mardou and others

"The Subterraneans", Jack Kerouac, 1958

With "Tristessa", it was fleeting junkylove, more of a meditation of what it means to be enslaved and reliant upon others and upon drugs than truelove, like "The Subterraneans". Kerouac's follow-up to "On the Road" is even more off-the-cuff, but now a panoramic snapshot of a single love, not several back-and-forth trips, and in a mere 111 pages he spills that love onto the paper in all its details and glory, true to the soul and all that good stuff.

For a short little novel "The Subterraneans" is incredibly dense, wordy, and still flowing. It took me several sessions to come through, probably as many as the 2-3 times as long "Big Sur". You could tell that Kerouac wrote this in a BLAST, three days and three nights in reality, and that it struck like lightning you take a picture of and never fades. The words would lose me, find me, and like great Kerouac, there are moments you have no clue what's going on, then moments of utter clarity. He's able to divulge common things such as the basic plot (meeting, courtship, first sex, the good times, the bad times, the cause of the end, the end, the outcome) with glory of humanity and tenderness with his sketching prose, his stream-of-consciousness paralleled by no one.

The girl's name is Mardou, half-black half-Indian who strikes Kerouac's fancy as being somewhat the mother of us all. Hie Oedipal Complex is fleshed-out toward the end, and continuously through the whole Duluoz Legend as he struggles to find a replacement for his mother and always ends up back on her doorstep. Mardou seems like the closest thing the many-times-a-married man would find, as they make plans in darkness and love for real, but it isn't to last. The classic Kerouac paranoia rears its head as he begins to see signs of their downfall and plans accordingly. Through the man's positivity as The Legend goes on, his worship of life and the wonderment it brings, he's surely got the weakness of looking over his shoulder constantly. In this way he sabotages the relationship and this is a reflection of its destruction, beautiful and brittle, and totally relatable as it is a cliche in a new way. So not a cliche. Just a really good book on love.

Also covered in subplots that will converge with Mardou's affair with another "subterranean", Kerouac must've cemented his status as leader of the beats with this book which goes into further detail of the structure of the underground folk he was a part of. Some had made it in art, some were simply self-made scholars, others street poets and beatniks with the brains to join; they all had brains. Mardou was like Kerouac, impoverished, mad, intelligent as hell, and ready for whatever. In many ways she was the counterpart he was made for as you could see his contrast with the better-off beats and their witticisms that he did not all together fit with (he was too honest, even in his wit it was not as clever as it was genuine). Kerouac was instead crazier, just as brainy, impressive in conversation and art, but always retreated, and so did Mardou, to her home and the aptly named Heavenly Lane she lived on, where, Kerouac prophesized, one day her light would not be on for him any longer. And he was right.

Through the packed prose and intellectual and cultural references Kerouac and his Legend are known for, this strikes compelling as what is a meditation on love and its costs and rewards. He seems to regret in retrospect what he did to destroy, only seeming to understand it away from the situation and behind a typewriter, but still he moves. That's the point, right? He moves, and we move, and his travels and loves and heart-breaks and search for it continue perpetually. And I can't help but feeling he finds IT so often, but also finds that nothing so IT lasts, too precious and breakable. Just move!


"...and now you threw away a little woman's love because you wanted another drink with a rowdy fiend from the other side of your insanity."

deterioration

"Big Sur", Jack Kerouac, 1962

My previous Duluoz experience goes to the first typed "On the Road" and then the smashing little druggy Mexico City love meditation "Tristessa", but now Kerouac has found fame through what he refers to as "Road", and post-fame blues with alcohol tremens are what will be taken on in "Big Sur".

Kids expect him to be younger, and wiser, and more and more Jack Ti thinks he's a complete idiot and full of shit. He's caught up with Cody Pomeray (Neal Cassady as you'd figure), sleeping with Cody's favorite mistress and sitting on her chair and binging as she works while her child drives him wild, and on this saga goes.

The first fifth of the book is simply our protagonist, Mr. Kerouac, searching for an escape from big crowds and people who need to talk to him now that he is so-called "King of Beatniks". He's famous, he's got money, and he's getting the hell out of New York, so he finds himself on a cabin on Big Sur on the Pacific, and he's isolating himself trying to find greener grass. Though such is not possible; when he's at Big Sur he misses the crowds when he's with the crowds he misses the isolation Big Sur provided him. His torture turns to him rationalizing all with supposed signs he's going mad (such as Tyke, his kitten, dying and he mourns this consistently through the book so fabled loss of innocence) until he winds back at Big Sur with friends and his affair screwing with her kid hanging off of her and all woebegone things. This is Kerouac at his maddest and most self-deprecating.

Yet again, it's about adventure. He drinks too much, he's getting old, he misses his time with his old road pale when it's just the two of them, but he's still picking his ass up and doing things. Big Sur itself seems the maddest place as Duluoz stands over the thousand foot bridge and the wild waters as if its some giant monster meant to deter him from the peacefulness of the cabin, the peacefulness of the pure life. His alcoholism are those mad waters which never calm. Eventually even the pure things begin to look crazy and convicting, as Duluoz gets more and more paranoid and into worse situations with Billie, the woman who so wishes to settle with him but ends up driving him mad with useless philosophy and beatings of her child (and she swears, in the most despondent parts of "Big Sur" that she'll kill herself and the kid and all will be over). This adventure is not the same as the others, however, where Kerouac finds joy and sadness but always the will, as it seems he loses some of his faith and eventually, in the last fifth of the book he's gone so mad it's hard to make anything concrete of the text at all -- a wonderful mish mash of words set to the tune of a scabbed and tattered brain. A maddening adventure of the alcohol-induced and destroyed psyche.

The strangest part is that in the last two pages he suddenly snaps out of it. Everything is OK. It leaves with a sort of "What the fuck" thought, though this is Kerouac and he is, as I previously suspected, so damn scared of falling into cynicism, and it's funny I'm drawn to people like that because my own writing I forget, and, while I will venture much farther to the darkside of my own mind than I've seen Kerouac do, I need to hold on to those rays. In "Big Sur", yes, it is totally forced, but I think Kerouac wanted us to see that, see that you need to draw your mindstate away simply, make a change, get rid of Billie and her damned kid, drop them off and your obligations if need be, and get back to the purity of things. Or go mad. It's hard to say where Duluoz leaves us this time. We just know he comes back at some point.

This is a much more picturesque, naturesque Kerouac this time around, and not only is there isolation through Big Sur, but he seems isolated by those around him, isolated by fame, isolated by the mindset that he is not who he may really be. It is not instantly quotable, philosophies much more scattered, but still a different side of Kerouac and his Legend, and all is strange and mad in the world of Duluoz.

the blame game

"Shooter", Walter Dean Myers, 2004

Columbine and all things school shootings seem as confounding to Walter Dean Myers as they were to the rest of us when Middle America got to feel the acts of "senseless" violence that have plagued Mr. Myers's Harlem world since Harlem Time began. Not that we look to Myers for the answers, he's more the type to provide analysis, a fictional play-by-play of something undeniably real and problematic for society. Something in "Shooter", however, and about Myers and his seeming fear of empathizing too much with the book's assailant, Leonard Gray, is distressing insofar as he refuses an honest appraisal of a teenage killer's mindset and decides instead to, at the worst moment, plunge into the glib 'types that mar our ability to heal society before the worst manifests itself in irreparable tragedy.

As a book researched during the time Myers was taking notes and doing interviews for the spell-binding drama of a kid in the wrong place, wrong time, with the wrong associates, "Monster", "Shooter" is also more experimental teen lit, this time Myers writing from the voice of multiple interviewers and those intimately involved with Len Gray. The voices he gives both Cameron Porter (Len's closest male friend and, really, accomplice to his acts) and Carla Evans (a tough, abused teen girl, down to reality and all) stand up well with his professional interviewees, some emotionally removed professional psyches, others more badgering or even less than competent. It is interesting how Porter reacts to different situations, especially as he turns unsure and inward when met with the confrontational tone of FBI analyst Victoria Lash (also the lone dissenter when the others, exposed as more going-through-the-motion detectives concede that there was nothing that could have prevented the heinous crimes of Leonard Gray, an absurdity of bureaucracy too real and well fleshed-out). You believe that Cameron and Carla are intelligent, perhaps too intelligent and made vulnerable, outsiders trying to cope with teen life and doing a predictably poor job given how quick we are to give amnesty to the adults who could've intervened and been there as bullying and other harsh actions were committed against these weary souls.

It is the voice of Leonard Gray himself, though not found until the appendix after the "report", the remnants of his diary, that move to glib and tired characterizations of a teenager hollering for help, which bog the book down. He plays with words immaturely, and screams to the page, but also writes in prose so refined it is barely believeable. At what level are we trying to represent him? Sometimes he sounds like Neal Cassady, at other times the songwriter for Good Charlotte, and maybe this battle of a mad intelligent cat and a mad cliche cat are supposed to reveal something about his mindset. I personally think there isn't enough rambling or inclusion of, just, normal shit, every word is profound, it is far too much a product of an author rather than an accurate immitation of a boy lost. Here is where Myers is exposed as losing his touch with the soul of the perpetrator, instead reducing himself to mocking teen angst, and doing so in a badgering and unprofessional (though maybe also too-professional) manner. When you first hear about Len through the mouthpiece of Cameron, Carla, or the various analysts, it would seem as though Myers would hint at a human in Len, that perhaps there was more than meets the eye, and perhaps he could hint at the soul through his journal, but it's hard to find amongst the carefully written mocking. Even when he attempts to show remorse for exposing Carla's disturbing past (being molested by her father), he only seems to mention it in a self-centered way, though Cameron and Carla seem to both agree he was genuine and deeper than that, so Myers loses touch when trying to feign teen angst. Which is understandable; he's much better at being a confused African American from Harlem caught up at the scene of a crime (as seen in "Monster"), than an angry middle-class white boy fanatical for guns and dramatic shows of helplessness. He just can't seem to identify properly with Len, and that definitely degrades what is, up to that point, a fine piece of teen lit.

"Shooter" remains an important reflection point coming from a strong voice in teen writing despite its shortcomings. If it doesn't get your brain cranking on the true disturbances and harshness of the teen psyche and the effect of bullying and displacement of teenage beings, I'd be surprised. It makes me eager to then read Todd Strasser's "Give a Boy a Gun" to see how he pulls it off (as he has a similar nose for controversial wide-spread issues and teen accessibility that few seem to be able to find). Here's hoping he can pull of a scenario just as believable with perhaps just a bit more understanding for all parties and the cycle, not just beginning and endpoints, but the circle that is created which we can't seem to break, its strengthening in our youth.

PS--Though this is a gut reaction, I do want to praise the author, Mr. Myers, for his painting of the actual horrors of the actual event through the mouths of Cameron and Carla. Their description of what happened, their emotions, their tentative voice, created magical moments in teen lit few can recreate. The images of Len cutting himself open and painting "Stop the Violence" on the school walls before eventually turning his gun on his non-compliant, therefore evil traitor friends, creates a surreal quality such events deserve. The man can write, this book is not terrible, but just just just if he could've gotten to the heart of the child who spilled his own blood and that of others, and not just to the mania, but his true heart, this book would've been a beacon for the distraught teens mangled in anxiety. Still though.

FB: Carla, what do you think of all this? If you were summing it up, what would you say? CE: I've thought about it, naturally. The thing is, everybody is looking at what happened that day, but when you think about it, what happened that day was the result of a whole lot of other stuff. I'm not saying there was a direct cause or anything. But I think the whole thing wouldn't of went down the way it did if a lot of other stuff hadn't pushed Len to where he was. Is anybody looking into the other stuff?

i mean, man, whither goest thou?

"On the Road: The Original Scroll", Jack Kerouac, 2007.

Even in forever, it must all end. Fuckin' Potchky, Lucien Carr's dog, had to eat the end of Kerouac's scroll, lost and forever lost, so editor Howard Cunnell was left to sift through all sorts of "On the Road" editions to piece together what might have been, and in so many ways I just wish he would have ended with the words told of the Mexico City ambulances, but more appropriately for Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac and their beating souls and Neal's concept of time, "and it does not pause for an instant". Been fine like that, though I am not quibbling over the close, it works and is still notable for how the ending was polished by the process of making the book publishable by the standards of non-literate publishinghouses. And in that, the original scroll so legendary of "On the Road" was also ended, died to bring up its child, the "On the Road" so widely hailed, with pseudonyms and non-homosexuality, etc., etc., a version still crazy and stream-of-consciousness a-full, but still toned-down. Now I have read the scroll, beaten back to life to die only at the last word ("instant") transcribed by Mr. Cunnell for the benefit of us all without much of a touch, kept all the same as Kerouac madly typed it in a few weeks in a New York apartment.

Over a hundred pages of introduction precede the unabated scroll, with four "Kerouac scholars" including Howard Cunnell himself delving into different aspects of "On the Road"'s importance. Cunnell's is the only one I shall ever return to because his account of how "On the Road", the popular published version, came to exist in its edited glory, is absolutely fascinating. It makes me want to write a million novels and never seek to publish them, as if I'm keeping the mysteries of life all to myself and true understanding will die when I go limp. I'm glad Kerouac never got to the point, though, because even revised "On the Road" was great, and now the scroll has finally seen the light of day, posthumously, unfortunately for his soul but that's the way even he saw it as happening, and did his old publishers look like fools for how it went down, as he prophecized? To me they did, but this is how legends are made, with rejections and scathing criticisms by editors-not-writers. Legendary works never stay down, so the scroll is now published and all has come to materialize I suppose.

I am not going to hash-out the plot again because the plot hasn't changed. Two fellows, now in their true names of Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac, are searching for IT, and are using the road to do that. We follow Kerouac in first-person as he meets with Neal, is separated, meets, is separated, and the eventual mass of time they'd spend together going from Frisco to New York to Mexico City, the meat of the book which all leads to and breaks from. Do they ever find what they search for? Does it matter? Perhaps the point to be found is that you can cross America a million times and it will brighten you and pain you and all you search for is not a mystery but is really already found and you just live and live and live and live and go on hiatus forever. I search for no beginning or end in anything, so maybe I'm not like Jack Kerouac, but I have found something otherworldly from his searches, and it makes me thrive as I read the words.

Many say they never do find what they search for, but perhaps in their not finding IT through their journeys, you find IT in yourself as you read, and even more so in the scroll which, even though now published in a hard-bound has no indentations and is truly written in a stream-of-consciousness method, no matter how well its puncutated for something not revised at all. It goes and goes, though not as unconventional as other works (I know from experience "Tristessa" is way more far-out, or "gone" as Jack may describe), but with this method of non-paragraphing, where the books change with just capital letters in the middle of the river of journey saying BOOK ONE or BOOK FOUR, and no arbitrary page breaks and stalls for needless chapter headings, you get the sense that all is connected in Jack's travels and including these several journeys with Neal and others in one book has its purpose, and not only perhaps was this Kerouac's magnum opus, but the whole plot was a climax, his life's climax.

I like that thought. "On the Road" may just be my favorite book ever now, and while I do like the published version, the scroll tickled me these past few days where I read the overwhelming amount of it. In my recent finding that my General Anxiety Disorder may really be Bipolar, or Manic Depression, the mania living inside this book appeals to me, especially since this weekend I have felt heightened. If I can control the "disorder" moodwise, I think I'll find it a blessing, because according to my well-versed psychologist what it does to my brain makes me creative and divergent and more coexisting with what IS in some metaphysical term than most people are probably ever capable of, and I think it, too, brings me closer to "On the Road" and all that we search for.

"The truth of the matter is, you die, all you do is die, and yet you live, yes you live, and that's no Harvard lie.

how do you avoid getting sucked-in?

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows", JK Rowling, 2007

Listen all you elitists and haters and punks-ass hoes, listen to teacher now, because I have one non-fact that I will phrase as a fact because there is more truth in it than your whole existence: JK Rowling is getting kids to read. I know you hate her because she's all corporate and having an impact on our global economy, or whatever, but she's also got kids becoming literate, and hell, it's not her fault she wrote with such crossover success, she was a poor-ass woman living in a car! And again, the kiddies are reading. We're talking the ones that HATE reading, the ones who are between 4th and 8th grade. With "Harry Potter", Rowling came with seven books that grew up with readers, were relevant to the kids on an emotional level, darkened as adolescent life darkened for Harry, with the angst of love and impending doom, with social overtones and hidden messages galore. The prose is simple, but effective, engaging enough to have adults in line with the chillins, anticipating every new book's release until this, the seventh installment, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows".

This is basically the story of a tense start, a despondent middle, and an ending that casts doubt right up to the very end. In a nutshell, predictable. Somehow, that doesn't stop it from being a riveting read, and a worthy reread as this was my second time through. It may not be worth its 750+ page count like the finest book of the series, "Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix", a plot always tense that will bring out the rebellion from the tamest with an antagonist arguably more maddening then Voldemort himself, Dolores Umbridge, but as Voldemort takes down the Ministry and then Hogworts, the wizarding school itself, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione are sent out into a most twisted game of hide-and-seek, whilst looking to destroy parts of the Dark Lord's soul with very little to work with and time running out, you will find this is as much of a page turner as any other book in the series.

There is always a witty scenario up Rowling's sleeve, and here she delivers several ways to come to an expected event in an unorthodox manner. Disguising six others as Harry in order to trick the Death Eaters and get Harry from his regular "muggle" (non-magic people) home safely was clever and held some instant action when the good guys are bombarded. As well, when Bill and Fleur get married at Ron's, and Kingsley's patronus interrupts the raucous festivities with a message that ministry has fallen to the baddies, it is the utmost way to explain this fact to us and also give us a little chill at the same time, as instantly Death Eaters crash in on the Order of the Phoenix (good guys) and the fighting begins. Even the obscure gifts that Dumbledore gives to Harry, Ron, and Hermione, seemingly meaningless, end up being crucial, everything for a reason. In that, it's totally optimistic, especially as Harry dodges death's grips time and time again, persists against doubts, and brings forth one of the greatest revolutions, and greatest stories of bad and evil, ever scrawled.

I won't even complain by the crazy number of pages dedicated to the monotony of the trio going from deserted place to deserted place without any clue what they're doing. It's frustrating, dares to turn you into a nutcase banging your head against your headboard, wall, whatever hard surface you can connect with. But that's how it's supposed to feel. For Harry Potter, what has come easy? Hell, he has to walk right to his own death in order to make all right in his world. He's so earnest in his methods, you may want to puke, or you just may just wish he was real. Anyhow, the time in the woods is time well spent on self-discovery, and the most important moments in the brother/sister bond of Harry and Hermione, as well as Ron learning his mettle. Coming of age, yes indeed. Going through puberty has never been more demanding.

Then the last 150-200 pages are magical, no pun intended. The Battle of Hogworts, the rallying behind a figure-head, all the pageantry and excitement and darkness that comes with it. It's been an epic journey, and the ending is apt. The race to find Voldemort's last piece of soul, and then, the clincher, realizing that part of Voldy's soul is in Harry, and Harry's near-death experience speaking to the late Dumbledore, and before that, seeing Severus Snape's final thoughts and coming to the predictable but hard-won idea that Snape was truly for the good and in many ways, as much of a hero as Harry himself. I'm not going to write a million pages, but when all of this comes together, and in the pit of your stomach you revile Rowling for making you read thousands of pages just to sacrifice Harry at the end, then Harry coming back like Jesus and stomping out the biggest threat to the world, ever, it's just an emotional roller coaster, because you realize, you are so attached to these people. So attached you forgive the corny and needless epilogue ("19 Years Later") in all its cliches, because you are so damned happy everyone ended up just like you wanted. Every now and again, that's OK.

I will miss the anticipation of new Harry. I only got to anticipate it once since I never gave it a chance until a while after "Harry Potter and the Half-Blooded Prince" released, the sixth book. It's over, though, all loose-ends tied tight. This series will have impact long after I finish typing this, though. Students will continue to read and read'um through the ages. Ron will be the comic relief as always. Hermione should be the model for girls growing up, a respectable adolescent female character who is neither dumb nor promiscuous, but rather brainy, thoughtful, and rebellious and forward-thinking when the time calls. And finally, we can all find a hero in Harry, the kid empowered with a task that would save his world from imminent peril, and he never ever gave up. These are characters we already knew, but so improved upon that they became original again. We fell and fell hard for them. And they lived happily ever after. (Sigh).

"Voldemort's handn was trembling on the Elder Wand, and Harry gripped Draco's very tightly. The moment, he knew, was seconds away."