Incoherence and Coherence in Jack Kerouac

I’ve just finished a “double-read” of the audiobook of the Original Scroll of On the Road, read by John Ventimiglia.

 

By “Double-read” I mean this:  After finishing Book 1, I went back and listened to it a second time.  After Book 2, I did the same with it.  And so on.  So when I got to the end of the whole thing, I’d actually listened to the entire novel twice.  And the ending of most of the books impressed me so, I went back and listened to each of the endings multiple times.  This being at least the eighth time I’ve listened to an unabridged recording of either On The Road or the The Original Scroll thereof, I can say that I have now gotten quite deep into Kerouac, the novel, and Kerouac’s story,  approach and style.

I’ve picked up on a lot of details.  There’s a certain seeming incoherence here.  This certainly is why a lot of early critics considered Kerouac a “barbarian with a typewriter.”  And yet—should books be coherent?  Maybe not in all ways!  Because life is not particularly coherent, is it?

So if William Burroughs says “when you’re dead your just dead,” but a page or two later starts talking about communicating with the dead, should we object?

If people are discussing how Carolyn Cassady threw Neal Cassady out, how should we react a page or two later when Helen Hinkle says, “I think it was very wise of Luann to throw you out.”  I thought I had found a real blooper here—and maybe I have.  Or not!  When I noticed this in The Scroll, I ran over to the published novel to check.  The same apparent inconsistency appears there.  Real people do misspeak!

One thing I’ve noticed is that Kerouac really doesn’t talk much about his feelings.  He gives us his ideas, but not so much his feelings.  He gives us his reactions (his response to jazz, for example), but that isn’t the same thing.

I think this is why people often miss the underlying mood of the book.  The recent film concentrated on the sex and jazz; but underlying the entire book is a search for something to make up for the fact that Kerouac’s father is dead and Kerouac’s wife has left him.  Neal Cassady is always trying to connect with his own father and family.  Allen Ginsberg is always asking what the meaning of these travels are.  They all feel pursued by some presence.  And at the end of the book, an old man with long flowing white hair walks past Kerouac and says, “Go moan for man.” 

This is all stated, but not emphasized.  Implications are left for the reader to realize on his own.  Part of Kerouac’s Art is to simply mention these things, then leave us to notice them.  You can debate whether this artistic strategy is good or bad.