The style of Jack Kerouac is the most interesting part of his work. There is some symbolism, in a few works, specifically when he passed out in the latrine and was urinated on in On the Road. However, his style was realistic and used a minimal amount of symbolism. The actual writing, the pace of words led Truman Capote to refer to him as a “typist, not a writer.” This Benzedrine fueled writing leads him to Dickinsonian sentence structure-hyphens galore-Kerouac new how to end a sentence-by not ending it-his Faulknerian/Dickinsonian sentence structure enabled the reader to catch up to his addled, rattled mental condition only to be surpassed by his verbosity and narration. Kerouac labeled this style Spontaneous Prose (http://www.wordsareimportant.com/kerouac.htm);

he even came up with a set of guidelines for this spontenaity:

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You're a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

Review-Pro-Big Sur

Big Sur, by Jack Kerouac, is a marvelous work full of contrasting darkness and light, full of shade and gleaming beauty. The style of the work is typical Kerouc-staccato rhythm tapping words into the readers head like some rapid jazz percussionist. Kerouac's moralism is also evident. His concluding poem, the epilogue of Big Sur contains the line, "No tempest as still and awful as the tempest that rages within" (241). This tempest is the tempest that would slay Kerouac, this foreshadowing of the overshadowing of his own literary prowess is one of the most prescient pieces of literature in the 20th Century. Big Sur=good read.

Review-Con-Some of the Dharma

Some of the Dharma-a collection of Jack Kerouac’s random writings seem to this reviewer to be a superfluous example of a mediocre writer’s family trying to cash in on whatever drivel this glorified typist wrote on a napkin in some drunken stupor. The misshapen glob of a text is almost unreadable in its entirety, or even in small bites. It’s like an exotic pork products pureed into unrecognizable chunks and formed into phallic slabs and placed between the sides of cardboard flavored nothing. His work is like a rancit frankfurter, to be frank about the matter. It disgusts me. This 420 pages full of Buddhist ramblings enlightens the reader not one bit about the man, his life, or his work.

Epilogue

I love the writing of Jack Kerouac. He influenced the Baby Boom generations ideals of freedom and was a reflection of a basic American archetype-the happy wanderer (see Johnny Appleseed). My research into his life enabled me to critique him rather that mythologize him. He was a hypocrite, or he was a man who did a 180 in his life. I’ve chosen to the hypocrite appellation because of his betrayal of ideas he helped create while sinking into a morass of drunken despair. The multi-genre style enables a greater use of multimedia technologies, a greater use of kinesthetic learning style, and a greater freedom to create. I hope the audience appreciates the beauty and ugliness of Kerouac’s life and writing through this presentation. In it, I synthesized a great deal of information and metaphor to create a somewhat confusing, somewhat enlightening experience for my audience.

Discussion Question

What is the literary value of Kerouac’s writing?
Does his life story influence your idea of that literary value?
How does he fit in with his generation of poets? With the American literary tradition?
Was he a leader, a pioneer, a Judas, or a dilettante? Explain.

The Disembodied Poet

My sotapanna slivering ways

Buddha-Christ until the end of days

Samsaric blundering, golden suffering

Loathsome and beautiful

Confidence man-changeling

In me, not of me, winding, becoming, blind dazzle of ectsasy
Mexico City! Atop a field of dead and dying are the light and lying

Just a bum of the Dharma -a Benedictine unconfirmed-lost and found

A sotapanna slivering.........................................was always, as always

Alwys will be, this me, visioning sweet Gerard, Oh! Gerard

Running, rolling, drinking, stinking, this incessant game, habit energy

Is a spider web,

Even the slipp'ry sotapanna

Is caught and knows

The wheel of Karma goes round and round

Round and round goes Samsara

This is the wheel of Dharma

No monk, no bhikku, just a sotapanna

Eking a slow death and a slow burn

So the Lord says is my appointed turn...

Solomon's Kerouac

My Kerouac is a holy man who became unholy, a gorgeous Beat who became a stinkinpiss-drunk Nixonite, who lost his soul and then died early...too early. He is Paul were Paul orginally Christian and the light on the road to Damascus in fact a gaping abyss, a sheol, a samsara inescapable.

From Cool to Wack
Kerouac



Beautiful dreamer-
Desolation Angel,
By desolation ruled,
From Dharma deranged,
Onetime counterculture Appleseed,
Later Death’s Apprentice-
“No!” you say-“Yes…Indeed”

From whence to wither this I will share,
In a manner not unlike that of Kerouac,
How his heart-he would bare,
Benzedrine-fueled ramblings
Mighty epic ramblings…
Then his heart turned black.