Kerouac and Despair

Just now thinking, maybe I like Kerouac because he addresses despair and the search for meaning, like Camus, like Genet.

I’ve just finished listening to the scene in Part 2 of The Original Scroll (of On The Road) where Cassady abandons Kerouac and Luanne on the street in San Francisco, then Luanne abandons him, then he imagines he’s run into his mother from 1800 in England.

Both Part 1 and Part 2 of On the Road end with despair – yet with glances ahead.

Of course despair is also a major theme in Big Sur.  It is an amazing book because it describes Kerouac going to pieces.  How was he able to write so coherently about it?  And at the end he still has hope, or faith—that things will still turn out all right, somehow.

People talk about Kerouac the Alcoholic.  And I do have the impression that Kerouac spent at least the last seven or more years of his life drunk.  Yet he still managed to write Big Sur, Satori in Paris, and Vanity of Duluoz.  Not bad, I think, for being always drunk.  Vanity of Duluoz, in particular, shows a coherence and straight-forward writing approach that goes against the idea that Kerouac by 1967 was a slobbering drunkard.  A drunkard he may have been, but as John Clellon Holmes remarks in the documentary “Kerouac,” he was always interesting to listen to.

So here’s to Jack.  I was surprised, yesterday, in looking at some jazz cuts on YouTube, to see how many people were accessing the music simply because Kerouac had mentioned it in On The Road.  In an essay included with The Original Scroll, someone asks “Why are students still interested in Kerouac?”  Indeed!  Why am I still reading him?  I haven’t figured that out yet!  I just know I find him interesting and sincere and honestly feeling and thinking—which is something I value.