A Little on "Doctor Sax"

So what is Doctor Sax?

It’s a book by Jack Kerouac, about himself at age eleven or thereabouts; about him and his family and his boyhood friends; and the flood that ruined his father’s printing business; and his boyhood fantasy world of good and evil.  It is quite different from Picano’s book about himself at the same age.

Kerouac wrote it while visiting William Burroughs in Mexico City in the early 1950s.  He allegedly wrote much of it while locked in the bathroom smoking marijuana.  He was influenced by the indigenous Mexican mythology he was learning about from Burroughs.

The background is Kerouac’s French-Canadian Catholic Massachusetts childhood.  In his outer life, Kerouac plays with his street friends and comes home to his parents and his sister.  But in his inner life, he envisions a world of demons, angels, and guardians.

The mythology is this:  Satan, in the form of a gigantic snake, was hurled into the center of the earth following The Fall.  Since then the snake has been burrowing upwards towards the surface. Now (roughly 1933) he is threatening to break through the earth’s surface at the site of an old castle-like building in Kerouac’s hometown, Lowell Massachusetts.  In anticipation of this, a huge “convention of world evil” is being held in the castle, attended by demons, vampires, and other evil creatures.  A heretical sect, the Dovists, claim that the Snake is an illusion—“merely a husk of doves.”  On the Last Day, the Dovists believe the doves will bring tidings of peace to the world.

Meanwhile a saint named Doctor Sax has spent generations seeking the potion that will destroy the snake.  On the day of the flood, he takes young Kerouac (called Dulouz in the book) under his care as he goes to destroy the snake.  Unfortunately, the powders and potions that Doctor Sax has spent generations perfecting have absolutely no effect on the snake.  All seems lost.  The universe doesn’t seem to care.  Evil seems triumphant.

Then a gigantic bird appears in the sky, accompanied by battalions of doves.  The bird grabs the snake and disappears with it into the sky.  Doctor Sax is amazed:  “The Universe disposes of its own evil!”  It is Easter morning.

It’s a strange book.  Then again, Eleven-year-old boys (and girls too, I’d wager) dream strange dreams.  Doctor Sax is an entirely different approach to novels about pre-adolescence.

Neither Doctor Sax, nor Picano’s Ambidextrous are your “ordinary” stories of coming of age.

Picano and Me

So I’ve been reading a lot in two areas:  Let’s call them “counter-culture” and “gay.”  By counter-culture I mean of the ‘50s, ‘60s, and maybe ‘70s:  The Beat writers and their offshoots:  Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs…Kesey, Hunter Thompson.  And the gay writers I’m talking about are the people associated with the Violet Quill of the ‘70s and ‘80s, but have been writing ever since; people like Edmund White, Andrew Holleran, and Felice Picano.

 

I have some mixed feelings about all of them.  The Beats I respect, but they certainly were a bunch of highly individualistic people.  I’m more conflicted about the Violet Quill; is it some kind of latent residual homophobia on my part?

I’m now halfway through Picano’s “memoir in the form of a novel, Ambidextrous.  I wasn’t expecting to like it.  My first attempt to read it ended when I got bored with his descriptions of being able to write with both hands as a child.  It just didn’t seem interesting.  And I seen reviews talking about all the childhood sex he describes in the book.

But I’ve gotten interested in his story, for reasons I hadn’t anticipated.  I’d read the sequel, Men Who Loved Me, first; so I knew about the years of his young adulthood.  He seemed much more freewheeling than I.  In fact we seemed quite different.  But now—

Well, I discover he had a run-in with a teacher in the fifth grade; quite a bit of trouble with that teacher, actually.

I had trouble in the fifth grade.  Whereas Picano’s teacher bullied him, my own teacher merely teased me.  My perception—well, it might as well have been bullying.  Now it might be considered mild psychological bullying.

But I believe my teacher simply liked me and didn’t know how to express it.  I was fairly shy at the time, in a new school and a new environment because of my own circumstances of growing up with the U.S. military.  Anyway, I hadn’t been expecting that Picano and I would have an unpleasant fifth-grade experience in common.

And a bit further on into the story:  Descriptions of model airplanes.  Picano’s friend makes airplanes out of balsa wood.  I myself bought plastic models and assembled them.  Picano describes the different airplanes that were modeled, plus the decals, the paints, etc.; and hanging them from the ceiling.  

As a child, I assembled some airplane models; though I didn’t concentrate on planes.  I made several large ship models; a large model of the Eiffel Tower; cars; etc.  

In short, as far as Picano’s description of himself at the age of eleven or twelve, I could relate to that; in spite of the fact that he was talking about New York City and its suburbs, while I would be talking about the tidewater area of Virginia, about seven years later than he is describing.

Picano’s descriptions have moved me along a bit towards continuing with my own novel based on my early life.  And for that I thank him!

I’ve also been taking another look at Kerouac’s Doctor Sax, another novel dealing with a boy who is eleven or twelve—but that is a totally different type of work!

Memorial Day, 2012: Contemplating All the Tributes I See to the Military

As a child, in the 1950s and 1960s, I grew up on U. S. military bases.  By the time I was 21, I had lived on (or next to) military bases for...12 or 13 years.  If I count the baby years that I can’t remember, maybe it was 15 or 16 years!  But I wasn't in the military.  My father wasn't in the military.  He worked for the American Red Cross, serving the military.

So I grew up in the military environment, but not actually military, and not a military family. 

The Red Cross is a humanitarian organization.  The military is not.  The international Red Cross movement offers “neutral humanitarian care to the victims of war.”  The American Red Cross offers “support and comfort for military members and their families.”

I grew up as a Protestant Christian.  In military setting, that meant I attended generic church services designed (so I've heard) not to offend any of the many Protestant denominations.  The other choices for church services would have been Catholic or Jewish.  The same chapel was used for all three.

I read the synoptic gospels and believed in loving my enemies and blessing those who cursed me.  Every day, on base, the American flag was raised and lowered as the National Anthem was played.

I knew an Air Force major who disappeared over North Vietnam in the 1960s.  And a military doctor who made mysterious (to me) visits to Iran in the 1970s.  I knew an alcoholic officer.  I knew Red Cross workers:  One who loved classical music.  Another who was a naturalist and had married a Japanese woman after World War II.  I knew the children of the military, the wives and mothers of the military.   I knew the loneliness and the worry of the military.  On the other hand, thanks to the military, I've lived in Germany and Japan, and traveled to over twenty countries.  My family's housing and medical expenses were subsidized.  Food, clothing, and entertainment were subsidized.

It was a very different life.  Growing up, I lived nowhere more than five years.  It was the same for everyone I knew (except for the few scattered years when I was “off-base.”).  I was very connected to the military, but was not military.  I was disconnected, in any deep sense, from the localities in which I was living.

All of this has left me with, shall I say, some "internal conflicts"...