Writing, Life, Kerouac

Ah, but sometimes Life gets in the way of Writing, if we let it!  I’ve been busy here with life, work, staying healthy, etc.

 

On the other hand, one thing I could probably learn from Jack Kerouac is that you can always write.  I have the impression that Kerouac was always taking notes.  Whereas I tend to sit and brood, like Proust perhaps, storing up memories to put on paper another day.

Thing is, it’s hard sometimes to live with a pen and notepad in your hands!  Now, of course, it would be “with an iPad or whatever.”

But I’m back to Kerouac again, listening once more to the audiobook version of the original scroll of On the Road, read by John Ventimiglia.  I ask myself what draws me so to this book, this writer.

But something does.  This time, when I listened to Part One of the novel, which takes up about forty percent of the book, I discovered I was fascinated, not bored.  In the past I’ve often asked why Kerouac devoted so much time to this first section (of five) of the novel.  This time I kept lingering over individual descriptions.  At the end of Part One, I went back and played the entire book up till there all over a second time.

I’ve just done the same thing with Part Two.  I’m getting a much better sense of the structure of the story now.  People say nothing happens.  I’m more inclined to say that everything happens.  I’ve got to get to the bottom of what this is all about:  This book, and my attraction to it.

Meanwhile, I’ll go on to Part Three tomorrow.  We’ll see what happens.