitis in August, Kerouac was admitted to the Kingsbridge VA hospital in the Bronx, where he began this journal while bedridden. Still stinging from Robert Giroux’s rejection of On the Road months earlier, Kerouac struggles to overcome his doubts and enunciate a viable compositional philosophy, finally exclaiming, “I SHALL BE MYSELF.”

  TUES. AUG. 28, 1951—B (900) I’ve been in this hospital 2½ weeks filled with growing peace and the most beautiful visions of life and the soul since 1947. I have to stop smoking, I have stopped; result is, sometimes I feel like a little boy and in fact remember whole spates of time from my boyhood; so I could write a Remembrance now ten million words long—how many pages is that?—30,000 pages, about thirty-five huge volumes. Who could read it? Yet the way I feel I’m convinced every bit of it would be good. Foolishness—I’m writing this in bed. The visions, in fact, are the best since 1946 and since childhood. [B (900) above is a count on calory intake, I weigh 166½, too much; 900 c. for breakfast alone, four eggs; ass on bed.] So I worked out second big “labour” of my writing-work-life: the Victor Duchamp On the Road epic, which I’ll start as soon as I get home, using tried & proven system of Town & City—the “daily heap,” belief, in fact reverence, humility, much solitude, walking, and now more health measures (less coffee, more tea; alcohol only before dinner, if any). And a world-view backbone to the structure of the fiction. These Tolstoyan feelings . . . I welcome them back, after almost 3 years floundering in “hipness” and dissolution and indecision and ambiguity. Though I’m writing this on my back I feel again like my own giant—(and apologies for bad printing). To make a living, though, money for rent, food, money for future need. First, in here, I tried writing a potboiler; I said to myself “Like Faulkner I’ll write a goodnatured watered-down monogram of my style, like Sanctuary, and make a living”; I’d call it Hip; but I don’t have the heart for it. It may sound vain, but the act of writing seems holy to me, so much so I can’t even be a “hack” in secret; I can’t put a beginning and an end onto something which never started and never will end. Holy . . . sacred . . . to use the written word in honor of life, in defense of life against the forces of death and despair, to make old men lift their hearts a bit and women think (or cry), and young men pause before it’s too late for realizing to do them any good—why use the word for cheap illiterate vulgar fools who buy books in the mass to titillate their empty beings between vices and hypocrisies. No. But to make a living. Here’s what I’ve decided: alternatives are as follows: 1. Go home to my mother’s, have room of my own, and spend one year (divided by 3-month visit with Neal in May in Frisco) writing first publishable half of Road trilogy; so getting advance in September 1952.* 2. Go to sea—save $150 per month, for a year, or $1800, traveling, note-taking, planning, then going to Mexico for over 2½ years to compose entire epic Road in peace and quiet, finishing it entirely by Fall 1954, aged 32. 3. Take $300 I expect on October 25 of this year (or more) and bus to Florida, living around tracks, four hours afternoon winning an average of $30, or $180 a week, sending winnings home, to save either for Long Island house down payment then my mother pays 40-a-month installments on her own house instead of rent; or saving for Mexico house & life, probably averaging $9,000 a year with ORDINARY luck and much more otherwise, always facing gambler’s risk of losing everything—system is this: $10 place on favorite, losing; raise two units of 10, winning graduate back unit at a time. 4. Going to Frisco in October with my $300 to live in Neal’s attic rent-free, working part time job, writing the epic Road in moments of quiet, if any. 5. Signing on with construction overseas job, like in Alaska or Europe, as typist or otherwise, for at least $5,000 the year, coming back with at least 4 G’s clear, for Mexico life & composition of Road epic in entirety (which will bring double dividends, being 2 novels, and lead to other jobs, like Hollywood script, for kicks and study). These are pure plans and pure alternatives; they inter-cross, and insomuch as they are allowed to inter-cross, the purity vanishes and oldtime indecision may creep in. But in any case I shall keep track of every day left in my life, like this, with the date emblazoned in my fresh morning thoughts, so no matter what plan I’ll follow, this I’ll follow. Alternative No. 1 is what I’ve decided on at least till I’m certain about that October $300, and then we’ll see about No. 3; meanwhile I’ll straighten my seamen’s papers.

  But now to return to the activities of my writing-soul:—

  LUNCH: 800 c. Completed letters to Stella Sampas and Seymour in England. To keep check, I started yesterday with $300.00 bankroll, which is now $364.00—(passing up $75 made last Fri. & Sat.) Track is Saratoga.

  But how I remember my hometown. I’m going back to it now, thank the Lord, in first half of epic Road—(might call trilogy “Fall in America”) . . . I remember boyhood dreams that are now, still extant, the most profound thoughts I have . . . that great dreaming hump-hill on Bridge St. that you can see from all over town; the redbrick smokestacks rising like giants into the drowse of afternoon clouds; in fact the yellow wildflowers dimly powdered on that hill; and—as if Lowell was the world—all this comes back to me here on a bed overlooking all Manhattan north and south, to lend immortal credence to the “phantom isle” on which my life has “faded”—as if this New York of the Eight Million was a phantom isle, or my life faded. This is just talk, fair talk; soon I star
t the work in earnest, like a Blake. (S: 800 c. sn. 200 c.)

  WEDNESDAY AUGUST 29, 1951— 2700 c.; too much. Started today on 900 c. Lost $72.50 at Saratoga yesterday. B- Roll: $288.00 (70). Alternative No. 3 may not be—FALL IN AMERICA is about what happens to a young man in this country in ten years, what on earth it means . . . why, where, when, what for . . . In my past ten years, reaching back to Aug. 29, 1941, what has happened to me? I’m penniless in a charity hospital today; yet in 1941 I thought by now I’d be rich, famous and a father, owner of a house, mature. What happened? If anything, I was at the point of being like in that dream I had down south: a 30-year-old hanger-on (of small pensions?) around Skid Row saloons, going downstreet of an evening with an old mattress under my arm, to sell it for wine, my face beaten but not yet broken, muscular-armed, halfway between football player and hobo. In 1941 I dreamed (I remember it, in the parlor) of such success that when I snapped up everything real seemed dumb—exactly ten years ago was the moment of the beginning of my Fall—Fall in America, the sad Autumns of realization—

  Imagine a book starts like this: “What did he say? Did you see him?” “Yes. He had the same strange look on him all the time I was there.” “And what’d he say?”

  Further betting records in back pages. (L: 850 c.) (Sup: 850 c.) Just right, 2400 for the day. Still don’t know what the decision is, by the doctors, on my illness; supposed to walk tomorrow. Am reading magnificent introduction to Pierre by Henry Murray, Pierre itself, and Under the Volcano—a superconscious work that seems valuable to me but not to literature in general (as Pierre is)—whatever this means; unless, merely, that I can see Joyce and Proust to new advantage in Lowry’s tremendous prose, but prose in itself is not enough when you go beyond my private mulling studious peering, to the larger demands of literature where you have to be a Melville, provide emotional dignity, a lifetime of indefinable charm, work of unmeasurable sincerity and soul-sorrow, to count: and I agree, what fun when I learned today that Melville “imitated” Byron!!! Volcano has in it hints of heaven, and that’s a lot. Too long I’ve been considering myself a literary critic—Under the Volcano is part marvellous, part crap. Pierre is a Kraken. Ate another 200 c. later in day, to go over my quota like a pig (but felt weak). At 8 P.M. nurse told me doctor said I could start walking—which I’m doing. O Sax!—save me from myself! I want to write Dr. Sax, now—(although, speaking of Murray’s Pierre intro, I shall have to ask him to autonomous-inward-operate me no aroused soul-images or other Jung bunk, the dumb fuck, p. xliv). It’s a sin to know too much, or rather, there’s a punishment attached to knowing too much—I caught myself just now. The snake, the child—to make deliberate symbols, or just let the legend of the snake take me over? Prefer the latter—reading Murray’s intro makes me want to write Sax, the snake in the pudding of T & C and The Road; where I would portray my mother as she really is (conjuress, mystic, prophet, gravedigger, little girl, madwoman, pal)—(my father what he really was, sterile, or that is, impotent, or castrated)—(my brother himself the Snake)—these mysteries?—but why make such a big fuss over a spear? (so to speak). In October of 1948, refreshed from T & C, I really had this Sax; now all’s left is the desire, no more body. But I’ll do it from the bottom of my mind and then all this means nothing, something else will have to be said.

  Thought and thought till late at night. Where will it get you? I ask myself—to consume yourself on thoughts of “what you should do,” what is right, “great”—25% or more of your energy wasted on vanity. EVERYTHING YOU DO IS GREAT, said Neal, meaning, DON’T WORRY, WRITE! Good and evil as it haunted Melville concerns me no more—I’m too old now for problems of duality; my Orpheus emerged some time ago. (I thought of re-writing all my youthful works, including Orpheus and Vanity of Duluoz, desperate for exploitable themes.) The truth is, now, at 29, I’m only bothered by the spectre of death and as far as I’m concerned that Snake is only age & death coming after me. For while there’s life, there’s indefinable charm, and ripeness is all.

  THURSDAY AUGUST 30, 1951—Started day with big 850 c. breakfast (4 boiled eggs). On the Road as I wrote it this last spring is still an existing work of 150,000 words that I ought to do something with—cut out, put in, sell. But again . . . that word OUGHT. I’m being consumed by an ecstatic sense of doubt; no greater joy than perfect doubt and all those masks. Ah but these days of joyful reverie on a hospital bed; the pure mornings, the will to do everything (not just “choose”); the air, the vistas, of an America and even a New York City that is young, upgoing, just-beginning. For me, it will be HEALTH, WILL, CURIOSITY, SATISFACTION, THOUGHTS, EXPRESSION forever—functional, not desperate; glad, not dissatisfied—Talk, talk, talk. The immense power of life which is greater than the puny self-problems is the fountain from which I draw my work, my water, my existence; setting an example in spirit. Ah Lucien Carr, you and your little sadisms beneath the evening-star; Ginsberg, your humiliated doubts on the plain of night; Bill Burroughs, don’t die!; Neal, verbiage is not your jungle! Phooey. Either I, or Holmes, continually peek(s) over my shoulders at these words. It’s all a lie, a lie, a lie, a fucking lie. J’ai mentri. Last night I dreamed of Mexico—I was with Lucien, suggesting a bar on some haunted deserted San Juan Letran more like the Lowell of my childhood sorrow. What is this writing of lies?—this yakkery?—what for? I’m bound to it by an order that came from heaven recently . . . or was it long ago? This is silly. No bold nervous beauty either. If I have to claw it out of myself, literally with a grapple hook bleeding, I’ll produce those great books—if I have to rattle on like this till doomsday, till all the rattle is gone and the strike strikes—a venom of lies to heal the body truth, the parent truth, the apparent truth, the truth, the saying, the mouthing, the blah, the belief in happiness. (Future ages will believe in happiness.) Another inch of thought and I’ll have it—“what to do,” “how to say it.” (I lost it at strike strikes.)

  Let’s solve the problem of my so-called soul today & decide once and for all what to do. I have 10 million dollars in the bank that I might as well spend when I get out of this hospital—(no amount could get me out sooner than the doctor wants). First off, a trip—around the world or straight to Mexico? on ships, freighters, Am. Pres. Lines, or fly, step up tempos?—and why the need for the economy of Mexico now? What’s in Mexico that’s not in my soul now? Shall I set up a trust fund for my mother, get her out of the shoeshop, get her a house? She’ll be afraid alone in a house when I travel. A 2-family house, renters upstairs; or just an apartment in Jamaica somewhere. As for me—a pad in Manhattan, for thinking, writing, wenching, parties, talk, for friends, I sleep there half the time. (It doesn’t matter.) Now what else? Give Neal a trust fund—give Joan & baby of course a trust fund, big one, why not?—give Carolyn one—now buy a house in Mexico anyway—Oh, a house overlooking Frisco, on a Sausalito hill—a visit to Paris—but for what? Sooner or later I got to decide whether I’ll just spend money (I can’t eat more than 3 times a day, can’t smoke, can’t drink without ruining my health no matter how rich I am) or decide on what to do with my soul. Why,—shall I write, like I used to when I was poor and human? Or shall I just concentrate on beautiful women, romantic voyages, interesting friends? For this I’d have to make rich friends, my poor friends would have to grow rich with me—so I go into business with my poor friends and since money makes money we all get rich together—now my old poor friends are my old rich friends. But they change their friends & ways, and no longer interest me after awhile? Meanwhile I lie sideways in a bed with the naked legs of the most beautiful warm women in the world wrapped around my hips, looking them in the eye as I penetrate their soft vaginas. But even this palls after awhile and I see no love on the horizon. The only love is Divine. Adam was a nervous mistaken friendly good intentioned fool; Eve, far from being from one of his ribs, was a cool haughty beautiful dull-souled somewhat vague unfriendly cunt-creature from the other end of the forest who accidentally stumbled on Adam like a little boy is found playing on the riverbank n
ot bothering anybody and told he has sinned. All Adam had to do was ignore her, but he didn’t know how and so went along with what he knew were the laws of nature but wasn’t much interested. What is nature compared to the desires of the secret mind?—or compared to the idea of God, the abstractions of immortality, beauty and joy. Adam is a fool because he is abstract. Eve is not a fool, only a negative nothing, a hole, a hole of Calcutta containing the universe in suffering, in which Adam will lose himself if he doesn’t watch out—The “rib” idea was a trick to make him buy Eve . . . buy a part of himself. It’s Eve’s mother that you got to watch out for, she plotted it—the wife of Zeus, dammit! (Whoever.) Adam wants to be alone, he needs Eve once a day, for two hours, just like the Mexican peon, that’s enough of the drowning nature-bath; time enough for that in the grave; Adam has a MIND to develop, bridges to build, concepts to formulate, sciences to make exact, literatures to elicit from his personality. But what about Adam’s mother? She is the earth, the silent stormy gloomy mystic earth. Then Adam’s wife is not his mother’s sister, but a stranger—a sinister stranger from the other end of the forest. Adam is a multimillionaire. Now he has nothing to do but stand up and assert his right to be Adam the man, in his work, and set his forest in order, or be a goddamn cuckold to that Lesbos goddess primitive Zeus & Haverty got hung with. For this is not only the age of Freud but the age of Lesbos. Adam’s got to make up his mind and stick by his decisions. Besides, Adam, by himself, must pray to the morning sun, whether he’s surrounded by this & that or whether he’s alone—he must pray & praise the universe of God, he must make his sorrows the sorrows of time, the sorrows of—must! must! What do I really mean. And what shall I do now I’m a multimillionaire? (950 c. L.) The bankroll fell to $194.00. Marcus Goodrich, Malcolm Lowry: same. Why should a man undermine himself? If the culture myth cracks, why should the man decay?—(and in the name of “truth” or what we now call facts?). I can’t buy the myth, I don’t want to die. Are my fondest memories just memories of parts of the myth I can’t or won’t buy. When I set about writing The Town & the City I decided the myth was still vigorous and okay and I’d buy. And I still think, in fact know, that society has good intentions. To accept the world I shall have to reject the ghost . . . give up the ghost. A good thing to give up. I hereby accept the world:—This will include everything, everybody, shortcomings and all, including Joan; I accept. (Youz’ all fulla shit.) If I reject the myth I shall have to substitute one of my own making or decay. At least I do know I don’t want to decay. Still, what else is living? “I have decided to consider annihilation,” Melville would have said at this point. But not me in the morning—dew is fresh on me in the morning, and it’s morning every day. I only succeed in undermining myself. What is my self made of?—the will not to decay in a universe of decay (“don’t decay, Pyotr Alexandrovich, don’t decay!”). What could I make for myself with which not to decay and that I could believe?—some vaster, sounder universe than T & C in which I can godlike do as I fuckingwell please. And, however, anyway, what’s wrong with the universe I’ve already got?—just because I’m not a God in it? But I am, I’m a multimillionaire in it; of course I’m a god . . . or the trouble is there are no gods in reality, and the real universe means death for all without any other God but the Multifarious Mingling at the end of Eternity. In other words, when you lose your individuality you lose God; and when you do that, you’re on the edge of the grave of mankind, headed for the Eternal Realms of Immortal Oblivion? But to live on earth it is necessary to believe in yourself. Therefore reject all possibilities that there are no gods, no God, no godlikeness—no vast & charming individualities—or die. Ripeness is all. The study of Character is the study of God and Man. No other study, whether objective or projective subjective, should occupy the mind of the man who does not want to decay. Unless you are a member of the new selfless Marxian generation of the Infinite Mass-Ego Mystery . . . like some of the doctors around here. (Dostoevsky knew everything.) Ah this wrangling with myself! I’m too dumb to be a writer and if I were a millionaire I wouldn’t bodder.