Full Transcript for 648--Talking Smack about Jack Kerouac with Diane DeRoy on The Grassy Knoll with Vyz.

00:03:50.400 battle between evil and good and all this, which I 74 00:03:50.460 --> 00:03:53.879 remember doing myself, especially when you were alone and were 75 00:03:53.900 --> 00:03:56.090 bored and you wanted to go out. I mean, when 76 00:03:56.120 --> 00:03:58.150 I read Dr. Sacks, I'm like, oh, have I not 77 00:03:58.169 --> 00:04:01.009 been there? Of course I have. But with Maggie Cassidy, 78 00:04:01.110 --> 00:04:05.069 it gets into something even deeper, and I would say sweeter, 79 00:04:05.229 --> 00:04:08.219 forgive that phrase, but because you start to realize that 80 00:04:08.240 --> 00:04:11.960 there's another sex, and all of a sudden all these emotions, 81 00:04:12.020 --> 00:04:16.160 which adolescence is just defined by, this rush of stuff, 82 00:04:16.180 --> 00:04:18.379 you have no idea some days, like, why am I 83 00:04:18.420 --> 00:04:21.079 feeling that? And I think he captured both the early 84 00:04:21.120 --> 00:04:24.920 days and the adolescent period very, very well. 85 00:04:25.810 --> 00:04:30.209 Yeah, in Dr. Sachs, he is talking about the childhood 86 00:04:30.250 --> 00:04:33.649 of the American boy. there really aren't any girls in it. 87 00:04:33.829 --> 00:04:36.529 It's just really about how he hung out with his boys. 88 00:04:36.850 --> 00:04:40.850 And I don't think anybody has ever described boyhood better 89 00:04:40.889 --> 00:04:44.329 than Jack in this book. He's really good at describing 90 00:04:44.430 --> 00:04:47.870 Americana in general. Of course, he's brilliant. But when he 91 00:04:47.889 --> 00:04:50.189 talks about his childhood with his boys, you know, hanging 92 00:04:50.209 --> 00:04:52.600 out in the corners and smoking cigarettes and all the 93 00:04:52.629 --> 00:04:55.959 things that they did, not to mention his fantasy about Dr. Sacks, 94 00:04:56.800 --> 00:05:01.269 it just makes you feel... that you're there. You know, 95 00:05:01.410 --> 00:05:04.990 everything that he says, you feel like you're in Lowell. 96 00:05:05.250 --> 00:05:09.029 I actually, lately I've been working on Dr. Sacks with 97 00:05:09.050 --> 00:05:13.060 my book, and that, along with Maggie Cassidy, I've been thinking, 98 00:05:13.160 --> 00:05:16.199 I'd like to move there. I've been there. I know 99 00:05:16.220 --> 00:05:19.600 what that town is like. I can feel it by 100 00:05:19.639 --> 00:05:22.000 knowing what Jack said about it. When I go to Lowell, 101 00:05:22.600 --> 00:05:29.060 I am in Penelope's town. But More importantly, he talks 102 00:05:29.120 --> 00:05:34.220 about it very realistically, very nakedly. And you know that 103 00:05:34.420 --> 00:05:37.959 he's describing a really poor, working-class mill town with a 104 00:05:38.000 --> 00:05:43.810 lot of ethnic diversity where the people actually speak freely 105 00:05:43.870 --> 00:05:48.269 about each other by race. And there's no political correctness there. 106 00:05:48.769 --> 00:05:52.910 That's how it was. And yet... He's talking

about all 107 00:05:52.949 --> 00:05:56.329 this stuff as it was, which today people would think was, 108 00:05:56.410 --> 00:06:00.660 like I said, politically incorrect, that you just want to 109 00:06:00.680 --> 00:06:02.240 be there. You want to live in a world that 110 00:06:02.279 --> 00:06:05.699 was that simple that you could bitch about the Greeks 111 00:06:05.720 --> 00:06:11.040 or the French or the Poles, the Russians, the Irish. Yeah, 112 00:06:11.060 --> 00:06:14.870 the Irish were a big deal. Then going from there, 113 00:06:15.970 --> 00:06:19.220 sort of segwaying into Maggie Cassidy, that book is about sex. 114 00:06:20.069 --> 00:06:24.769 It's about sexual discovery. It's about all the things that 115 00:06:25.170 --> 00:06:31.709 he learned and his madness for girls. He describes teenage 116 00:06:31.750 --> 00:06:36.620 girls beautifully and his lust for them. It's not nasty. 117 00:06:36.819 --> 00:06:40.839 It's not R-rated. He uses all the words that he 118 00:06:40.860 --> 00:06:43.779 needs to use, and yet it's just a beautiful thing. 119 00:06:43.879 --> 00:06:45.220 Shall we just say he was honest? 120 00:06:46.319 --> 00:06:46.860 Absolutely. 121 00:06:46.879 --> 00:06:49.009 Yeah, of course he was. And you can't be that 122 00:06:49.060 --> 00:06:51.220 way anymore because, you know, the thought police or the 123 00:06:51.259 --> 00:06:53.759 word police come down on you. Yeah, but I mean, 124 00:06:54.120 --> 00:06:56.300 he was honest, and that's what attracted me, and I 125 00:06:56.339 --> 00:06:59.899 think that's what attracted a lot of individuals to his work. 126 00:07:00.529 --> 00:07:03.430 You may not have always liked the final scenario, but 127 00:07:03.810 --> 00:07:05.490 you realize he was giving it to you straight right 128 00:07:05.509 --> 00:07:06.870 out of the box without milk and sugar. 129 00:07:07.810 --> 00:07:11.740 Yeah, that's really important, you know, because there's a biographer, 130 00:07:11.860 --> 00:07:17.500 Ellis Ambern, who has, his entire book, Subterranean Kerouac, was 131 00:07:17.579 --> 00:07:19.980 written in an effort to prove that Jack was gay, 132 00:07:20.060 --> 00:07:24.000 which is a very, you know, hot topic among the Kerouacos, 133 00:07:24.120 --> 00:07:26.949 you know. And there's a website, I think it's the 134 00:07:26.970 --> 00:07:32.449 Knitting Circle, where they actually, they cite Amber's book, and 135 00:07:32.769 --> 00:07:35.649 they go on and on about embracing Kerouac as being 136 00:07:35.990 --> 00:07:40.149 not just bisexual, but, you know, homosexual. My argument against 137 00:07:40.209 --> 00:07:44.230 that is that if you look at Kerouac, Ginsburg, and Burroughs, 138 00:07:44.990 --> 00:07:48.850 Ginsburg and Burroughs were both homosexuals, gay. So, you know, 139 00:07:48.870 --> 00:07:51.050 as long as the day is long, they were gay. 140 00:07:51.670 --> 00:07:55.069 And yet they both had relationships with women. Burroughs married 141 00:07:55.129 --> 00:07:59.649 a woman and fathered a child, if I'm mistaken about that. 142 00:08:00.779 --> 00:08:03.759 And yet even though they had what would be looked 143 00:08:03.819 --> 00:08:08.060 at as heterosexual leanings, they would never describe themselves as 144 00:08:08.100 --> 00:08:12.699 bisexual or heterosexual. Same thing, if you stand that argument 145 00:08:12.740 --> 00:08:15.560 on its head, look at Kerouac. He may have had 146 00:08:15.579 --> 00:08:20.379 a few, you know, gay encounters or homosexual encounters with 147 00:08:20.439 --> 00:08:24.379 men who were homosexual, but he was through and through heterosexual. 148 00:08:24.420 --> 00:08:26.980 When you start reading the child books, you know, the 149 00:08:27.019 --> 00:08:30.790 kid books, Dr. Sachs and Maggie Cassidy, and then read 150 00:08:30.819 --> 00:08:36.389 his journals, he's not overcompensating. He's not a macho, heterosexual man. 151 00:08:36.429 --> 00:08:39.370 He is honest, as you say. And because of that, 152 00:08:39.429 --> 00:08:42.669 because Kerouac was so confessional and so honest, it's ridiculous 153 00:08:42.730 --> 00:08:44.990 to think that he was hiding a homosexual life. 154 00:08:45.529 --> 00:08:49.539 Do you think that Cassidy and Kerouac, who were basically 155 00:08:49.600 --> 00:08:53.179 living a life in, I would say, balls to the walls, 156 00:08:53.899 --> 00:08:57.980 that whatever forays they had into homosexuality was like, let's 157 00:08:58.019 --> 00:08:59.899 push it to the limits in every direction it went, 158 00:08:59.980 --> 00:09:01.100 and that was one of the directions? 159 00:09:02.370 --> 00:09:04.409 Yeah, well, Kerouac, I think I might have told you 160 00:09:04.450 --> 00:09:10.610 that Kerouac was of the mindset that the man who 161 00:09:10.649 --> 00:09:14.330 was receiving fellatio from a queer, as he called him, 162 00:09:14.429 --> 00:09:16.289 was not gay, but the guy that was giving it 163 00:09:16.309 --> 00:09:21.370 was gay. Excuse me. As far as Cassidy goes, he 164 00:09:21.409 --> 00:09:27.169 was just one of those Roman candles. He wanted everything. 165 00:09:27.240 --> 00:09:30.750 He wanted to experience everything and He had no problem, 166 00:09:31.159 --> 00:09:33.899 you know, having sex with men or women, or like 167 00:09:33.960 --> 00:09:37.139 I said, groups of men and women, because he was 168 00:09:37.299 --> 00:09:39.360 sexually driven to such an extent that he had to 169 00:09:39.379 --> 00:09:40.820 have sex all the time. 170 00:09:41.299 --> 00:09:45.679 That Roman candle passage coming from Kerouac when we talked 171 00:09:45.759 --> 00:09:48.120 last time about going down, what was it, Broadway or 172 00:09:48.139 --> 00:09:51.200 something like that? And the people who never, you know, 173 00:09:51.259 --> 00:09:55.539 yawn or whatever, and they burst like Roman candles. Yeah, 174 00:09:55.639 --> 00:10:00.169 I mean, Cassidy... A strange figure. a whole lot of 175

00:10:00.250 --> 00:10:03.450 energy and physical prowess, and actually an intellect that was 176 00:10:03.490 --> 00:10:07.649 probably never developed. But there was something there, no doubt. 177 00:10:07.750 --> 00:10:11.460 And I'm sure you've read, you know, the first third, 178 00:10:11.779 --> 00:10:14.379 to which there were now two other thirds, by Cassidy, 179 00:10:14.440 --> 00:10:17.840 and that was produced, or at least published, I'm sorry, by... 180 00:10:19.169 --> 00:10:22.690 That was Girl and Getty's, right? Right. Publishing House? Give 181 00:10:22.710 --> 00:10:23.710 me a break here. I can't remember. 182 00:10:23.730 --> 00:10:24.070 City Lights. 183 00:10:24.250 --> 00:10:27.690 City Lights. There you go. Hello. Mine's a terrible thing 184 00:10:27.710 --> 00:10:30.970 to lose. But, I mean, you know, the first third 185 00:10:31.090 --> 00:10:37.419 was also, it was awesome. And Cassidy, obviously, I mean, 186 00:10:37.460 --> 00:10:40.320 do you agree, was probably, you know, had a really 187 00:10:40.379 --> 00:10:43.980 high IQ and in another time or setting probably could 188 00:10:44.019 --> 00:10:47.620 have been a very accomplished literary figure. 189 00:10:48.330 --> 00:10:53.460 Right, yes, definitely. If you read the Cassidy Letters, a 190 00:10:53.700 --> 00:10:57.620 book that came out a couple years ago from Carolyn Cassidy, 191 00:10:57.659 --> 00:11:02.639 edited by Dave Moore, you can watch Neal's writing style 192 00:11:02.700 --> 00:11:06.340 sort of develop, and Jack credited Neal with changing his 193 00:11:06.379 --> 00:11:09.620 writing style. You can see that happening in Jack's books, 194 00:11:09.740 --> 00:11:14.659 his journals and stuff like that. But Cassidy was very... 195 00:11:15.149 --> 00:11:16.509 I don't know how to describe it to you. It's 196 00:11:16.590 --> 00:11:20.289 very kind of over the top, very correct, you know. 197 00:11:21.129 --> 00:11:24.429 He spoke in very proper terms or wrote in very 198 00:11:24.529 --> 00:11:29.129 proper sort of eloquent sentences. He was always saying, yes, yes, yes, yes, 199 00:11:29.149 --> 00:11:32.789 you know, all the time. And so his was actually 200 00:11:32.809 --> 00:11:35.490 a lot more florid. What Jack did was he took 201 00:11:35.549 --> 00:11:39.710 that fast talking off the top of the mind sort 202 00:11:39.769 --> 00:11:43.769 of thing that Neil did, the rapping, and he added 203 00:11:43.820 --> 00:11:49.399 his own very sensitive soul to it. He was much 204 00:11:49.500 --> 00:11:54.240 more vulnerable, I think, than Neal. And that's what made 205 00:11:54.259 --> 00:11:59.129 the difference. That's why Kerouac was embraced and was a writer, 206 00:11:59.149 --> 00:12:02.169 a great American writer, and why Cassidy never made it 207 00:12:02.190 --> 00:12:04.950 as a writer. So you can read his stuff for sure, 208 00:12:04.990 --> 00:12:09.889 and it's wild. But it's only the germ of what 209 00:12:09.929 --> 00:12:12.820 Kerouac picked up and then did with his own writings. 210 00:12:13.659 --> 00:12:16.759 As I'm thinking now, I'm only going to ask you, 211 00:12:17.200 --> 00:12:21.259 I mean, this isn't really germane or that important, but 212 00:12:21.279 --> 00:12:23.899 Kerouac died in 68, is that correct? And did Cassidy 213 00:12:23.960 --> 00:12:25.700 die in 69? 214 00:12:25.700 --> 00:12:27.779 Cassidy in 68, Kerouac in 69. 215 00:12:27.779 --> 00:12:31.440 It's reversed, okay. Okay, so that means that Jack was 216 00:12:31.500 --> 00:12:33.259 aware that Cassidy had died. 217 00:12:33.919 --> 00:12:38.039 Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of speculation about how he 218 00:12:38.080 --> 00:12:42.340 felt about that as well. What I've heard most of 219 00:12:42.360 --> 00:12:44.370 the time is that he never really talked about it. 220 00:12:44.600 --> 00:12:49.919 And I've read somebody's opinion that he just never accepted 221 00:12:49.970 --> 00:12:52.850 that Neil was actually dead. They hadn't been having a 222 00:12:52.870 --> 00:12:57.049 relationship for a few years, a friendship. And Cassidy had 223 00:12:57.090 --> 00:13:00.669 gone off with the Mary Prankster. And so he had 224 00:13:00.960 --> 00:13:04.000 gone in a direction that Jack thought was kind of unseemly, 225 00:13:04.039 --> 00:13:07.929 the hippies, you know. Jack didn't like the hippies. So 226 00:13:08.169 --> 00:13:12.769 he didn't see Neil, and I think that's probably right, 227 00:13:12.820 --> 00:13:16.240 that he was really in denial about Neil dying. He 228 00:13:16.279 --> 00:13:20.799 had a lot of trouble with people dying, and he 229 00:13:20.840 --> 00:13:23.440 rarely grieved about it or let it be seen that 230 00:13:23.480 --> 00:13:24.639 he was grieving about that. 231 00:13:25.820 --> 00:13:30.559 Well, there was always a bit of lugubrious deaths and 232 00:13:30.620 --> 00:13:33.799 sorrow in Jack's life right from the very beginning, which 233 00:13:33.840 --> 00:13:39.500 I think probably is first... with Visions of Gerard. 234 00:13:40.570 --> 00:13:42.129 Yeah, yeah. 235 00:13:42.409 --> 00:13:45.690 And that obviously impacted him. And I don't know if 236 00:13:45.730 --> 00:13:49.529 that gave him somewhat of a feeling like, let me 237 00:13:49.549 --> 00:13:52.149 burn it out because, you know, what's it all about? 238 00:13:52.169 --> 00:13:54.899 I mean, you get a little nihilistic perhaps and you 239 00:13:54.919 --> 00:13:57.639 just want to go. I mean, not that you were 240 00:13:57.679 --> 00:14:00.539 asking me, but there's something, you know, behind the death 241 00:14:00.559 --> 00:14:02.080 of my father that made me say, look, you know, 242 00:14:02.120 --> 00:14:05.480 come and get me and I'll give it. Crap. All right. Now, 243 00:14:06.019 --> 00:14:10.360 that might have been part of what was in Jack. 244 00:14:10.519 --> 00:14:13.590 I think it was. You're much more steep than what 245 00:14:14.610 --> 00:14:17.330 he wrote. Do you believe that

that kind of twisted him? 246 00:14:17.370 --> 00:14:19.690 That's a bad word to say. It's a bad verb. 247 00:14:20.350 --> 00:14:26.529 Do you think something affected him with the death of Gerard? Yes. 248 00:14:27.220 --> 00:14:31.379 That was the key element, and he said that he 249 00:14:31.399 --> 00:14:35.080 was born as a writer when Gerard died, and there 250 00:14:35.100 --> 00:14:37.379 was a lot more attached to the death of Gerard 251 00:14:37.399 --> 00:14:42.820 than that. His survivor guilt about it, the rhapsodizing about 252 00:14:43.080 --> 00:14:45.720 Gerard that happened with the nuns who came to hear 253 00:14:45.799 --> 00:14:49.240 his last words and never told anybody what he had said, 254 00:14:49.299 --> 00:14:51.559 but left the room saying the boy is a saint, 255 00:14:51.600 --> 00:14:55.470 you know. And his mother and father then sort of 256 00:14:55.529 --> 00:14:59.909 comparing him unfavorably to Gerard in years to come, feeling 257 00:14:59.929 --> 00:15:02.169 like he never could live up to that. And if 258 00:15:02.210 --> 00:15:05.870 you read through his books, I'm doing a sort of 259 00:15:05.990 --> 00:15:09.570 a concordance, an indexing of the words that Kerouac used. 260 00:15:10.370 --> 00:15:12.750 In the early books especially, everything is, he uses the 261 00:15:12.789 --> 00:15:17.230 word bleak and uses the word sad or sadness more 262 00:15:17.250 --> 00:15:19.820 than any other word, I think. In the book, he 263 00:15:19.889 --> 00:15:22.360 uses those words almost as often as he uses the, 264 00:15:22.379 --> 00:15:26.639 you know. And so if you read through, and he 265 00:15:26.740 --> 00:15:33.120 also uses colors to describe his feelings. And in Maggie Cassidy, 266 00:15:33.200 --> 00:15:36.519 I think it is, he has this long series of 267 00:15:36.600 --> 00:15:40.779 three or four paragraphs where he uses the word gray, gray, gray, gray, 268 00:15:40.879 --> 00:15:44.279 gray over again. The gray night, the gray day, the 269 00:15:44.320 --> 00:15:47.710 gray water, or the gray rain, or whatever happens to be, 270 00:15:47.929 --> 00:15:51.610 he's into gray. And that stuff all comes out of loss. 271 00:15:52.289 --> 00:15:54.769 It comes out of his sense of loss. And I 272 00:15:54.809 --> 00:15:58.860 think he's trying to find himself and develop who he 273 00:15:58.879 --> 00:16:00.220 is and really be who he is. But I don't 274 00:16:00.250 --> 00:16:02.379 think he ever really gets to be, you know, which 275 00:16:02.460 --> 00:16:06.360 is kind of why he follows them down the street, 276 00:16:06.480 --> 00:16:08.779 you know. They went down the street like dingle-doddies and 277 00:16:08.840 --> 00:16:11.019 I shambled after as I've been doing all my life 278 00:16:12.100 --> 00:16:15.779 because those were the mad ones. And, you know, maybe 279 00:16:15.820 --> 00:16:20.320 he wasn't able to express his own madness, but he 280 00:16:20.820 --> 00:16:21.899 loved it in everybody

else. 281 00:16:23.019 --> 00:16:25.399 You know, the use of colors may seem like a 282 00:16:25.440 --> 00:16:27.659 simple thing for writers to use, but they seem not 283 00:16:27.679 --> 00:16:31.509 to want to do that. You're right about Kerouac employing them, 284 00:16:31.909 --> 00:16:34.470 but you know what? It works. It does. One of 285 00:16:34.490 --> 00:16:37.750 the things I emailed you about, and it reminds me 286 00:16:37.769 --> 00:16:44.360 of Well, in 1967 especially, and I had just moved 287 00:16:44.379 --> 00:16:46.759 from another town, so I kind of was like, where 288 00:16:46.820 --> 00:16:49.840 am I and what am I doing? And not feeling 289 00:16:50.399 --> 00:16:52.840 too great about being there. With rain coming down on 290 00:16:52.879 --> 00:16:55.799 me in the early winter or the late fall and 291 00:16:56.120 --> 00:16:58.860 going by these schools and buildings of the red brick. 292 00:16:59.899 --> 00:17:04.160 And when I read in Kerouac's work, him being haunted 293 00:17:04.220 --> 00:17:07.210 by the red brick, I mean, somehow, I don't understand 294 00:17:07.269 --> 00:17:09.630 why I understood it, but I did, and it made 295 00:17:09.670 --> 00:17:11.390 sense to me. Right. 296 00:17:12.670 --> 00:17:16.059 Yeah, especially on the East Coast. You know, the difference 297 00:17:16.119 --> 00:17:18.640 between the East Coast and the West Coast is that 298 00:17:19.339 --> 00:17:24.579 there wasn't enough wood, you know, to build wooden structures 299 00:17:24.640 --> 00:17:27.039 like there is out here on the West Coast. Everything 300 00:17:27.079 --> 00:17:28.900 out here is made of wood. You rarely see a 301 00:17:28.940 --> 00:17:32.839 brick building. But back East and also predominantly in the Midwest, 302 00:17:33.720 --> 00:17:34.740 buildings are made of brick. 303 00:17:34.759 --> 00:17:34.960 Uh-huh. 304 00:17:35.619 --> 00:17:38.589 And so when you evoke the red brick, you're really 305 00:17:38.630 --> 00:17:42.630 talking about a heritage that goes deep, deep, deep into 306 00:17:42.670 --> 00:17:47.950 the Yankee mindset and the experience that you can't help 307 00:17:47.990 --> 00:17:50.089 but be influenced by, just like people out here are 308 00:17:50.150 --> 00:17:54.500 influenced by wood, trees, pines, firs, you know, the wooden 309 00:17:54.539 --> 00:17:57.960 buildings and wooden planks and wooden boats and everything else. 310 00:17:59.140 --> 00:18:02.289 So our wooden... stuff is the equivalent to red brick 311 00:18:03.190 --> 00:18:04.549 that you experienced in your life. 312 00:18:05.230 --> 00:18:07.230 But also understand, too, that was a time, I mean, 313 00:18:07.269 --> 00:18:09.690 when you can build, let's say this, I mean, because 314 00:18:09.710 --> 00:18:12.809 these structures are still doing fine. I mean, brick shithouses, 315 00:18:12.859 --> 00:18:19.359 let's face it. I mean, it was still economically efficient 316 00:18:19.799 --> 00:18:22.000 to build with that. And, of course, you're right. I mean, 317 00:18:22.019 --> 00:18:24.660 everything happened in the northeast and the east first because, obviously, 318 00:18:24.720 --> 00:18:28.960 the whole migration... of Americans, or what would be Americans, 319 00:18:29.019 --> 00:18:32.019 went east or west. So in the east, everything is older. 320 00:18:32.680 --> 00:18:35.609 I mean, when you look at tombstones and graveyards, as 321 00:18:35.690 --> 00:18:38.049 I have, you know, in the northeast, you know, you 322 00:18:38.089 --> 00:18:41.430 go back to, like, 1608, 1609, that doesn't happen out 323 00:18:41.490 --> 00:18:43.970 by you. So, yeah, I mean, it was also a 324 00:18:44.009 --> 00:18:48.359 vestige of what was feasible then, economically, and of course... 325 00:18:48.880 --> 00:18:52.059 Because they built it that way, they still stand. And 326 00:18:52.079 --> 00:18:55.440 when I go back to New Jersey, you know, and 327 00:18:55.480 --> 00:18:57.940 not that far from Patterson, which was, you know, in 328 00:18:57.980 --> 00:19:00.769 Kerouac's purview as well as with Ginsburg, I mean, that's 329 00:19:00.809 --> 00:19:03.470 what you can see. They're still there. And I told 330 00:19:03.509 --> 00:19:06.910 you that, you know, one of my everlasting loves from what, 331 00:19:07.069 --> 00:19:10.390 you know, early sophomore year in high school was spray 332 00:19:10.410 --> 00:19:13.609 painted on a brick wall. and it faded to the 333 00:19:13.670 --> 00:19:15.210 point that I knew what I was looking for, and 334 00:19:15.319 --> 00:19:18.980 I could just about see it. But obviously it faded, 335 00:19:19.019 --> 00:19:23.519 but still I'm drawn to those buildings. It's a great 336 00:19:23.579 --> 00:19:27.559 romantic sentiment, and it was really a part of my 337 00:19:27.599 --> 00:19:29.390 life as real as anything else. 338 00:19:29.890 --> 00:19:34.710 Right. People over here in Washington State, they spray paint 339 00:19:34.769 --> 00:19:38.049 on cliff faces and rocks because we don't have that 340 00:19:38.089 --> 00:19:39.690 many brick buildings to do that on. 341 00:19:40.779 --> 00:19:43.119 No, but I mean, you know, it's funny, again, as 342 00:19:43.160 --> 00:19:45.849 we kind of like corresponded, that, you know, all these 343 00:19:45.930 --> 00:19:50.440 undying testaments to love, which lasted like three months. were 344 00:19:50.480 --> 00:19:52.509 on handball court walls and stuff. I mean, it was 345 00:19:52.529 --> 00:19:54.829 the sign of the times, and it was like, yeah, okay, 346 00:19:54.849 --> 00:19:56.470 you know, that's over with. So somebody would come in 347 00:19:56.490 --> 00:19:59.210 and like spray paint that thing out, you know. 348 00:19:59.250 --> 00:20:01.230 But, you know, there's nothing sweeter, you know. 349 00:20:01.349 --> 00:20:02.849 Oh, yeah. Love, you know. 350 00:20:03.349 --> 00:20:06.190 And so it's worth the monument, you know, spray painting 351 00:20:06.390 -->

00:20:08.730 somebody's name and a heart, you know, on a building. 352 00:20:08.759 --> 00:20:08.930 Mm-hmm. 353 00:20:09.769 --> 00:20:12.470 Because there isn't anything better. It's really quite a sacred thing. 354 00:20:13.630 --> 00:20:15.569 I want to ask you a question about your aunt 355 00:20:15.970 --> 00:20:17.890 and Maggie Cassidy. Why do you think she gave you 356 00:20:17.930 --> 00:20:19.900 that book? Of all the books she could have given you, 357 00:20:19.910 --> 00:20:20.750 why do you think she gave you that book? 358 00:20:20.769 --> 00:20:21.710 Well, she gave me On the Road. 359 00:20:21.730 --> 00:20:23.890 Oh, it was On the Road? I thought it was 360 00:20:23.910 --> 00:20:24.430 Maggie Cassidy. 361 00:20:24.529 --> 00:20:26.690 Oh, no, it was On the Road. But you can 362 00:20:26.730 --> 00:20:28.190 ask me why she gave me that also. 363 00:20:28.210 --> 00:20:30.170 Why did she give you that book? Did she want 364 00:20:30.190 --> 00:20:30.890 to get rid of you? 365 00:20:32.279 --> 00:20:34.799 Well, you know, it was a very strange thing. She 366 00:20:34.839 --> 00:20:38.180 married into the landed New Jersey people. She married into 367 00:20:38.220 --> 00:20:41.269 the Cosby family. The first governor in New Jersey was 368 00:20:41.309 --> 00:20:45.210 a Cosby, and her husband was a Princeton grad. This 369 00:20:45.250 --> 00:20:48.930 was completely different from the roots that she had in 370 00:20:49.130 --> 00:20:51.990 Cliffside Park in northeast New Jersey. I don't know if 371 00:20:52.079 --> 00:20:54.559 she was decrying the fact that she lived amongst the 372 00:20:54.599 --> 00:20:58.220 hoi polloi, but she hit it big time. Anyway, she 373 00:20:58.299 --> 00:21:01.779 also was liberal enough and knew I was going through 374 00:21:01.799 --> 00:21:05.119 my growing pains through college, and she sent this out, 375 00:21:05.519 --> 00:21:08.329 and I was like, yeah. And I think she probably 376 00:21:08.349 --> 00:21:10.609 spent the rest of her life apologizing to my mother 377 00:21:10.650 --> 00:21:13.430 for doing that. But it was like, once I saw this, 378 00:21:13.490 --> 00:21:16.029 it's like, whew, I'll see you guys later. 379 00:21:16.529 --> 00:21:19.150 Yeah, it's really amazing, though, that she gave that book. 380 00:21:19.210 --> 00:21:22.839 I mean, that really, in her generation versus your generation, 381 00:21:22.859 --> 00:21:26.180 which is my generation, I can't imagine an aunt or 382 00:21:26.220 --> 00:21:28.680 an uncle ever giving me that book. You know, it's like... 383 00:21:29.509 --> 00:21:32.829 they're like a secret, you know, like a grail that 384 00:21:32.869 --> 00:21:36.329 was passed from hand to hand in our generation behind 385 00:21:36.349 --> 00:21:39.490 the back of everybody because it talked about things that 386 00:21:39.890 --> 00:21:41.990 your parents would never want you to be reading about. 387 00:21:42.029 --> 00:21:42.349 Correct. 388 00:21:43.349 --> 00:21:48.529 It's really interesting that your aunt was, I mean, maybe 389 00:21:48.569 --> 00:21:52.609 she had lost some of her wildness, you know, in 390 00:21:52.690 --> 00:21:55.109 all of her marriages and things like that. 391 00:21:56.069 --> 00:21:57.250 I think what happened was. 392 00:21:58.809 --> 00:22:07.509 I could understand her not embracing the somewhat rough upbringing 393 00:22:07.539 --> 00:22:10.920 they had because she was a sister to my father, 394 00:22:11.160 --> 00:22:13.720 and they lost their mother very early, and the father 395 00:22:13.759 --> 00:22:17.299 was the sea captain. So they kind of were bereft 396 00:22:17.400 --> 00:22:20.259 and raised by, in Norwegian lore, what's called a tante, 397 00:22:20.380 --> 00:22:23.869 an aunt. And so that's the way she was brought up. 398 00:22:23.930 --> 00:22:27.619 She might have, and I'm guessing this, not rebelled, but saying, 399 00:22:27.640 --> 00:22:31.279 I don't ever want to do this anymore. And, you know, 400 00:22:31.339 --> 00:22:32.920 struck it rich, so to speak. I'm not saying she 401 00:22:32.960 --> 00:22:35.069 was a gold digger, but certainly her life from that 402 00:22:35.109 --> 00:22:38.230 point on was something much, much different than what she 403 00:22:38.289 --> 00:22:42.990 experienced in northeastern New Jersey. However, you know, her brother, 404 00:22:43.029 --> 00:22:46.109 my dad, and us, we continued to live in that 405 00:22:46.150 --> 00:22:48.809 kind of situation. But, you know, she was always, from 406 00:22:48.829 --> 00:22:51.970 that point on, she was very liberal and, you know, 407 00:22:51.990 --> 00:22:55.940 spent a lot of time after the fact, in universities. 408 00:22:56.319 --> 00:23:01.119 And her sending it to me was probably an offshoot 409 00:23:01.180 --> 00:23:03.140 of that, and I would say that was pretty fair. 410 00:23:04.289 --> 00:23:06.349 And I'm glad. But you know what happened was, when 411 00:23:06.390 --> 00:23:09.789 I got that, I had gone back to college after 412 00:23:09.809 --> 00:23:14.509 a two-year hiatus. And I ran into a bunch of 413 00:23:14.549 --> 00:23:18.309 people at Jersey City State who were very much ahead 414 00:23:18.329 --> 00:23:21.170 of the curve beyond me as far as, I guess, 415 00:23:21.490 --> 00:23:25.940 liberalness or whatever. and filmmakers, and when I talked to 416 00:23:25.960 --> 00:23:28.119 them about it, they were like, yeah, we already did that, 417 00:23:28.200 --> 00:23:30.599 so then I get swept away on that wave, and 418 00:23:30.920 --> 00:23:34.059 I'm not complaining whatsoever. I mean, it was a great ride. 419 00:23:34.099 --> 00:23:38.710 I mean, it was just a real, just a wonderful 420 00:23:39.410 --> 00:23:41.730 next two years of college, which I was hoping I 421 00:23:41.769 --> 00:23:45.569 could parlay somehow, someway into a career later on. Not 422 00:23:45.609 --> 00:23:48.589 being a filmmaker and such, but just the openness that 423

00:23:48.609 --> 00:23:53.150 that experience you know, broached, which I would have not 424 00:23:53.210 --> 00:23:56.490 had any other way. So it really was an open door, 425 00:23:57.339 --> 00:24:00.039 and I wouldn't have changed it for the world, but 426 00:24:00.220 --> 00:24:03.059 it really did have an impact. And to this day, 427 00:24:03.079 --> 00:24:05.640 you know, now I'm long in a tooth and stuff, 428 00:24:05.720 --> 00:24:08.519 and I listen to the call of the road, I'm going, well, 429 00:24:08.579 --> 00:24:12.069 probably not right now. But you know what, I want 430 00:24:12.089 --> 00:24:13.730 to run by you. I don't know if you want 431 00:24:13.750 --> 00:24:15.349 to hit off what I just said. I mean, I 432 00:24:15.369 --> 00:24:20.170 just went on like a screed, so... Do you want 433 00:24:20.210 --> 00:24:21.170 to interject anything? 434 00:24:21.599 --> 00:24:24.559 Oh, well, as you were talking, I was actually wondering. 435 00:24:24.579 --> 00:24:29.440 I was reading through the Windblown World journals this morning, 436 00:24:30.039 --> 00:24:33.720 as well as On the Road, because the Windblown World 437 00:24:33.819 --> 00:24:37.460 journals are the journals he kept on the road, which 438 00:24:37.500 --> 00:24:40.980 he then developed into a book on the road. And 439 00:24:41.000 --> 00:24:44.720 I was reading, Kerouac had this sort of famous expression 440 00:24:44.759 --> 00:24:47.650 where he said... that he wished he were a Negro. 441 00:24:48.230 --> 00:24:53.190 He wanted to experience that because there wasn't enough, he 442 00:24:53.210 --> 00:24:57.890 didn't have enough kicks, joy, darkness, didn't experience that night 443 00:24:58.750 --> 00:25:02.190 that all the black folks did, that he was hanging 444 00:25:02.210 --> 00:25:04.359 around in Denver and going to the jazz clubs and 445 00:25:04.420 --> 00:25:08.180 stuff like that. And in On the Road, he does 446 00:25:08.500 --> 00:25:13.740 draw not just racial distinctions, but also ethnic, as in 447 00:25:13.940 --> 00:25:17.869 cultural distinctions. So what I wanted to ask you was, 448 00:25:18.869 --> 00:25:23.789 did that resonate with you in your experience in New Jersey? 449 00:25:23.829 --> 00:25:27.589 Did you see those ghettos, or did people you knew 450 00:25:27.650 --> 00:25:32.450 speak freely about other races and criticize them very openly? 451 00:25:32.930 --> 00:25:33.190 Mm-hmm. 452 00:25:34.039 --> 00:25:37.750 Without any fear of being considered, you know, racist or 453 00:25:37.769 --> 00:25:40.109 anything else. Did that happen to you? Did you lose that? 454 00:25:42.190 --> 00:25:44.329 Yes and no. And I'll tell you, when I left 455 00:25:46.730 --> 00:25:51.579 Southern Bergen County, Palisades Park and Cliffside Park, which was, 456 00:25:52.799 --> 00:26:00.009 you know, 99 and 99, 100 percent white, mostly Catholic, Italian, Catholic, 457 00:26:00.160 --> 00:26:04.829 Irish people, There was really nothing there. It was

not 458 00:26:04.849 --> 00:26:08.269 a big deal. Then I moved to Teaneck, which was 459 00:26:08.450 --> 00:26:12.750 extremely integrated. And that's when I had to deal with 460 00:26:12.769 --> 00:26:15.339 certain situations that I had not dealt with back in 461 00:26:17.220 --> 00:26:23.900 Palisades or Cliffside Park. But the thing was, we in Teaneck, 462 00:26:23.920 --> 00:26:28.220 we got along very well. Englewood and Hackensack were flanking 463 00:26:28.380 --> 00:26:34.269 towns where there were problems. But my experience with blacks, 464 00:26:36.049 --> 00:26:38.349 you know, in Teaneck at that time was almost expressly 465 00:26:38.509 --> 00:26:44.700 athletic and actually really kind of made an acceptance in 466 00:26:44.720 --> 00:26:46.559 me so that when I went on, it was no 467 00:26:46.599 --> 00:26:49.519 big deal wherever I went. I did not really get 468 00:26:49.619 --> 00:26:54.799 close to anybody who was, you know, who was black 469 00:26:54.900 --> 00:26:58.730 or different than my race. That would happen later on. But. 470 00:27:00.420 --> 00:27:02.089 I guess what I'm saying is that the mystique or 471 00:27:02.130 --> 00:27:10.289 whatever about the difference in raciality was pretty well modified 472 00:27:10.829 --> 00:27:12.380 when I went to Teaneck. And there's another thing you 473 00:27:12.390 --> 00:27:14.599 have to understand, too, and this was really, really rough 474 00:27:14.619 --> 00:27:18.140 to get around. When I was in Teaneck in 67 475 00:27:18.140 --> 00:27:21.619 and 68, you had riots, some severe riots, one of 476 00:27:21.660 --> 00:27:24.269 them in Detroit. A lot of things were getting strange. 477 00:27:24.349 --> 00:27:28.069 Newark also had riots. And nobody really knew, in a sense. 478 00:27:28.089 --> 00:27:30.410 In other words, we were friends... and all of a 479 00:27:30.450 --> 00:27:33.789 sudden these racial outbreaks occurred, and we kind of looked 480 00:27:33.809 --> 00:27:35.670 at one another like, are we supposed to not like 481 00:27:35.710 --> 00:27:39.690 each other? And then, of course, you have to understand realistically, 482 00:27:40.089 --> 00:27:41.990 you'll get militant groups that will pop up on both 483 00:27:42.029 --> 00:27:45.250 sides and make things even worse. But for the most part, 484 00:27:45.450 --> 00:27:49.710 this is a really long answer to what you've asked, 485 00:27:50.150 --> 00:27:54.089 and that is probably unlike Hero Act in Lowell at 486 00:27:54.150 --> 00:27:58.869 that time. We were much more integrated internally. and pretty 487 00:27:58.880 --> 00:28:01.250 much got along until people told us we shouldn't. And that, 488 00:28:01.329 --> 00:28:04.950 in fact, did happen with those riots and such. Is 489 00:28:04.990 --> 00:28:08.329 that any kind of acceptable answer? Oh, sure. 490 00:28:08.430 --> 00:28:12.289 Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, post-civil rights, 491 00:28:13.369 --> 00:28:16.869 the hatred that existed between

blacks and whites, and the 492 00:28:16.890 --> 00:28:22.730 South especially, but certainly migrating into all cultures, and the 493 00:28:22.829 --> 00:28:27.549 fear that we developed of each other was... was something 494 00:28:27.609 --> 00:28:31.359 that had historically not existed and it certainly did not 495 00:28:31.420 --> 00:28:35.099 exist in Kerouac's time which is why people could speak 496 00:28:35.140 --> 00:28:38.880 so freely about each other according to race and culture 497 00:28:39.059 --> 00:28:42.480 without any bitterness or rancor it was just that was 498 00:28:42.500 --> 00:28:44.619 what it was you. 499 00:28:44.569 --> 00:28:46.450 Know I'm sorry go. 500 00:28:46.369 --> 00:28:48.630 Ahead Diane no no I was going to say do 501 00:28:48.710 --> 00:28:51.950 you mind if I read something absolutely either the journals 502 00:28:52.029 --> 00:28:53.410 or on the road I can't remember where this comes 503 00:28:53.430 --> 00:28:56.329 from so I have it written down here um The 504 00:28:56.369 --> 00:28:59.650 passage about wishing he were a Negro, he says that... 505 00:29:00.160 --> 00:29:02.079 He was in Denver, by the way, when he wrote this. 506 00:29:02.619 --> 00:29:06.460 At lilac evening, I walked with every muscle aching among 507 00:29:06.480 --> 00:29:09.940 the lights of 27th and Welton in the Denver colored section, 508 00:29:10.599 --> 00:29:14.589 wishing I were a Negro, feeling that the best the 509 00:29:14.630 --> 00:29:17.930 white world had offered was not enough ecstasy for me, 510 00:29:18.470 --> 00:29:23.369 not enough life, joy, kicks, darkness, music, not enough night. 511 00:29:24.309 --> 00:29:26.839 And then the next paragraph, he says... I wished I 512 00:29:26.880 --> 00:29:30.559 were a Denver Mexican or even a poor, overcast Jap. 513 00:29:31.140 --> 00:29:34.769 Anything but what I was, so drearily a white man disillusioned. 514 00:29:35.609 --> 00:29:38.670 All my life I'd had white ambitions. That was why 515 00:29:38.819 --> 00:29:41.619 I'd abandoned a good woman like Terry, who was Mexican, 516 00:29:41.660 --> 00:29:44.759 by the way. In the San Joaquin Valley, I passed 517 00:29:44.819 --> 00:29:48.819 the dark porches of Mexican and Negro homes. Soft voices 518 00:29:48.900 --> 00:29:52.859 were there, occasionally the little dusky knee of some mysterious 519 00:29:52.900 --> 00:29:56.869 sensuous gal, and dark faces of the men behind rose arbors. 520 00:29:57.660 --> 00:30:02.160 Little children sat like sages in ancient rocking chairs. A 521 00:30:02.180 --> 00:30:04.529 gang of colored women came by, and one of the 522 00:30:04.569 --> 00:30:09.910 young ones detached herself from back, blushing. Wait a minute. 523 00:30:09.930 --> 00:30:14.589 I'm getting this wrong. Someone who was rather like elders 524 00:30:14.630 --> 00:30:17.630 then came to me fast. Hello, Joe, and suddenly saw 525 00:30:17.759 --> 00:30:20.960 it wasn't Joe and ran back, blushing. I wished I 526 00:30:20.980 --> 00:30:25.819 were Joe. I was only myself, sound paradise, sad, strolling 527 00:30:25.859 --> 00:30:29.740 in this violet dark. this unbearably sweet night, wishing I 528 00:30:29.779 --> 00:30:34.000 could exchange worlds with the happy, true-hearted, ecstatic Negroes of America. 529 00:30:36.779 --> 00:30:37.980 That's the passage I wanted to read. 530 00:30:38.859 --> 00:30:41.779 Well, you know, again, it reminds me of somebody, and 531 00:30:42.160 --> 00:30:45.200 he has said this also on the road, that he 532 00:30:45.240 --> 00:30:49.660 wanted to experience everything at one time, always, everywhere, whatever. 533 00:30:50.210 --> 00:30:54.230 And certainly this is, I think, an offshoot of what 534 00:30:54.269 --> 00:30:57.160 he was saying talking about, and that is, I want 535 00:30:57.180 --> 00:31:01.119 to experience it all. Do you think also, because he 536 00:31:01.160 --> 00:31:03.240 wanted to do so much in such a short a time, 537 00:31:03.309 --> 00:31:06.589 and he talked about a Roman candle and such, these 538 00:31:06.650 --> 00:31:10.069 are all short-lived things, do you think, well, this is 539 00:31:10.089 --> 00:31:13.630 probably a loaded question, that he had a death wish 540 00:31:13.930 --> 00:31:14.720 as early as that? 541 00:31:15.880 --> 00:31:20.500 Yeah, maybe he did. When you read Kerouac's journals, which 542 00:31:20.539 --> 00:31:24.380 is what I've been doing lately, reading Atop and Underwood, 543 00:31:24.400 --> 00:31:27.440 which were his first early stories from when he was about, oh, 544 00:31:27.539 --> 00:31:30.339 I think about from the time he was 19 until 545 00:31:30.720 --> 00:31:36.299 he finished or left school, you realize how out of 546 00:31:36.380 --> 00:31:40.230 it or how marginalized he felt by the rest of 547 00:31:40.309 --> 00:31:45.079 what he was witnessing and what he wrote about. He 548 00:31:45.119 --> 00:31:47.460 definitely had his own life, his eternal life, which had 549 00:31:47.480 --> 00:31:50.869 a lot to do with baseball and how he withdrew 550 00:31:50.890 --> 00:31:54.349 into his own little private baseball game. But he was, 551 00:31:55.289 --> 00:31:58.250 without a doubt, he wanted to experience what other people 552 00:31:58.309 --> 00:32:00.890 had experienced. And when you start reading the journals in 553 00:32:01.019 --> 00:32:05.680 the windblown world, you realize that he not only wanted 554 00:32:05.720 --> 00:32:07.619 to live the life that they lived, but he wanted 555 00:32:07.640 --> 00:32:11.039 to die the life they died. He talks frequently about 556 00:32:11.660 --> 00:32:15.559 how he'd rather die than be this or that. And 557 00:32:15.579 --> 00:32:17.700 I think in a way he might have, maybe in 558 00:32:17.880 --> 00:32:19.880 all of his books, during all of his life, he 559 00:32:19.940 --> 00:32:21.160 foreshadowed his own death. 560 00:32:23.680 --> 00:32:26.420 Do you think he had a maudlin fascination with death? 561

00:32:28.049 --> 00:32:30.650 I don't know. I mean, he talks about, you know, Gerard, 562 00:32:30.789 --> 00:32:33.829 when Gerard died, he talks about how he ran down 563 00:32:33.849 --> 00:32:36.109 the street saying, you know, to his father, excited to 564 00:32:36.150 --> 00:32:38.890 his father, saying, Gerard is dead, he's dead, you know, 565 00:32:38.950 --> 00:32:41.460 and And because of the fact that he thought this 566 00:32:41.480 --> 00:32:44.910 was a wonderful thing, that it happened, a blessing or, 567 00:32:45.349 --> 00:32:47.990 you know, the nuns and all that kind of stuff. 568 00:32:48.529 --> 00:32:53.089 But then he contrasts that later with talking about watching 569 00:32:53.109 --> 00:32:56.390 his parents and everybody, his aunts and uncles, and crying 570 00:32:56.450 --> 00:33:00.519 in the parlor. And his cousins, I guess, are outside 571 00:33:01.000 --> 00:33:04.559 setting off firecrackers, you know, which is completely inappropriate at 572 00:33:04.599 --> 00:33:06.940 that time. And he sort of talks about the conflict 573 00:33:06.980 --> 00:33:10.640 that he feels. Yeah, and he talks about, I think 574 00:33:10.720 --> 00:33:14.319 it's in Dr. Sacks, he talks about a funeral in 575 00:33:14.339 --> 00:33:17.680 the parlor where he watched them carry out a dead body, 576 00:33:17.759 --> 00:33:22.400 you know. Here, figures of coffin bearers emerging from the 577 00:33:22.440 --> 00:33:24.940 house on a rainy night, bearing a box with dead 578 00:33:25.009 --> 00:33:28.920 old Mr. Yike inside. And then he starts talking about St. 579 00:33:29.029 --> 00:33:29.569 Therese. 580 00:33:30.109 --> 00:33:34.769 But, yeah, he wasn't afraid to talk about death, and 581 00:33:34.809 --> 00:33:38.890 he saw death in a very kind of... alternately a 582 00:33:38.930 --> 00:33:45.609 poetic way and a horrific way, almost as if death 583 00:33:45.990 --> 00:33:48.569 in this world was the way to get out of life. 584 00:33:51.119 --> 00:33:55.319 Well, later on, well, it seemed to me that he 585 00:33:55.359 --> 00:33:58.279 lived much like a Roman candle and burnt it at 586 00:33:58.319 --> 00:34:02.359 both ends. And I wonder sometimes if there were not 587 00:34:02.480 --> 00:34:05.819 involved in that some kind of death wish of like, 588 00:34:05.880 --> 00:34:08.489 you know, live fast, die young, make a good corpse. 589 00:34:09.309 --> 00:34:10.929 I kind of got that from him. Did you? 590 00:34:12.119 --> 00:34:17.719 Well, not really. The reason for that is that I've 591 00:34:17.820 --> 00:34:21.739 been sort of enlightened lately to something I really wished 592 00:34:22.000 --> 00:34:26.769 I hadn't started to notice, which was Kerouac's drinking and 593 00:34:26.929 --> 00:34:29.309 how much he drank and how early he started drinking 594 00:34:30.170 --> 00:34:33.230 and the effect it had on him by the time 595 00:34:33.369 --> 00:34:37.199 he was 24 years old. He talked about having... drunk 596 00:34:37.300 --> 00:34:39.820 and had been a drinker for eight years solid by 597 00:34:39.860 --> 00:34:42.860 that time and how he had to quit drinking and 598 00:34:43.099 --> 00:34:49.460 he's constantly giving up booze making these sort of alcoholics 599 00:34:49.539 --> 00:34:53.849 anonymous pledges to himself that he's not going to drink 600 00:34:53.909 --> 00:34:55.710 anymore that he's not going to drink anymore if he 601 00:34:55.730 --> 00:34:57.789 doesn't say that then he says he's going to stop 602 00:34:57.849 --> 00:35:00.130 drinking booze or he's going to stop drinking wine or 603 00:35:00.670 --> 00:35:02.449 he's only going to drink in his own house and 604 00:35:02.489 --> 00:35:04.510 not drink out in public with everybody else but the 605 00:35:04.550 --> 00:35:08.440 fact is He drank all the time. And I kind 606 00:35:08.480 --> 00:35:11.730 of had thought, and I think this is still somewhat valid, 607 00:35:12.989 --> 00:35:16.989 that Jack is bipolar, was bipolar, and he used alcohol 608 00:35:17.030 --> 00:35:19.889 to medicate himself, to bring himself down from manic phases. 609 00:35:19.949 --> 00:35:24.230 And the manic phases came both from using the bennies 610 00:35:24.369 --> 00:35:29.900 and dex and also just getting high in general on 611 00:35:29.940 --> 00:35:32.900 caffeine and then writing, being in that sort of phase. 612 00:35:32.940 --> 00:35:36.250 But needing to come down and having his doctor prescribe 613 00:35:36.289 --> 00:35:39.610 him something as simple as Benadryl, you know, to bring 614 00:35:39.630 --> 00:35:42.659 him down and put him into a softened state. But 615 00:35:42.889 --> 00:35:45.800 I thought that booze was a really more or less 616 00:35:45.900 --> 00:35:49.539 a medical regulator that he used, but now I see 617 00:35:49.579 --> 00:35:52.599 from reading Windblown World, and this makes me very sad, 618 00:35:52.699 --> 00:35:57.630 that his alcoholism started very early and was daily, even 619 00:35:57.710 --> 00:36:00.869 in his young life. So I don't think that he... 620 00:36:02.369 --> 00:36:05.530 had any sort of consciousness or wish to live fast 621 00:36:05.630 --> 00:36:09.139 by a young and happy-looking corpse. Because as we all know, 622 00:36:09.199 --> 00:36:11.679 by the time he died, he was quite bloated and 623 00:36:12.739 --> 00:36:15.679 had that huge liver and a big belly and was 624 00:36:15.760 --> 00:36:18.260 beaten up all the time. He was just in horrible, 625 00:36:18.340 --> 00:36:21.440 shabby shape. Nothing like when he was a young man 626 00:36:21.460 --> 00:36:25.190 and was fixing his hair and conscious of his clothes 627 00:36:25.210 --> 00:36:28.409 and things like that. So I think the alcohol just 628 00:36:28.489 --> 00:36:31.760 took him. And I think that, if anything, what he 629 00:36:31.800 --> 00:36:35.519 was writing about in terms of joy or ecstasy, that 630 00:36:35.559 --> 00:36:39.250 was sort of an effort to deny what was happening 631

00:36:39.309 --> 00:36:40.230 to him with alcohol. 632 00:36:42.369 --> 00:36:45.269 I was struck by the fact that, you know, he 633 00:36:45.289 --> 00:36:48.989 might have tried to do himself harm and end early, 634 00:36:49.369 --> 00:36:51.400 but he didn't. And so he was left with the 635 00:36:51.420 --> 00:36:54.800 husk that he had of the life down here in St. Petersburg. 636 00:36:54.860 --> 00:36:57.099 And I'm not saying that pejoratively. I just... Let me 637 00:36:57.139 --> 00:37:00.800 tell you... more than I want to let anybody know. 638 00:37:01.659 --> 00:37:04.360 I mean, I watched his life, and I can understand 639 00:37:04.409 --> 00:37:08.070 a lot of things. And I might be right and 640 00:37:08.090 --> 00:37:11.269 I might be wrong, but I think what I saw 641 00:37:11.289 --> 00:37:13.730 in him is after all the joy was done, after 642 00:37:13.769 --> 00:37:16.889 we took all those rides with his works, which I've 643 00:37:16.909 --> 00:37:20.780 done several times, that I thought he might have wished 644 00:37:21.099 --> 00:37:24.360 to have gone out in a blast of glory, if 645 00:37:24.380 --> 00:37:27.820 you will, but didn't. And then when it doesn't happen... 646 00:37:28.289 --> 00:37:33.269 you know, this is what befalls you. What do you 647 00:37:33.289 --> 00:37:33.829 think about that? 648 00:37:34.670 --> 00:37:38.590 Well, it kind of contradicts, I kind of think, I 649 00:37:38.630 --> 00:37:41.530 don't think that really is the case. I think that 650 00:37:41.809 --> 00:37:45.030 it was, that his life in St. Petersburg was a 651 00:37:45.070 --> 00:37:46.760 sort of a slow motion suicide. 652 00:37:46.780 --> 00:37:47.739 Agreed. 653 00:37:48.030 --> 00:37:50.519 But it was, when you read, again, when you read 654 00:37:50.559 --> 00:37:54.420 his early books, it's, You read so many times he's 655 00:37:54.480 --> 00:37:56.619 talking about, I don't want to live, I don't want 656 00:37:56.659 --> 00:37:58.800 to go on. If things are going to be this way, 657 00:37:58.880 --> 00:38:01.320 you know, I don't want to live. And so he's 658 00:38:01.400 --> 00:38:05.469 expressing these sort of self-destructive and suicidal wishes when he's young. 659 00:38:06.070 --> 00:38:09.489 But it wasn't because he had wished to go out 660 00:38:09.510 --> 00:38:11.530 in a blaze of glory or that he hadn't done that, 661 00:38:11.630 --> 00:38:15.289 so he was doing something else. My belief, and I 662 00:38:15.329 --> 00:38:18.719 still have this, is that his life was ruined by fame. 663 00:38:18.969 --> 00:38:20.619 It's a trivial thing. 664 00:38:20.400 --> 00:38:21.460 People use all the time. 665 00:38:22.250 --> 00:38:24.389 And people argue about it all the time when they 666 00:38:24.409 --> 00:38:27.570 talk about somebody like Kurt Cobain, who even said that 667 00:38:28.070 --> 00:38:32.239 fame had ruined his life. But Kerouac's life was so 668 00:38:32.409 --> 00:38:35.980 obviously ruined. He never did anything dangerous to himself. He 669 00:38:36.000 --> 00:38:39.539 never put himself in harm's way, ever. He didn't seem 670 00:38:39.559 --> 00:38:41.460 to have any kind of death wish like so many 671 00:38:41.519 --> 00:38:44.300 of his friends did. And he had so many people 672 00:38:44.360 --> 00:38:48.420 die in his life. A few suicides and one murder. 673 00:38:49.989 --> 00:38:53.889 The guy, Bill Canastro, was decapitated on the subway. And 674 00:38:53.949 --> 00:38:57.170 he knew all these people who died, and he talked 675 00:38:57.269 --> 00:39:00.139 about them, but never was there any indication that he 676 00:39:00.199 --> 00:39:03.980 wanted to die himself. And I may have told this before, 677 00:39:04.260 --> 00:39:10.099 but Kerouac's last journal entry, after his journals were collected 678 00:39:10.159 --> 00:39:14.659 and read, was this. I know what the truth is, 679 00:39:14.880 --> 00:39:17.139 but I don't want to live up to it. That 680 00:39:17.159 --> 00:39:20.000 was the last thing he wrote in his journals. He 681 00:39:20.099 --> 00:39:22.460 continued to write on the typewriter other things, but that 682 00:39:22.500 --> 00:39:24.710 was the last thing he had written. And to me, 683 00:39:24.750 --> 00:39:29.369 that sounds like he knew that he was dying and 684 00:39:29.409 --> 00:39:32.820 he was actually... making it happen in a way because 685 00:39:32.860 --> 00:39:34.719 he knew what the truth was that he didn't want 686 00:39:34.739 --> 00:39:37.289 to live up to it so he sort of released 687 00:39:37.329 --> 00:39:40.889 himself from life and gave up and then died a 688 00:39:40.929 --> 00:39:42.769 few days later so here's. 689 00:39:42.489 --> 00:39:45.650 A powerful question which is unfair it's all asking anyway 690 00:39:46.530 --> 00:39:47.340 what did he know was the. 691 00:39:47.340 --> 00:39:51.050 Truth I think that what he knew was the truth 692 00:39:51.090 --> 00:39:55.909 was that he was irrelevant. He had become irrelevant. He 693 00:39:56.130 --> 00:40:00.400 had once been relevant. He was it, you know. In 1957, 694 00:40:00.400 --> 00:40:03.380 when On the Road hit, he was it. And then he, 695 00:40:03.539 --> 00:40:06.599 from then on, what he learned was that people were 696 00:40:06.639 --> 00:40:09.119 going to use him. People wanted to have a piece 697 00:40:09.139 --> 00:40:11.900 of him. And that's all they wanted. They wanted to 698 00:40:11.980 --> 00:40:15.809 exploit him. They wanted to, you know, stalk him they 699 00:40:15.829 --> 00:40:17.210 wanted to be in his house they wanted to have 700 00:40:17.269 --> 00:40:19.309 a piece of his hem of his garment as it 701 00:40:19.389 --> 00:40:23.130 were but he that wasn't what he had expected to 702 00:40:23.170 --> 00:40:26.449 happen he had expected that something great would happen they'd 703 00:40:26.469 --> 00:40:28.840 have enough money to live and buy a house and 704 00:40:28.880 --> 00:40:31.179 he wanted to buy a farm and

marry a good 705 00:40:31.199 --> 00:40:34.059 little woman and have babies and you know live with 706 00:40:34.139 --> 00:40:37.159 neil even on this farm you know share all the 707 00:40:37.780 --> 00:40:40.280 all the hard work But in fact, that's not how 708 00:40:40.300 --> 00:40:43.119 his life ended up. He ended up married to a 709 00:40:43.159 --> 00:40:47.260 good woman, but it was not his passion, with a 710 00:40:47.300 --> 00:40:51.469 mother who was partially paralyzed, who was even more of 711 00:40:51.550 --> 00:40:53.989 a burden emotionally than she'd ever been in his life, 712 00:40:54.010 --> 00:40:57.489 and she'd always been an emotional burden. And so what 713 00:40:57.510 --> 00:40:59.929 he saw was that the truth. When he earlier had 714 00:41:00.010 --> 00:41:03.710 thought the pearl was going to be handed to him, 715 00:41:05.010 --> 00:41:07.909 now he knew that the pearl... didn't exist, and that 716 00:41:07.929 --> 00:41:10.920 in fact he was, life was horrible, and he was, 717 00:41:11.239 --> 00:41:13.219 it was never going to be good for him. He 718 00:41:13.239 --> 00:41:15.440 would never have the joy, the kicks, the darkness, and 719 00:41:15.619 --> 00:41:17.260 all that kind of stuff that he wanted. He was just, 720 00:41:17.280 --> 00:41:21.639 he was just living a miserable existence. 721 00:41:21.679 --> 00:41:26.610 We're talking with Diane DeRoy, who's a Kirovac researcher. Diane, 722 00:41:26.670 --> 00:41:29.929 is there anything that you would point people to with 723 00:41:30.010 --> 00:41:32.820 regard to your research or research that you feel is important? 724 00:41:33.579 --> 00:41:38.150 you know, very accurate regarding Kerouac. Any websites at all 725 00:41:38.190 --> 00:41:39.269 that you'd like to mention? 726 00:41:40.610 --> 00:41:44.230 Well, not any websites per se, but earlier we talked 727 00:41:44.289 --> 00:41:49.050 about color. And when I started working on my book, 728 00:41:49.070 --> 00:41:51.320 which is called The Kerouac Wordbook, which it'll be out 729 00:41:51.380 --> 00:41:51.880 in a few months. 730 00:41:52.039 --> 00:41:52.320 Okay. 731 00:41:53.800 --> 00:41:56.559 The first thing I noticed was Gap's use of color. 732 00:41:57.489 --> 00:42:00.469 And in his book, The Subterranean, early in the book, 733 00:42:00.530 --> 00:42:03.769 he starts to talk about the hipsters. You know, he 734 00:42:03.809 --> 00:42:05.730 says they're in San Francisco, but they're really in New York. 735 00:42:06.630 --> 00:42:09.219 And he uses all these images of blue and black, 736 00:42:09.559 --> 00:42:12.900 which are cool colors. And as you're reading through these paragraphs, 737 00:42:12.960 --> 00:42:17.250 you're feeling this chill. And you're not even aware of it, 738 00:42:17.760 --> 00:42:21.909 but he so skillfully uses these cold colors that you 739 00:42:22.869 --> 00:42:26.489 sort of have a chill going through your body. Later 740 00:42:26.510 --> 00:42:29.150 in the book, at the end, when everything is falling 741 00:42:29.170 --> 00:42:33.250 apart for him with Mardu, his girlfriend, his black girlfriend, 742 00:42:33.389 --> 00:42:36.269 by the way, he's in this rail yard, and he 743 00:42:36.289 --> 00:42:39.869 starts describing everything in terms of red, and you start 744 00:42:40.010 --> 00:42:44.349 to feel the heat of red. And, of course, he's 745 00:42:44.429 --> 00:42:47.289 used red, you know, in talking about his birth, you know, 746 00:42:47.429 --> 00:42:50.780 how he was born on this day into this redness. 747 00:42:50.840 --> 00:42:52.760 You know, it just goes on and on, all these 748 00:42:52.840 --> 00:42:54.139 things about redness and Dr. 749 00:42:54.199 --> 00:42:54.440 Faxe. 750 00:42:56.519 --> 00:42:59.039 And when I read that, I realized, because I was 751 00:42:59.099 --> 00:43:03.920 having an emotional reaction involuntarily to what he was writing, 752 00:43:03.960 --> 00:43:06.880 and I realized for the first time that Jack was 753 00:43:06.980 --> 00:43:09.860 right when he said that he had invented the only 754 00:43:09.909 --> 00:43:12.230 true American style of writing and that he wanted to 755 00:43:12.250 --> 00:43:16.090 be recognized as a writer, not as a crazy bum, 756 00:43:16.329 --> 00:43:20.789 you know, top-off, off-the-top-of-the-mind writer who just put words together 757 00:43:20.829 --> 00:43:23.170 in a funny way, but that he had actually consciously 758 00:43:23.190 --> 00:43:26.210 developed a style of writing, and he did. That's what 759 00:43:26.250 --> 00:43:29.059 my book is about. That's what I want to help 760 00:43:29.079 --> 00:43:35.280 people discover is what a brilliant stylist and inventor and innovator, 761 00:43:35.940 --> 00:43:38.900 with words, Jack Kerouac actually was. Get rid of the 762 00:43:38.940 --> 00:43:41.219 cult figure, get rid of the bum, you know, the 763 00:43:41.260 --> 00:43:44.900 crazy guy, and realize he was a brilliant writer on 764 00:43:44.920 --> 00:43:47.329 the level of James Joyce and beyond. 765 00:43:47.989 --> 00:43:51.409 Well, funny you should mention that. You set me up. 766 00:43:52.079 --> 00:43:55.179 But let me say this. A listener also wrote and said, 767 00:43:55.699 --> 00:43:58.760 you know, it's hard for me to listen about Kerouac. 768 00:43:58.780 --> 00:44:00.460 I thought he was kind of a boho and rude 769 00:44:00.480 --> 00:44:03.699 and all this other stuff. And he did not distinguish 770 00:44:03.719 --> 00:44:07.389 himself necessarily in certain settings, and we understand that. But 771 00:44:07.429 --> 00:44:10.610 be that as it may, he did understand, you know, 772 00:44:11.110 --> 00:44:16.010 the literary merit that he had. But because you mentioned Joyce, 773 00:44:16.090 --> 00:44:17.429 and I'll tell you what, you're going to come back 774 00:44:17.510 --> 00:44:20.130 again because you have to. I'll dog you until the 775 00:44:20.170 --> 00:44:22.510 end of time because I want to

get even more 776 00:44:22.550 --> 00:44:26.869 into the sweetness of Maggie Cassidy and Sax. But I'm 777 00:44:26.889 --> 00:44:29.489 going to throw a line out for you, okay? You 778 00:44:29.510 --> 00:44:30.070 ready for this? 779 00:44:30.090 --> 00:44:31.090 I'm ready. 780 00:44:31.230 --> 00:44:35.090 All right. This is like what? What is it? Family feud? 781 00:44:37.909 --> 00:44:40.159 Your answer. All right. No. Here we go. The figure 782 00:44:40.260 --> 00:44:42.719 of the dark avenger stood forth in his mind for 783 00:44:42.739 --> 00:44:45.880 whatever he had heard or defined in childhood of the 784 00:44:45.900 --> 00:44:52.119 strange and the terrible. Sounds like you're a wack. It's Joyce. 785 00:44:53.159 --> 00:44:54.079 Is it from Ulysses? 786 00:44:55.019 --> 00:44:57.239 Oh, man, where was that from? Oh, let's see what 787 00:44:57.280 --> 00:45:00.179 I do with that. All right, brothers. Oh, no, I 788 00:45:00.199 --> 00:45:01.159 don't know. 789 00:45:01.590 --> 00:45:02.739 Ulysses from Finnegan's Wake. 790 00:45:05.230 --> 00:45:07.489 I'm looking at all my footnotes. 791 00:45:07.610 --> 00:45:08.949 Oh, man. 792 00:45:09.010 --> 00:45:11.130 Okay, that's what I get. You're right. Stuck it up 793 00:45:11.170 --> 00:45:16.190 my butt. Okay. I don't know, Diane. And I'll get 794 00:45:16.230 --> 00:45:16.989 back to you on that. 795 00:45:17.909 --> 00:45:18.429 Yeah, definitely. 796 00:45:18.530 --> 00:45:20.969 Oh, man. You had to go and ask that. He 797 00:45:21.010 --> 00:45:24.230 ran pages for this thing. But isn't that a great... But, 798 00:45:24.570 --> 00:45:26.150 I mean, isn't that pirouacan? 799 00:45:26.670 --> 00:45:28.260 Yeah, it sounds like it could have come out of fact. 800 00:45:28.280 --> 00:45:28.550 Of course. 801 00:45:29.059 --> 00:45:35.539 For sure. But just to rehabilitate myself, let me read 802 00:45:35.559 --> 00:45:38.699 you a passage from Windblown World. I don't know when 803 00:45:38.719 --> 00:45:42.110 he wrote this. It might have been 1947. It might 804 00:45:42.150 --> 00:45:43.769 have been 1949. It's early in the book, though. 805 00:45:43.889 --> 00:45:44.210 Okay. 806 00:45:44.769 --> 00:45:48.079 He wrote... about his writing. He said, In the end, 807 00:45:48.159 --> 00:45:51.260 I'm my own greatest reader. Also, I believe in sane 808 00:45:51.280 --> 00:45:55.469 writing as opposed to the psychotic sloppiness of Joyce. Joyce 809 00:45:55.570 --> 00:45:58.309 is a man who only gave up trying to communicate 810 00:45:58.349 --> 00:46:02.210 to human beings. I myself do that when I'm drunk, weary, 811 00:46:02.309 --> 00:46:05.360 and full of misery. Therefore, I know it's not so 812 00:46:05.429 --> 00:46:08.960 honest as it is spiteful to blurt out associations that 813 00:46:09.000 --> 00:46:12.980 a true human effort to evoke and give significant intelligence 814 00:46:13.079 --> 00:46:17.349 to one's sayings. It's a kind of scornful idiocy. So 815 00:46:18.070 --> 00:46:20.179 he didn't like James Joyce, but he loved the way 816 00:46:20.199 --> 00:46:22.679 he put words together, that's for sure. And you can 817 00:46:22.760 --> 00:46:24.739 see that in Kerouac's works everywhere. 818 00:46:24.940 --> 00:46:28.000 Yeah, no doubt. And I'm not mocking that whatsoever. But 819 00:46:28.059 --> 00:46:28.900 now I have to go back. 820 00:46:29.079 --> 00:46:31.199 What? I just had to get back at you. 821 00:46:31.559 --> 00:46:35.820 Oh, you did. Okay, okay. Set game match, you win. 822 00:46:36.500 --> 00:46:38.900 That's okay. Yeah, and I know. I mean, what we're 823 00:46:38.920 --> 00:46:42.019 looking for is, hey, look, what this is all about. 824 00:46:42.199 --> 00:46:45.380 And it's holiness and it's great stuff. You'll have to 825 00:46:45.389 --> 00:46:46.679 go take a look at that, because I've got a 826 00:46:47.940 --> 00:46:51.539 footnote here, and I'm paging through this ancient thing. But 827 00:46:51.559 --> 00:46:53.460 all right, now, here's what I want to hit you with, okay? 828 00:46:53.480 --> 00:46:55.260 We're going to close out with this, if it's okay. 829 00:46:56.039 --> 00:47:00.940 It has to be okay, because it's my show. Like 830 00:47:01.000 --> 00:47:05.250 Dennis Leary. Anyway, let me run down this. It's only 831 00:47:05.289 --> 00:47:10.050 got about 16 categories, but I rocked my professor at 832 00:47:10.190 --> 00:47:15.070 USF with these uncommonalities, if you remember. that I mentioned. 833 00:47:15.550 --> 00:47:21.269 So let's go through, and please interject whatever you want, 834 00:47:21.289 --> 00:47:23.349 because you're the one that's going to bring out this 835 00:47:23.409 --> 00:47:28.289 goal from the mind. All right. Element is my left column, 836 00:47:28.449 --> 00:47:30.510 and then Joyce and Kerouac going from left to right. 837 00:47:31.110 --> 00:47:36.139 With the city, Joyce's city was industrial Dublin. Kerouac's was 838 00:47:36.199 --> 00:47:38.880 industrial low. Are we all right with that? Right, right. 839 00:47:39.519 --> 00:47:43.429 City of what I called liberation. For Joyce, it was Paris. 840 00:47:43.710 --> 00:47:46.610 For Kerouac, it was New York. Right. All right. 841 00:47:46.699 --> 00:47:48.280 I'm glad you didn't say San Francisco. 842 00:47:48.739 --> 00:47:51.760 No, it was New York. Okay. You know, this may 843 00:47:51.780 --> 00:47:56.059 not work later on, but the river integral in their 844 00:47:56.079 --> 00:47:59.280 life for Joyce was the Liffey. For Kerouac, it was 845 00:47:59.300 --> 00:48:04.230 the Merrimack. Right. All right. Religion, now it gets interesting. Joyce, 846 00:48:04.409 --> 00:48:10.050 Catholic upbringing, Jesuit priesthood, a possibility, identical for Kerouac. Catholic upbringing, 847 00:48:10.110 --> 00:48:11.889 Jesuit priesthood. What do you think about that? 848 00:48:12.900 --> 00:48:15.659 I'm not so sure about the Jesuit priesthood, nor am 849 00:48:15.820 --> 00:48:19.090 I certain. I

thought he was overwhelmed by Catholicism and 850 00:48:19.179 --> 00:48:22.829 the priests. I think he pretty much went straight from 851 00:48:23.550 --> 00:48:24.809 Catholicism to Buddhism. 852 00:48:25.989 --> 00:48:28.289 Do you think, as it might have seemed, well, it 853 00:48:28.309 --> 00:48:32.769 probably was with Joyce, that the astringent, shall we say, 854 00:48:34.130 --> 00:48:36.610 confines of Catholicism might have driven them both out? 855 00:48:38.389 --> 00:48:44.309 Sure, yeah. I mean, Catholicism has to be the most contradictory, 856 00:48:44.489 --> 00:48:46.519 crazy-making religion on earth. 857 00:48:46.940 --> 00:48:49.340 Thank you. You said that I didn't. She gets the emails. 858 00:48:49.500 --> 00:48:52.960 I don't. I agree. It's okay. 859 00:48:54.219 --> 00:48:59.389 Yeah, you can't be a man with normal male desires 860 00:49:00.429 --> 00:49:04.690 and still be a Catholic without feeling incredible shame for 861 00:49:04.750 --> 00:49:08.090 having these natural human desires. So, yeah. It drove them, 862 00:49:08.230 --> 00:49:09.889 I think it drove both of them a little nuts. 863 00:49:10.349 --> 00:49:15.980 Category 5, family finances. Joyce, urban poor, in parentheses, because 864 00:49:16.019 --> 00:49:20.280 of father's improvidence. Kerouac, poor because of the depression. And 865 00:49:20.909 --> 00:49:25.409 in 36, the Merrimack River floods and ruins father's printing business. 866 00:49:26.250 --> 00:49:28.309 Right, exactly. That's very, very true. 867 00:49:28.429 --> 00:49:35.260 Okay. Family tragedy. Joyce loses his brother Georgie at 14. 868 00:49:35.260 --> 00:49:40.000 Jack loses Gerard at 9. Yeah. All right. Ancestry. 869 00:49:40.400 --> 00:49:41.920 I just want to add one thing. 870 00:49:41.940 --> 00:49:42.460 Absolutely. 871 00:49:42.519 --> 00:49:45.460 In terms of family tragedy, also his losing his father. 872 00:49:46.389 --> 00:49:50.389 I actually sort of always forget that, the effect that 873 00:49:50.449 --> 00:49:53.409 it had on him. But yeah, childhood tragedy was sure 874 00:49:53.469 --> 00:49:56.909 our teenage tragedy or young man tragedy was losing his father. 875 00:49:56.949 --> 00:49:59.400 You know, I don't remember that. So can you tell 876 00:49:59.440 --> 00:50:02.809 me how old was Jack when he lost his dad? Oh, God. 877 00:50:03.389 --> 00:50:06.409 I should know this, but I can't remember. He was 878 00:50:06.469 --> 00:50:07.869 in his early 20s, I think. 879 00:50:07.969 --> 00:50:08.309 Okay. 880 00:50:08.449 --> 00:50:11.150 All right. And he promised his father he'd take care 881 00:50:11.170 --> 00:50:13.989 of his mother for the rest of her life. She 882 00:50:14.030 --> 00:50:17.650 lived a long time, unfortunately. She outlived Jack. 883 00:50:19.150 --> 00:50:22.380 By the way, he was down with his mother in St. Petersburg. 884 00:50:22.389 --> 00:50:22.889 Is that correct? 885 00:50:23.539 --> 00:50:23.739 Right. 886 00:50:24.099 --> 00:50:27.699

Did she expire also in St. Pete? 887 00:50:27.739 --> 00:50:30.139 Yes, in 1973. 888 00:50:34.599 --> 00:50:37.980 I'll ask a question about that some other time. Ancestry, 889 00:50:38.400 --> 00:50:42.480 Joyce was Celtic, and Kerouac was Celtic from Brittany. 890 00:50:43.800 --> 00:50:47.559 Yeah, I think I was reading something in Ulysses. I 891 00:50:47.599 --> 00:50:51.199 haven't finished that book, but I keep trying. Maybe it 892 00:50:51.219 --> 00:50:56.369 wasn't there. It's something about everybody in the Emerald Isle 893 00:50:56.469 --> 00:50:59.030 or the U.K. came from Brittany or something. That was 894 00:50:59.150 --> 00:50:59.889 the original. 895 00:51:00.469 --> 00:51:01.150 Yep. 896 00:51:01.670 --> 00:51:01.969 Source. 897 00:51:02.670 --> 00:51:03.010 Yeah. 898 00:51:03.110 --> 00:51:06.550 So, yeah. Very, very interesting. And Jack, of course, was 899 00:51:06.730 --> 00:51:08.969 very happy to call himself a Brit. 900 00:51:09.090 --> 00:51:14.639 All right. What I called Wandering, with Joyce at 20, 901 00:51:14.639 --> 00:51:19.119 a left-on steamer for Paris, which is recounted in the 902 00:51:19.179 --> 00:51:21.599 portrait of an artist as a young man, it doesn't 903 00:51:21.619 --> 00:51:25.139 really say... He took off, and that's what my British 904 00:51:25.360 --> 00:51:28.250 professor destroyed me with all the time. He never said 905 00:51:28.289 --> 00:51:29.789 he went. I'm going, come on, we know he went. 906 00:51:29.829 --> 00:51:32.889 But no, in that book, it didn't say he left. 907 00:51:33.090 --> 00:51:37.630 He was just thinking about going. But with Kerouac at 20, 908 00:51:37.630 --> 00:51:41.489 he sailed with the Merchant Marines, correct? Right. Okay. 909 00:51:41.510 --> 00:51:44.230 He joined the Navy also. 910 00:51:44.250 --> 00:51:44.530 Yeah. 911 00:51:45.380 --> 00:51:47.619 Traveling on the sea. The sea is my brother, you know. 912 00:51:49.500 --> 00:51:54.500 Athletics. Joyce was attractive. star so to speak and Kerouac 913 00:51:54.559 --> 00:51:59.500 track and football yes definitely alright now this is really 914 00:51:59.599 --> 00:52:02.570 wide birth and I understand that but what I called 915 00:52:02.619 --> 00:52:05.750 a fixation with Joyce it was his mother with Kerouac 916 00:52:05.789 --> 00:52:06.949 I said it was his mother. 917 00:52:08.530 --> 00:52:11.590 Yeah it has to be I'm sad to say and 918 00:52:11.650 --> 00:52:15.530 that is definitely a subject for another show right it 919 00:52:15.570 --> 00:52:17.840 was not what it appeared to be agreed it wasn't 920 00:52:17.889 --> 00:52:20.219 that he was a mama's boy it was that he 921 00:52:20.260 --> 00:52:21.980 was consumed by. 922 00:52:21.880 --> 00:52:24.820 His mother Yeah, and this is not tawdry what to 923 00:52:24.880 --> 00:52:26.619 say at least, but, I mean, there's a certain kind 924 00:52:26.659 --> 00:52:31.019 of debt you feel. Yeah, I mean, there's something going 925 00:52:31.119 --> 00:52:35.880 on there that is not untoward whatsoever. But especially, can 926 00:52:35.900 --> 00:52:39.400 we say this also, that when the mother is widowed, 927 00:52:40.380 --> 00:52:45.340 there's a certain, I guess, increased intensity of a son 928 00:52:45.360 --> 00:52:48.090 for the mother. I mean, I'll admit that. I mean, 929 00:52:48.110 --> 00:52:50.210 that's what happened with me. My father died a year 930 00:52:50.269 --> 00:52:54.980 older than I was. and you feel some kind of 931 00:52:55.019 --> 00:52:56.639 debt toward your mom. 932 00:52:57.719 --> 00:52:59.960 I'm sure that that is true. I've certainly known a 933 00:53:00.000 --> 00:53:03.230 lot of boys where their mothers got divorced and they 934 00:53:03.269 --> 00:53:04.630 felt they had to be the man of the house, 935 00:53:05.409 --> 00:53:09.170 and certainly that happened with Kerouac. But I think it 936 00:53:09.190 --> 00:53:13.219 was more Gabrielle treating Jack as a surrogate husband, which 937 00:53:13.280 --> 00:53:16.400 is another dynamic that I've seen many, many times in 938 00:53:16.599 --> 00:53:20.000 the mothers of my boyfriends, you know, who wanted to, 939 00:53:20.679 --> 00:53:23.880 they didn't want their sons to go off and have wives. 940 00:53:24.260 --> 00:53:26.360 They wanted their sons to stay home and take care 941 00:53:26.380 --> 00:53:30.500 of them as if they were husbands in every, practically 942 00:53:30.639 --> 00:53:33.500 every area, maybe every area when you want to get 943 00:53:33.519 --> 00:53:35.679 real twisted about it, you know. 944 00:53:35.719 --> 00:53:39.340 Let me ask you, did Jack have two marriages? 945 00:53:40.239 --> 00:53:40.480 Three. 946 00:53:41.260 --> 00:53:43.159 All right, can you give us the links and to 947 00:53:43.199 --> 00:53:44.320 whom he was married? 948 00:53:44.860 --> 00:53:48.519 Yeah, his first wife was Edie Parker. And he called 949 00:53:48.559 --> 00:53:50.960 her Frankie, and he married her, I think, in 1950. 950 00:53:50.940 --> 00:53:56.139 I might be wrong about that. It was at school, 951 00:53:56.159 --> 00:53:57.760 I think, at the time. It was the year that 952 00:53:59.159 --> 00:54:04.210 Lucian Carr killed David Kammerer, and Jack was arrested as 953 00:54:04.389 --> 00:54:08.829 a material witness or whatever after the fact. 954 00:54:08.909 --> 00:54:10.159 That happened in Manhattan, didn't it? 955 00:54:10.719 --> 00:54:11.300 Yeah, it did. 956 00:54:11.320 --> 00:54:11.679 Okay. Okay. 957 00:54:12.570 --> 00:54:14.510 And Jack was in school at the time, I think. 958 00:54:14.530 --> 00:54:17.099 And he married Edie at that time. And their marriage 959 00:54:17.179 --> 00:54:19.159 didn't last very long. I can't tell you how long. 960 00:54:19.199 --> 00:54:23.960 It was like maybe two years, three years. Less than that. 961 00:54:24.320 --> 00:54:29.969 Because the next woman he married was Joan Haverty. And 962 00:54:29.989 --> 00:54:35.849 he married her in November, I

think, of 1950. I'm 963 00:54:35.869 --> 00:54:41.309 not positive. They were divorced. He left her after he 964 00:54:41.369 --> 00:54:44.860 wrote the scroll manuscript for On the Road, which he 965 00:54:44.900 --> 00:54:49.079 did in April of 1951. And she gave birth to 966 00:54:49.099 --> 00:54:53.679 their child in February of 1952. He was already long 967 00:54:53.699 --> 00:54:56.909 gone by then. He left right after he wrote the manuscript. 968 00:54:56.989 --> 00:55:00.369 He left by August of 1951. He was in San Francisco. 969 00:55:01.849 --> 00:55:05.510 And his third wife was Stella Sampas, who was the 970 00:55:05.590 --> 00:55:08.550 daughter and part of the family of the Sampas family 971 00:55:08.639 --> 00:55:12.360 of Lowell. characters that were frequently in his books from 972 00:55:12.380 --> 00:55:15.119 The Town and the City all the way through probably 973 00:55:15.139 --> 00:55:19.639 to the end. Sebastian Samus was his dear, dear friend 974 00:55:19.679 --> 00:55:22.289 who had encouraged him with his writing and who Jack 975 00:55:22.369 --> 00:55:26.110 encouraged to write. But he died on the beach at 976 00:55:26.269 --> 00:55:30.170 Anzio during World War II. And Jack was very, very 977 00:55:30.210 --> 00:55:36.250 attached to Sebastian. So Stella was one of the younger siblings. 978 00:55:36.849 --> 00:55:39.559 and she had had a love for Jack all of 979 00:55:39.599 --> 00:55:43.059 her life and she was delighted and thrilled when he 980 00:55:43.079 --> 00:55:46.039 proposed marriage to her after Gabrielle had her stroke in 981 00:55:46.039 --> 00:55:50.199 1966 and she then she lived with Jack and with 982 00:55:50.260 --> 00:55:55.329 Stella with Gabrielle and took care of them both until 983 00:55:55.349 --> 00:55:59.050 Jack died and until Gabrielle died and then she herself 984 00:55:59.110 --> 00:56:02.849 died in 1991 so she was married from 1966 until 985 00:56:02.909 --> 00:56:06.010 his death in 69 and a family member until her 986 00:56:06.050 --> 00:56:08.590 death or until Gabrielle's death, I guess, in 1973, I 987 00:56:08.730 --> 00:56:11.469 guess is how you end that. 988 00:56:12.409 --> 00:56:13.389 Are there any heirs left? 989 00:56:13.409 --> 00:56:18.130 The daughter? There is one heir left alive. It's Paul Blake. 990 00:56:18.150 --> 00:56:22.099 He was known as Little Paul or Little Luke in 991 00:56:22.139 --> 00:56:27.159 Jack's books, where he talked about his brother and his sister. 992 00:56:27.260 --> 00:56:31.519 I've talked to Paul. I talked to him about nine 993 00:56:31.539 --> 00:56:32.360 years ago, I guess. 994 00:56:32.460 --> 00:56:33.400 We talked on the phone. 995 00:56:34.639 --> 00:56:40.920 He's an alcoholic and he's quite delusional. And if he's 996 00:56:41.000 --> 00:56:44.699 entitled to anything of Jack's estate is a question that 997 00:56:44.820 --> 00:56:48.110 has been dealt with legally in the court. Personally, Jack 998 00:56:48.530 --> 00:56:51.090 didn't

do what he needed to do. He wanted Paul 999 00:56:51.110 --> 00:56:53.130 to inherit. He didn't do what he needed to do. 1000 00:56:53.170 --> 00:56:58.530 So Paul is very occasionally homeless. He's a laborer. He 1001 00:56:58.690 --> 00:57:01.530 lives on the streets of San Francisco or Sacramento and 1002 00:57:02.190 --> 00:57:04.289 He's quite ill, and I can't even believe he's still alive, 1003 00:57:04.329 --> 00:57:05.150 but apparently he is. 1004 00:57:05.170 --> 00:57:07.409 All right, going back. 1005 00:57:07.429 --> 00:57:10.030 It's just the end of the line. He's the last Kerouac. 1006 00:57:10.150 --> 00:57:11.570 That's it. Is that right? 1007 00:57:12.130 --> 00:57:13.449 Yes, he's dead. 1008 00:57:14.190 --> 00:57:18.679 As a sidebar, is anybody in Lowell wishing to keep 1009 00:57:18.719 --> 00:57:23.199 this situation alive? Any kind of society, you know what 1010 00:57:23.300 --> 00:57:25.019 I mean, and quotations? 1011 00:57:25.920 --> 00:57:27.880 Yes, you mean the Kerouac? 1012 00:57:28.340 --> 00:57:30.139 The legend, the whole idea, yeah. 1013 00:57:30.969 --> 00:57:33.630 Yeah, I'm going to say this wrong, but I think 1014 00:57:33.789 --> 00:57:37.289 last year there was some sort of a foundation established 1015 00:57:37.550 --> 00:57:43.039 at UMass Lowell. Yeah, and every year in October there 1016 00:57:43.099 --> 00:57:49.480 is a festival called Lowell Celebrates Kerouac. And some people 1017 00:57:49.619 --> 00:57:52.929 are always there who either knew him or are studying 1018 00:57:52.989 --> 00:57:57.469 him or otherwise are of a high profile about his 1019 00:57:57.530 --> 00:58:01.360 life or in his life. So, yeah, it's funny, though, because, 1020 00:58:01.460 --> 00:58:05.239 you know, it's like Thomas Wolfe writing about you can 1021 00:58:05.260 --> 00:58:08.250 never go home again. Well, Jack could never really go 1022 00:58:08.309 --> 00:58:10.929 home again. He could not succeed in his own town. 1023 00:58:11.050 --> 00:58:13.409 When he would go home, they'd just treat him like nothing, 1024 00:58:13.550 --> 00:58:16.230 you know. They were much more interested in talking about 1025 00:58:16.329 --> 00:58:20.630 Betty Davis, who had become a big movie star. But Jack, 1026 00:58:20.670 --> 00:58:23.099 he was just Jack, you know. They didn't make a 1027 00:58:23.119 --> 00:58:25.840 big deal. I remember reading a column, a newspaper column, 1028 00:58:25.900 --> 00:58:28.710 about that Jack was coming home to sign books at 1029 00:58:28.730 --> 00:58:32.989 the Beaumarchais, you know, and nobody even showed up. It 1030 00:58:33.030 --> 00:58:36.570 was pathetic. So they didn't know what they had, and 1031 00:58:36.769 --> 00:58:40.469 they are, you know, in a sort of revisionist sense, 1032 00:58:41.230 --> 00:58:43.130 trying to act like they do care about him, but 1033 00:58:43.150 --> 00:58:46.369 they didn't. You know, he never got the love he deserved. 1034 00:58:47.230 --> 00:58:49.130 Well,

it's also said a prophet has no honor in 1035 00:58:49.170 --> 00:58:52.670 his hometown, and that was probably a good example. And 1036 00:58:52.929 --> 00:58:57.030 the other thing, too, I just want to say... But 1037 00:58:57.230 --> 00:59:00.630 by all means, we've got to get deeper into Maggie 1038 00:59:00.630 --> 00:59:03.989 Cassidy and also Saks, and we'll do that because there's 1039 00:59:03.989 --> 00:59:07.039 just so much good stuff there. And if you don't mind, 1040 00:59:07.039 --> 00:59:09.949 we'll do that you know At another time, we kind 1041 00:59:09.989 --> 00:59:13.389 of like did a survey thing across this. But you've 1042 00:59:13.489 --> 00:59:15.630 given me a whole lot of good stuff. And I 1043 00:59:15.690 --> 00:59:17.260 want to get the books back out so I can 1044 00:59:17.280 --> 00:59:19.320 take a look as well. Because I tell you what, 1045 00:59:19.360 --> 00:59:21.260 it's pretty good, you know, chicken soup for the soul 1046 00:59:21.320 --> 00:59:24.139 as far as I'm concerned. Except, you know, especially Sax 1047 00:59:24.199 --> 00:59:27.559 and Maggie Cassidy. I'm like, oh, yeah, absolutely. Oh, yeah. 1048 00:59:28.159 --> 00:59:33.670 All right. Now, looking back at these uncommonalities, Childhood Hero. Joyce, 1049 00:59:33.789 --> 00:59:37.820 I would think, was the Count of Monte Cristo. With Kerouac, 1050 00:59:37.840 --> 00:59:39.039 could it be The Shadow? 1051 00:59:40.719 --> 00:59:42.400 Yeah, I'd say that's probably true. 1052 00:59:42.539 --> 00:59:44.980 He liked The Shadow. I mean, what's not to like 1053 00:59:45.019 --> 00:59:45.639 about The Shadow? 1054 00:59:47.199 --> 00:59:49.840 He liked all those, The Shadow and the Dying Westerns 1055 00:59:49.920 --> 00:59:51.739 and all that kind of stuff. That was his big 1056 00:59:51.760 --> 00:59:56.019 joy was to read adventure stories, you know, adventures and mysteries. 1057 00:59:56.699 --> 00:59:59.760 Well, you know, Joyce, no doubt, I mean, there was 1058 00:59:59.820 --> 01:00:03.849 radio at that time, but certainly Hardback was, Hardcopy was 1059 01:00:03.889 --> 01:00:06.949 still the name of the game. And with Joyce being 1060 01:00:07.210 --> 01:00:14.039 somewhat enamored of the Count of Monte Cristo and Dante's. 1061 01:00:14.900 --> 01:00:16.900 But the shadow now, I mean, you know, Kerouac is 1062 01:00:16.940 --> 01:00:19.530 on the cutting edge. as he's growing up, of radio. 1063 01:00:19.610 --> 01:00:21.449 And radio must have been compelling. I mean, there was 1064 01:00:21.489 --> 01:00:24.570 no TV then. This is a little step above reading 1065 01:00:24.590 --> 01:00:28.829 where things were animated, so to speak, if not, you know, visually, but, 1066 01:00:28.989 --> 01:00:33.840 you know, audially. So can we say that do you 1067 01:00:33.860 --> 01:00:37.260 think the shadow and his listening to it might have 1068 01:00:37.320 --> 01:00:41.400 colored somehow the way he wrote Dr. Sacks? Oh, sure. 1069 01:00:41.619 --> 01:00:44.360 Absolutely. He talks about the shadow in there and how 1070 01:00:44.449 --> 01:00:48.420 reading those books really stimulated him. And like you said, 1071 01:00:48.440 --> 01:00:50.800 the radio was a big deal. People gathered around the 1072 01:00:50.840 --> 01:00:54.519 radio in those days like people sit in front of 1073 01:00:54.739 --> 01:01:01.539 the dumb TV these days. Here's a little brief paragraph 1074 01:01:01.599 --> 01:01:05.989 from Facts. He wrote about that. He said, I knew 1075 01:01:06.050 --> 01:01:09.050 I was haunted but said nothing. Not long after that, 1076 01:01:09.090 --> 01:01:12.349 I dreamed a horrible dream of rattling red living room, 1077 01:01:12.510 --> 01:01:16.900 newly painted, a strange 1929 varnish red, and I saw 1078 01:01:17.079 --> 01:01:20.380 in it the dream all dancing and rattling like skeletons 1079 01:01:20.840 --> 01:01:24.090 because my brother Gerard haunted them and dreamed I woke 1080 01:01:24.159 --> 01:01:26.929 up screaming by the phonograph machine in the adjoining room 1081 01:01:27.469 --> 01:01:30.829 with its master's voice curved in the ground wood. Memory 1082 01:01:30.869 --> 01:01:34.210 and dream are intermixed in this mad universe. A few 1083 01:01:34.230 --> 01:01:36.630 paragraphs earlier he talked about his mother listening to a 1084 01:01:36.670 --> 01:01:40.050 radio show, a name I can't remember now, but Wayne King. 1085 01:01:40.630 --> 01:01:43.059 He says, My mother's scrubbing her back or tuning Wayne 1086 01:01:43.159 --> 01:01:48.900 King on the old mahogany radio. So yeah, the radio 1087 01:01:48.940 --> 01:01:52.260 and what came out of the radio, you know that 1088 01:01:52.340 --> 01:01:54.340 it has a bigger effect. And sure, you are in 1089 01:01:54.389 --> 01:01:56.429 the radio, and I love the radio. I work in 1090 01:01:56.449 --> 01:01:59.090 the air, of course, and there's nothing like the radio 1091 01:01:59.110 --> 01:02:01.070 because it doesn't give you the visual. So you have 1092 01:02:01.090 --> 01:02:04.050 to create them yourself. And I don't think there's anything 1093 01:02:04.090 --> 01:02:05.110 better than that, you know? 1094 01:02:06.570 --> 01:02:09.010 You know what? I'm focused to say that's true, but 1095 01:02:09.030 --> 01:02:11.739 you know what? I also believe to be such. And 1096 01:02:12.900 --> 01:02:15.300 I did a preface, I think, to last week's show's 1097 01:02:16.039 --> 01:02:20.010 which talked about, you know, I'm not going to date you, 1098 01:02:20.070 --> 01:02:24.050 but I mean, not go out with you, but put 1099 01:02:24.070 --> 01:02:24.550 you in a certain. 1100 01:02:24.570 --> 01:02:25.670 Go ahead, date me all you want. 1101 01:02:25.730 --> 01:02:29.010 You're in Seattle, good deal with that. But I mean, 1102 01:02:29.090 --> 01:02:33.219 going home, back in the 70s, whatever you were doing, 1103 01:02:33.239 --> 01:02:36.280 dropping off a date or whatever... And I talked about 1104

01:02:36.639 --> 01:02:38.800 it was only AM radio. I mean, that was the 1105 01:02:38.840 --> 01:02:41.840 push-button thing we had in our dashboard, and that was it, guys. 1106 01:02:42.260 --> 01:02:46.110 But that's when I started to listen to really, really 1107 01:02:46.530 --> 01:02:50.829 the best rockin' tours like Gene Shepard, and I've talked 1108 01:02:50.849 --> 01:02:56.090 about others like Bob Mayer and all that. And I mean, man, 1109 01:02:56.130 --> 01:02:58.500 it was spellbound stuff. I mean, like, okay, I like 1110 01:02:58.519 --> 01:03:00.179 the music, but there's a time when, like, you know, 1111 01:03:00.199 --> 01:03:03.309 I don't need the music. Let me listen to somebody 1112 01:03:03.329 --> 01:03:07.349 saying stuff. And what they transmitted over the airwaves was magic. 1113 01:03:07.889 --> 01:03:09.650 And that, yes, to this day. 1114 01:03:09.670 --> 01:03:11.130 Oh, my God, absolutely. 1115 01:03:11.210 --> 01:03:13.570 Okay, you understand that completely, right? Oh, yeah. 1116 01:03:13.769 --> 01:03:17.090 Transistor radios, crystal sets, the atmosphere drops, and you get 1117 01:03:17.150 --> 01:03:19.369 all these jokes from all around the world. You listen 1118 01:03:19.409 --> 01:03:21.840 to all these people talking. Oh, my God, it's nothing 1119 01:03:21.880 --> 01:03:23.860 like it. We could talk about that sometime. 1120 01:03:24.139 --> 01:03:26.820 Well, you know, the thing is, the little dunderheads we 1121 01:03:26.880 --> 01:03:30.750 were driving around... You know, we call it sidewalk drinking. 1122 01:03:30.789 --> 01:03:32.469 You know, we had a six-pack in there. We all 1123 01:03:32.510 --> 01:03:38.730 drive around my 64 Chevelle. And the AM radio got in. Buffalo. 1124 01:03:39.690 --> 01:03:43.710 This is Buffalo, guys. This is big. The Jay Starr Show. 1125 01:03:44.070 --> 01:03:46.230 I mean, but this is the way it went. And eventually, 1126 01:03:46.269 --> 01:03:48.840 you know, we got CKLW from Detroit and all that. 1127 01:03:49.159 --> 01:03:50.219 And we're going, wow. 1128 01:03:50.840 --> 01:03:51.380 Far away. 1129 01:03:51.699 --> 01:03:54.099 But, you know, that's the romance of it. I don't 1130 01:03:54.119 --> 01:03:57.940 need the visuals. I don't need the commercials. Just let me... 1131 01:03:58.579 --> 01:04:00.960 And aren't we really talking about this? Look, writing is 1132 01:04:01.019 --> 01:04:04.869 about this. Listening to radio and music and all this stuff. Listening. 1133 01:04:05.230 --> 01:04:11.010 Don't engage your visuality. Let your brain paint the pictures 1134 01:04:11.670 --> 01:04:14.590 of the audio that you hear. Yes. 1135 01:04:14.889 --> 01:04:18.349 And this is why ham radio endures. Ham radio. 1136 01:04:18.389 --> 01:04:18.949 Oh, no doubt. 1137 01:04:19.489 --> 01:04:22.780 You can relive all those feelings of your childhood. You 1138 01:04:22.820 --> 01:04:26.949 can be transported into your own imagination. as you pick 1139 01:04:27.010 -->

01:04:30.090 up somebody in Russia or in Australia or on the 1140 01:04:30.139 --> 01:04:32.199 North Pole with your hand radio? 1141 01:04:33.559 --> 01:04:38.059 Imagination. That's really key. And that's something that's not being 1142 01:04:38.079 --> 01:04:40.739 massaged as much as it should be because everything's being 1143 01:04:40.800 --> 01:04:45.179 given to kids and people nowadays. All right, you know. 1144 01:04:45.300 --> 01:04:47.460 I mean, they're not given to anything yet. 1145 01:04:48.329 --> 01:04:50.510 I can't believe it. It's just, I mean, I'm going 1146 01:04:50.530 --> 01:04:52.530 to sound like an old study that you'd like my parents, 1147 01:04:52.610 --> 01:04:56.289 but these kids today, you know, they sit there and 1148 01:04:56.309 --> 01:05:00.099 they watch these reality shows which in no way resemble reality, 1149 01:05:00.219 --> 01:05:04.820 you know. It's all scripted and forced on you and, oh, 1150 01:05:04.840 --> 01:05:06.880 it's awful. I don't watch them, but I know enough 1151 01:05:06.920 --> 01:05:08.699 about them to know this, you know. 1152 01:05:09.019 --> 01:05:09.440 No doubt. 1153 01:05:10.059 --> 01:05:10.780 It's pathetic. 1154 01:05:10.800 --> 01:05:14.489 Let me go back to the appendix. We're here. Substance abuse. 1155 01:05:15.190 --> 01:05:20.190 With Joyce and Kerouac, both alcohol, Kerouac, you know, alcohol 1156 01:05:20.210 --> 01:05:26.409 and drugs. Okay. Autobiographical character. This is heavy stuff. Okay. 1157 01:05:27.090 --> 01:05:32.800 With Joyce, it was Stephen Hero slash Daedalus. Would it 1158 01:05:32.820 --> 01:05:39.219 be correct, mainly, to say the autobiographical character with Kerouac 1159 01:05:39.260 --> 01:05:40.099 was Jack the Loose? 1160 01:05:42.130 --> 01:05:47.590 Eh, I don't know. He certainly appears as Jackie DeLuo 1161 01:05:47.750 --> 01:05:50.070 in many of his books, you know, seven or eight 1162 01:05:50.110 --> 01:05:50.360 of them. 1163 01:05:50.440 --> 01:05:50.760 Oh, great. 1164 01:05:51.340 --> 01:05:53.940 But I almost kind of think in a way that 1165 01:05:54.519 --> 01:05:59.460 Leo Persepied in the subterraneans was Jack's true alter ego. 1166 01:06:01.059 --> 01:06:04.789 Also certainly in Paradise and On the Road, but more 1167 01:06:04.809 --> 01:06:07.610 so than anything else, I tend to see the real 1168 01:06:07.630 --> 01:06:11.929 Jack in... in the subterranean. And then, of course, second 1169 01:06:11.949 --> 01:06:14.030 to that would actually be Big Sur, and he was 1170 01:06:14.610 --> 01:06:15.469 Zulu's in that book. 1171 01:06:16.010 --> 01:06:18.349 Yeah, okay, so you might give me a little check 1172 01:06:18.429 --> 01:06:19.590 on Deleuze as being. 1173 01:06:20.260 --> 01:06:20.980 It's hard to say. 1174 01:06:21.219 --> 01:06:21.619 Okay. 1175 01:06:22.139 --> 01:06:26.300 The legend, of course, was something he built, but who 1176 01:06:26.340 --> 01:06:29.300 knows how much of that was about him and how 1177 01:06:29.340 --> 01:06:32.860 much it was just about documenting his family and genealogy 1178 01:06:32.880 --> 01:06:35.619 and stuff like that. And everybody else that was in 1179 01:06:35.659 --> 01:06:36.159 it as well. 1180 01:06:36.530 --> 01:06:36.829 Okay. 1181 01:06:37.030 --> 01:06:40.389 So who was Jack Kerouac? I guess that's a good question. 1182 01:06:42.110 --> 01:06:45.139 All right, saga motif, whatever the hell that meant. I 1183 01:06:45.159 --> 01:06:47.920 wrote that. Anyway, the saga motif. 1184 01:06:47.940 --> 01:06:48.940 Sounds like you were in college. 1185 01:06:49.239 --> 01:06:51.739 Well, yeah, at that time I went back. I was 1186 01:06:51.760 --> 01:06:54.239 getting a little too astral for my own good. But 1187 01:06:54.260 --> 01:06:57.059 the saga motif, and maybe this will help a little 1188 01:06:57.079 --> 01:06:59.630 bit when I go to the Joyce column. It was 1189 01:07:00.050 --> 01:07:04.960 a Stephen Hero slash portrait slash Ulysses. With Jack, I 1190 01:07:05.000 --> 01:07:09.780 said it was the legend of Deleuze. Because he does 1191 01:07:09.880 --> 01:07:15.820 have a continuum with the Deleuzes. And, you know, did 1192 01:07:15.840 --> 01:07:17.500 he try to do that? And do you think he 1193 01:07:17.539 --> 01:07:21.860 successfully did that? I thought he wanted to create, you know, 1194 01:07:21.900 --> 01:07:24.440 that kind of, like I said, saga. Like, you know, 1195 01:07:24.460 --> 01:07:27.090 the continuing thing about the Deleuzes. I don't think it 1196 01:07:27.139 --> 01:07:30.789 ever came through. But let me, I've said enough. One, 1197 01:07:30.989 --> 01:07:32.710 do you think he wanted to make that some kind 1198 01:07:32.730 --> 01:07:37.550 of literary, you know, saga? And two, if so, do 1199 01:07:37.570 --> 01:07:41.269 you think he succeeded? 1200 01:07:41.349 --> 01:07:42.630 You know, I'm going to have to get back to 1201 01:07:42.650 --> 01:07:46.010 you on that, because if you're talking about motif as 1202 01:07:46.090 --> 01:07:48.139 opposed to saga, or if you're talking about both of them, 1203 01:07:48.199 --> 01:07:52.420 I think that's two different things. The motif would definitely, 1204 01:07:52.659 --> 01:07:56.380 in my opinion, be the world around him. The saga 1205 01:07:56.440 --> 01:08:00.960 would be the doulos legend, but I want to consult 1206 01:08:01.039 --> 01:08:03.760 the vanity of doulos before I answer that question, and 1207 01:08:03.840 --> 01:08:06.079 I can't consult it now, so next time maybe we 1208 01:08:06.099 --> 01:08:06.780 can talk about it. 1209 01:08:06.780 --> 01:08:09.940 Okay, that's fair enough. And like I said, if they 1210 01:08:09.960 --> 01:08:14.630 were contradictory terms, I would probably live with saga more 1211 01:08:14.650 --> 01:08:17.350 than anything else, which I thought you might have built, 1212 01:08:17.729 --> 01:08:20.949 but we will revisit that, and let's do that. That'll 1213 01:08:20.970 --> 01:08:22.109 be

a teaser for another show. 1214 01:08:22.369 --> 01:08:23.149 Okay. 1215 01:08:23.189 --> 01:08:25.460 How bright am I? Literary style. 1216 01:08:25.960 --> 01:08:27.039 Are you ready? 1217 01:08:27.060 --> 01:08:32.579 I'm ready. All right. Our survey said Joyce streamed consciousness, 1218 01:08:33.579 --> 01:08:35.899 but Kerouac called it spontaneous prose. Do we have a 1219 01:08:35.920 --> 01:08:36.359 problem there? 1220 01:08:37.020 --> 01:08:39.920 Yeah. No, I thought that was really interesting that you 1221 01:08:39.979 --> 01:08:45.130 differentiated those. I would say Jack definitely wrote in the 1222 01:08:45.170 --> 01:08:50.270 stream of consciousness manner, but not as nakedly or severely 1223 01:08:50.329 --> 01:08:55.420 as Joyce did. And Jack was about spontaneity and writing 1224 01:08:55.460 --> 01:09:00.119 the first thing that came off his head. So... they're 1225 01:09:00.140 --> 01:09:02.619 kind of not exclusive to each other, and yet they are. 1226 01:09:03.159 --> 01:09:05.500 And I think you're right about Joyce. It definitely was 1227 01:09:05.579 --> 01:09:10.619 Stream of Consciousness. Kerouac was both. He just happened to 1228 01:09:10.640 --> 01:09:14.090 have the kind of mind where Stream of Consciousness did 1229 01:09:14.409 --> 01:09:18.649 work itself out to be spontaneous prose, but also brilliance. 1230 01:09:19.170 --> 01:09:21.470 just plain brilliant. What he wrote, that came out of 1231 01:09:21.529 --> 01:09:24.789 his mind like that. It really almost was first draft, 1232 01:09:24.829 --> 01:09:28.909 last draft. He really did believe, you know, first spot, 1233 01:09:29.779 --> 01:09:31.680 best spot. And he did manage to live that life. 1234 01:09:31.720 --> 01:09:33.800 And I'm not sure Joyce could have done that. Not 1235 01:09:33.840 --> 01:09:34.619 to take anything away. 1236 01:09:34.739 --> 01:09:35.800 Oh, no, no, no, no. 1237 01:09:36.100 --> 01:09:37.340 Like crazy Irishman, but. 1238 01:09:39.960 --> 01:09:42.770 I don't think that... I don't think anybody was as 1239 01:09:43.010 --> 01:09:47.210 coherent as Kerouac while using that style as Joyce. Incoherent. 1240 01:09:47.350 --> 01:09:47.569 I mean. 1241 01:09:48.479 --> 01:09:51.220 I have to read those pages like 12 times before 1242 01:09:51.300 --> 01:09:54.199 I understand where he's going or who he's even talking about. 1243 01:09:54.220 --> 01:09:58.020 Yes. I will tell you this. I was really surprised 1244 01:09:58.180 --> 01:09:59.819 by a prof I had. And you're right. I went 1245 01:09:59.859 --> 01:10:03.329 back to college in 1995 to get a second degree 1246 01:10:03.350 --> 01:10:06.229 in English and to get certified to teach such. And 1247 01:10:06.869 --> 01:10:09.750 one of my profs really shocked me because one of 1248 01:10:09.789 --> 01:10:13.590 the things that I had related to her was that 1249 01:10:13.649 --> 01:10:16.050 the first take was the best take. And that came 1250 01:10:16.069 --> 01:10:20.069 from Kerouac. And she wrote back, You're right, which I 1251 01:10:20.090 --> 01:10:23.409 thought was really strange because, you know, usually profs, you know, 1252 01:10:23.449 --> 01:10:26.189 they want, like, everything, MLA and all this other stuff, 1253 01:10:26.529 --> 01:10:29.060 but it's like, look, we're talking about life, okay, and 1254 01:10:29.119 --> 01:10:31.920 just give it to me. And so I thought that 1255 01:10:31.960 --> 01:10:35.439 was really, and she was an older prof, which might 1256 01:10:35.659 --> 01:10:41.329 not necessarily, you know, discount her from being somebody who 1257 01:10:41.430 --> 01:10:44.699 might have, like, Jack, at that time, but realized there's 1258 01:10:44.739 --> 01:10:47.659 nobody left around here except you, you fossil, which would 1259 01:10:47.699 --> 01:10:49.539 be me. What about that? 1260 01:10:50.079 --> 01:10:54.100 Well, you know, think about the ivory tower of academia. 1261 01:10:54.659 --> 01:10:55.060 You got it. 1262 01:10:55.680 --> 01:10:57.800 They can't accept the fact that you don't need a 1263 01:10:57.880 --> 01:11:01.199 chainsaw to cut butter, you know? Everything has to be 1264 01:11:01.399 --> 01:11:03.310 paid by the word, and you have to make everything 1265 01:11:03.329 --> 01:11:06.710 more complicated than it is. So when you look at 1266 01:11:06.850 --> 01:11:13.170 somebody who is deceptively simple, and untrained as Kerouac is, 1267 01:11:13.550 --> 01:11:18.539 you just can't accept that, you know. It just isn't acceptable. 1268 01:11:18.920 --> 01:11:23.220 And it really doesn't fit in with the entire dialectic, 1269 01:11:23.260 --> 01:11:27.489 you know. So people end up just not accepting it, 1270 01:11:27.500 --> 01:11:30.789 which is, of course, another reason why Kerouac languishes in 1271 01:11:30.970 --> 01:11:35.250 cult status these days rather than in the legitimate writer 1272 01:11:35.270 --> 01:11:37.329 status he belongs in, in academia. 1273 01:11:39.479 --> 01:11:43.819 I will tell you this. I've always obviously cleaved to 1274 01:11:43.859 --> 01:11:47.840 Kerouac as having, with the spontaneous bros, you know, or 1275 01:11:47.899 --> 01:11:50.770 whatever you want to call it, a certain amount of emotion. 1276 01:11:53.130 --> 01:11:56.210 There's an emotional dynamic taking place there, which works and 1277 01:11:56.270 --> 01:12:00.270 transfuses me, which I just like, you know, say, yeah, 1278 01:12:00.310 --> 01:12:02.520 that's it. We got it. And I will tell you... 1279 01:12:03.970 --> 01:12:06.569 As I mentioned to you before, when I was reading Joyce, 1280 01:12:06.710 --> 01:12:09.189 because I had to, and Brit lit back in 1995, 1281 01:12:09.189 --> 01:12:12.970 I came upon this epiphany. I'm like, you know, I 1282 01:12:13.010 --> 01:12:16.539 read this before, but Joyce also could kick it himself. 1283 01:12:17.619 --> 01:12:21.359 For whatever reason, I probably, well, not probably, I definitely 1284 01:12:21.439 -->

01:12:25.020 cleave more to Kerouac, because I guess that speaks more 1285 01:12:25.039 --> 01:12:28.199 to my generation or the United States or whatever. But 1286 01:12:28.220 --> 01:12:32.369 there's no denying that And, you know, for anybody to 1287 01:12:32.449 --> 01:12:35.180 try to duplicate this, it probably falls on its face. 1288 01:12:35.859 --> 01:12:38.800 But the two of them, man, I mean, they could 1289 01:12:38.859 --> 01:12:45.699 riff verbiage like nobody else could. Yeah. 1290 01:12:46.039 --> 01:12:47.920 Well, think about it. I mean, you don't, when you're 1291 01:12:47.939 --> 01:12:51.640 out with your girlfriend, you don't have a script. When 1292 01:12:51.680 --> 01:12:54.060 you want to be passionate, you come out of the heart, 1293 01:12:54.260 --> 01:12:56.899 you know. You don't even come from the brain. You 1294 01:12:56.939 --> 01:13:01.310 come from your soul. And that's life and that's beauty, 1295 01:13:01.350 --> 01:13:01.600 you know. 1296 01:13:03.199 --> 01:13:08.000 So we can both envision Joyce and Kerouac sitting down, 1297 01:13:08.640 --> 01:13:10.680 you know, with a headload of what they want to 1298 01:13:10.720 --> 01:13:13.239 do and just letting it go, which I have to 1299 01:13:13.279 --> 01:13:14.750 tell you, I think it's pretty good. 1300 01:13:15.569 --> 01:13:16.829 Yeah, I agree. 1301 01:13:17.369 --> 01:13:19.489 And that's the reason why we like what they both do. 1302 01:13:19.510 --> 01:13:27.039 All right, now going to literary style, another category. Oh, no, 1303 01:13:27.060 --> 01:13:30.760 we already did that. All right. All right. Actual adolescent romance. 1304 01:13:31.939 --> 01:13:32.180 All right. 1305 01:13:32.779 --> 01:13:38.430 Now, with Joyce, it's Mary Sheehy, M.S. Okay. With Kerouac, 1306 01:13:38.750 --> 01:13:43.430 we kind of know the individual as Mary Carney. Right. 1307 01:13:43.569 --> 01:13:45.109 Does that ring with you? Sure. 1308 01:13:45.369 --> 01:13:48.810 Yeah, I thought that was really an interesting thing that 1309 01:13:48.829 --> 01:13:53.600 you figured out. And you kind of wonder if Kerouac... 1310 01:13:53.539 --> 01:13:55.420 You know, Mary Carney, of course, was her real name. 1311 01:13:55.479 --> 01:13:58.699 Maggie Cassidy was the book's title. 1312 01:13:58.880 --> 01:13:59.039 Right. 1313 01:13:59.239 --> 01:14:02.939 Even in that book, just for your information, he was 1314 01:14:03.039 --> 01:14:05.229 in love with a woman at the same time that 1315 01:14:05.250 --> 01:14:08.289 he was in love with Maggie, Pauline Cole, who they 1316 01:14:08.310 --> 01:14:10.390 called Moe, M-O-E, Moe Cole. 1317 01:14:10.890 --> 01:14:11.029 Okay. 1318 01:14:11.069 --> 01:14:13.529 And her initials were M-C, and so they talked about 1319 01:14:13.729 --> 01:14:19.220 M-C-1 and M-C-2, which kind of, just playing around with 1320 01:14:19.279 --> 01:14:20.560 initials is really kind of fun. 1321 01:14:21.939 --> 01:14:24.399 You know, and I think he deliberately did that, and 1322 01:14:24.439 --> 01:14:27.659 if so, good for him. I mean, why not? Do 1323 01:14:27.699 --> 01:14:28.100 you agree? 1324 01:14:28.760 --> 01:14:32.560 Yes, deliberately, but also, those were her initials. I mean, 1325 01:14:32.640 --> 01:14:34.600 it's quite amazing to me. 1326 01:14:34.920 --> 01:14:39.460 But do you think he might have, in a way, again, speculation, 1327 01:14:39.739 --> 01:14:42.520 but he might have saluted Joyce in a certain sense, 1328 01:14:42.880 --> 01:14:45.859 or else said, look, these are more similarities, and I'm 1329 01:14:45.880 --> 01:14:46.479 going to bring them out. 1330 01:14:47.060 --> 01:14:50.119 Yeah, no, I'm sure it was definitely an homage to 1331 01:14:50.180 --> 01:14:53.619 Joyce because much of his early writing was really informed 1332 01:14:53.659 --> 01:14:56.699 by Joyce. You know, the way he used words and 1333 01:14:56.739 --> 01:15:00.699 ran them together, you know, instead of, you know, like, 1334 01:15:00.880 --> 01:15:05.439 just writing like a normal person, I guess, you know. 1335 01:15:05.659 --> 01:15:11.319 He was definitely influenced so much by Joyce. And he 1336 01:15:11.380 --> 01:15:13.180 took it to a whole other level. 1337 01:15:14.189 --> 01:15:16.949 And I think you would agree, and we've spoken about 1338 01:15:16.970 --> 01:15:20.310 this before, for the dumb head that I was, When 1339 01:15:20.350 --> 01:15:22.289 I went in and read Joyce for the first time 1340 01:15:22.560 --> 01:15:25.359 at the behest of my British Lit class, I sat 1341 01:15:25.420 --> 01:15:28.340 there and just thought the light bulbs started to grow 1342 01:15:28.800 --> 01:15:32.520 and grow and grow. I'm going, wow, this is great. 1343 01:15:32.539 --> 01:15:35.779 I mean, it was like Jack was back after 20 years. 1344 01:15:36.479 --> 01:15:38.279 And that was a really neat thing. And, of course, 1345 01:15:38.319 --> 01:15:43.680 my Brit Lit professor, Professor Ms. Hirsch, And the accountant 1346 01:15:43.699 --> 01:15:45.619 said that and said, okay, fine, run with it. And 1347 01:15:45.680 --> 01:15:47.319 she was fine with it. In fact, she thought it 1348 01:15:47.340 --> 01:15:49.579 was really cool. She just said, look, remember, this is 1349 01:15:49.600 --> 01:15:52.140 a Brit-led class. It ain't about Jack. And I said, okay, fine, 1350 01:15:52.220 --> 01:15:54.180 but let me just do this. And she did. And 1351 01:15:54.239 --> 01:15:55.319 I thought that was really swell. 1352 01:15:57.090 --> 01:16:00.310 I'm really impressed with the fact that you chose that topic. And, 1353 01:16:00.829 --> 01:16:03.550 I mean, certainly people have talked about it a lot. 1354 01:16:03.829 --> 01:16:08.369 But to actually do a critical comparison between the two riders, 1355 01:16:08.949 --> 01:16:13.300 that's really brave of you. And that's a huge... constantly 1356 01:16:13.340 --> 01:16:16.859 bite off and try to support your argument. Even though 1357

01:16:16.880 --> 01:16:20.159 it might seem kind of obvious, to actually create what 1358 01:16:20.199 --> 01:16:23.039 you created, you know, you had to do a lot 1359 01:16:23.060 --> 01:16:23.539 more work. 1360 01:16:24.100 --> 01:16:27.720 I'll tell you what, though. It was a wonderful thing 1361 01:16:27.880 --> 01:16:30.680 to do. I mean, as you well remember, I mean, 1362 01:16:31.319 --> 01:16:34.140 I brought home like 18 books from the USF library, 1363 01:16:34.720 --> 01:16:38.020 you know, and I just, I mean, I was just, 1364 01:16:38.500 --> 01:16:40.920 it was the best. And I think you understand that too, 1365 01:16:40.960 --> 01:16:43.739 you're a researcher, and all the other researchers out there 1366 01:16:43.800 --> 01:16:46.979 understand that when you strike a vein of gold, there's 1367 01:16:47.090 --> 01:16:48.979 nothing that can keep you away from it, and you 1368 01:16:49.010 --> 01:16:52.710 just go deeper and deeper, and there's absolutely a love, 1369 01:16:52.750 --> 01:16:55.050 I guess I could say, you know. And that was 1370 01:16:55.069 --> 01:16:59.930 the case in my situation. But, I mean, the epiphany 1371 01:17:00.050 --> 01:17:03.760 of understanding where Kerouac came from After all these years, 1372 01:17:03.800 --> 01:17:06.020 you know, I'm going to get all fart now. You know, 1373 01:17:06.060 --> 01:17:09.159 my days are done. My thumbing is done. And all 1374 01:17:09.220 --> 01:17:11.880 of a sudden, I see this one going, Jack's calling me. 1375 01:17:12.720 --> 01:17:15.279 All right, let me go on to another thing, and 1376 01:17:15.479 --> 01:17:17.939 we only have three more categories to go. 1377 01:17:17.960 --> 01:17:18.460 Okay. 1378 01:17:18.819 --> 01:17:23.609 Fictional adolescent romance. Now, this gets a little bit more specific. 1379 01:17:24.210 --> 01:17:29.890 With Joyce, it was Emma Cleary, E.C., But still, with Kerouac, 1380 01:17:30.010 --> 01:17:33.850 it was Maggie Cassidy, M.C. Any take on that? 1381 01:17:36.140 --> 01:17:40.100 No, I actually, they probably weren't, Kerouac probably didn't get 1382 01:17:40.140 --> 01:17:41.380 that from Joyce, you know. 1383 01:17:41.720 --> 01:17:42.840 No, no, I don't think so. 1384 01:17:43.659 --> 01:17:46.399 Yeah, it's kind of fun, though, to go into Joyce's 1385 01:17:46.420 --> 01:17:47.680 store and come out to Kerouac. 1386 01:17:48.180 --> 01:17:52.920 That might be, you know, an unbidden coincidence. So going 1387 01:17:53.000 --> 01:17:57.300 on to the next to last category, Literary Similarity. Joyce 1388 01:17:57.319 --> 01:18:02.659 does Ulysses, and the Kerouac does On the Road. Now, 1389 01:18:03.100 --> 01:18:07.970 hold on. We have another one under the Joyce category, 1390 01:18:08.050 --> 01:18:12.729 Finnegan's Wake, and I think this is probably more applicable. 1391 01:18:13.289 --> 01:18:16.220 Kerouac does Old Angel Midnight. The only reason I say 1392 01:18:16.260 --> 01:18:21.159 that is because those around both

Joyce and Kerouac thought 1393 01:18:21.229 --> 01:18:24.649 that Finnegan's Wake and Old Angel Midnight was almost incomprehensible 1394 01:18:24.689 --> 01:18:26.390 to the point like, why are we doing this? I'm 1395 01:18:26.810 --> 01:18:28.270 going to throw that big one to you. 1396 01:18:29.189 --> 01:18:32.529 Yeah, I don't know. I haven't read Finnegan's Wake. I tried, 1397 01:18:32.590 --> 01:18:34.229 but I haven't gotten very far in it. 1398 01:18:34.489 --> 01:18:35.510 Most people haven't, yeah. 1399 01:18:36.010 --> 01:18:38.810 Yeah, I have tried about 20 times to read Ulysses, 1400 01:18:38.869 --> 01:18:41.630 and I think this time I'm up to page 75. 1401 01:18:41.630 --> 01:18:45.029 I mean, I can skim through it, but I can't 1402 01:18:45.229 --> 01:18:50.529 comprehend it. I don't see, though, any correlation between... Ulysses 1403 01:18:50.609 --> 01:18:53.050 and On the Road. Those are the two you compared, right? 1404 01:18:53.590 --> 01:18:56.310 Well, those are the first two, and agreed. They are 1405 01:18:56.350 --> 01:19:01.380 not that close in stylism. But again, as we have 1406 01:19:01.439 --> 01:19:06.359 spoken before, you're still on the age-old literary track of 1407 01:19:06.439 --> 01:19:09.180 the quest or the quest. 1408 01:19:09.840 --> 01:19:13.100 Right. Yeah, I agree with that. But the big difference 1409 01:19:13.199 --> 01:19:17.899 I'm thinking of is that Joyce, you know, based his book, Ulysses, 1410 01:19:18.340 --> 01:19:22.060 on a myth. And, in fact, that was the framework 1411 01:19:22.239 --> 01:19:24.060 for it. But On the Road was not based on 1412 01:19:24.220 --> 01:19:27.619 any myth. It was based on a true story, a 1413 01:19:27.859 --> 01:19:30.020 wild story that happened at one end of the country 1414 01:19:30.180 --> 01:19:34.869 and ended at the other, you know, and then looped back. So, yeah, 1415 01:19:34.970 --> 01:19:40.909 the difference is that Joyce used a framework. from mythology, 1416 01:19:41.329 --> 01:19:44.710 and Kerouac did so. In that way, you can't compare 1417 01:19:44.729 --> 01:19:50.069 the two books. In terms of the quest, that definitely is, 1418 01:19:50.369 --> 01:19:54.380 I think, in all of Kerouac's books, maybe not as 1419 01:19:54.560 --> 01:19:59.939 mythic as in On the Road, but still, I think 1420 01:19:59.960 --> 01:20:01.500 there's a quest in each of his books when you 1421 01:20:01.619 --> 01:20:02.600 start to read those. 1422 01:20:03.079 --> 01:20:05.539 All right, and fair enough. I would say that, and 1423 01:20:06.300 --> 01:20:09.090 you can go back to... We were talking about T.S. 1424 01:20:09.149 --> 01:20:10.510 Eliot's The Wasteland. 1425 01:20:10.770 --> 01:20:11.010 Yeah. 1426 01:20:11.770 --> 01:20:15.430 And, you know, through Arthur and The Grail and all that, 1427 01:20:15.810 --> 01:20:18.590 there has always been this fascination, and perhaps because it's 1428 01:20:18.770 --> 01:20:23.289 part of humankind, that there will

always be this quest 1429 01:20:23.510 --> 01:20:27.220 for whatever. There'll be the quest or there'll be, you know, 1430 01:20:27.270 --> 01:20:30.939 The Grail or something like that. With Ulysses and On 1431 01:20:30.979 --> 01:20:36.300 the Road, yeah, that's a pale comparison, objection well taken. 1432 01:20:37.220 --> 01:20:39.539 But then we get into that point at Finnegan's Wake 1433 01:20:40.439 --> 01:20:45.340 and Old Angel Midnight. I think Joyce's brother said, this 1434 01:20:45.399 --> 01:20:49.270 is barely comprehensible. What are you doing? And I think 1435 01:20:49.369 --> 01:20:55.130 Old Angel Midnight, with its also very esoteric scheme, was 1436 01:20:55.210 --> 01:20:59.899 also like, what are you doing? And this is pretty 1437 01:20:59.939 --> 01:21:02.770 much esoteric and not in the mainstream of Kerouac. Are 1438 01:21:02.789 --> 01:21:05.619 you familiar with Old Angel Midnight and what that might 1439 01:21:05.659 --> 01:21:08.939 have been as far as imperceptible? 1440 01:21:09.760 --> 01:21:11.420 I can't talk about it off the top of my head. 1441 01:21:11.479 --> 01:21:14.000 I'm not that into it. Didn't he write that about 1442 01:21:14.039 --> 01:21:17.819 Lucian Carr? I mean, that was a story based on 1443 01:21:18.060 --> 01:21:21.810 a man and his life that he knew. So I 1444 01:21:21.819 --> 01:21:24.409 think that was an homage to a friend. 1445 01:21:26.180 --> 01:21:29.340 Yes, point well taken, and you're right. I'm looking back 1446 01:21:29.359 --> 01:21:31.039 at my old paper. I'm not going to start paging 1447 01:21:31.060 --> 01:21:34.039 through that, but, yeah, you're right. And, of course, again, 1448 01:21:34.079 --> 01:21:36.510 you know, whatever I put forth doesn't necessarily mean a right. 1449 01:21:36.590 --> 01:21:38.010 I mean, it's just what hit me. 1450 01:21:38.250 --> 01:21:43.050 Oh, yeah, I know. These things can be noodled for 1451 01:21:43.109 --> 01:21:46.930 a long, long time. And, you know, going back for 1452 01:21:46.970 --> 01:21:50.010 a second to T.S. Eliot, if you read Windblown World, again, 1453 01:21:50.090 --> 01:21:52.979 Jack really draws a lot on things he has read. 1454 01:21:53.630 --> 01:21:56.489 And in a passage he wrote in August of 49, 1455 01:21:56.489 --> 01:21:59.670 he was writing about the lamentation. This is called the 1456 01:21:59.710 --> 01:22:04.689 continuation of the lamentation. After he talks about, you know, writing, 1457 01:22:04.930 --> 01:22:07.109 how easy it's going to be to write Dr. Sacks, 1458 01:22:07.989 --> 01:22:11.489 he then says, hurry up, please, it's time. You know, which, 1459 01:22:11.560 --> 01:22:15.800 of course, is the phrase from T.S. Eliot that gives 1460 01:22:15.819 --> 01:22:18.180 you kind of chills, you know, the scene in the bar. 1461 01:22:19.079 --> 01:22:21.340 It's kind of interesting. I just thought of this. He 1462 01:22:21.380 --> 01:22:25.279 talks about in real life, his mother had to have 1463 01:22:25.319 --> 01:22:28.079 all her teeth pulled and get a denture. And that's 1464 01:22:28.100 --> 01:22:31.180 the same thing that's happening in the bar scene in 1465 01:22:31.199 --> 01:22:34.270 the wasteland. She wants to get herself a new denture, 1466 01:22:34.560 --> 01:22:37.430 a new bunch of teeth. And that actually happened to 1467 01:22:37.630 --> 01:22:40.489 Kerouac's mother. Not relevant to anything, but it just came 1468 01:22:40.529 --> 01:22:41.930 into my mind just now. 1469 01:22:42.189 --> 01:22:44.050 No, that's good. We want to put things out. We 1470 01:22:44.090 --> 01:22:47.140 always do this on the grass, you know, because... Whatever 1471 01:22:47.180 --> 01:22:51.899 we consider, because Winston is a twinkie dinks. Yeah, we 1472 01:22:51.920 --> 01:22:54.939 put out because the people will figure it out. But 1473 01:22:54.979 --> 01:22:57.380 it's best to get it out there because it isn't 1474 01:22:57.420 --> 01:23:01.680 just mental masturbation. Because, you know, things do go bump 1475 01:23:01.699 --> 01:23:03.199 in the night, and that's why we do what we do. 1476 01:23:03.600 --> 01:23:06.220 So I'm glad you mentioned that. Now, here's the last one. 1477 01:23:06.819 --> 01:23:12.020 This one's the heavy one. That's the haunting. And it says, 1478 01:23:12.310 --> 01:23:15.550 on the Joyce, I wrote, unseen sleepers filled him with 1479 01:23:15.609 --> 01:23:19.529 strange dread. as though they could harm him, part of 1480 01:23:19.590 --> 01:23:24.270 a ghost motif found in Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake. Now, 1481 01:23:24.329 --> 01:23:28.949 going over to Kerouac, it said, Red brick walls haunted him, 1482 01:23:29.489 --> 01:23:32.510 a reminder of the boyhood loneliness and despair he felt 1483 01:23:33.029 --> 01:23:35.810 in the factory town of Lowe. The motif is found 1484 01:23:35.850 --> 01:23:37.890 in all his work. All right, so we're looking at, 1485 01:23:40.170 --> 01:23:42.590 I guess what we would call in Joyce, The Strange Dread. 1486 01:23:43.899 --> 01:23:47.060 and also the red brick walls, which we have somewhat 1487 01:23:47.100 --> 01:23:50.340 talked about at the beginning of the show. So what 1488 01:23:50.359 --> 01:23:54.960 about that? I mean, the hauntingness, we can definitely admit, 1489 01:23:56.380 --> 01:23:59.420 is something that Kerouac has used in his work. In fact, 1490 01:23:59.500 --> 01:24:03.890 while we were talking today, it was haunted, haunted, haunted. 1491 01:24:04.359 --> 01:24:08.090 That verb comes into the program, doesn't it, quite often? Right. 1492 01:24:09.060 --> 01:24:12.539 Yeah, that's really interesting. I have to think about that 1493 01:24:12.579 --> 01:24:15.159 for a while, if he was haunted by the red 1494 01:24:15.199 --> 01:24:18.119 bricks of Lowell. He seemed to be haunted by his 1495 01:24:18.149 --> 01:24:21.489 own life. He haunted himself. And certainly he was haunted 1496 01:24:21.529 --> 01:24:25.350 by his brother's death and

haunted by the Catholic Church. 1497 01:24:26.029 --> 01:24:29.989 But for the most part, his hauntings came from his 1498 01:24:30.149 --> 01:24:33.909 own life. And again, we'll have to talk about that more. 1499 01:24:33.930 --> 01:24:34.590 I'll have to. 1500 01:24:34.510 --> 01:24:34.890 Look into that. 1501 01:24:34.930 --> 01:24:35.970 I never thought about that. 1502 01:24:36.149 --> 01:24:36.989 That's okay. I mean. 1503 01:24:38.020 --> 01:24:41.750 Yeah, it's really interesting, and I think it's definitely worth 1504 01:24:41.970 --> 01:24:44.250 looking at. There are probably a lot of people who 1505 01:24:44.470 --> 01:24:48.050 have already decided this or have figured this out, but 1506 01:24:48.229 --> 01:24:51.170 I haven't. So I'll think of it for the next time. 1507 01:24:51.729 --> 01:24:55.550 Well, you know, let everybody understand also that a lot 1508 01:24:55.590 --> 01:24:57.510 of what we do, I mean, you really have no 1509 01:24:57.550 --> 01:24:59.930 preparation for it, but that doesn't matter. I mean, the 1510 01:24:59.949 --> 01:25:03.390 thing is that the individual about which we speak in 1511 01:25:03.409 --> 01:25:08.479 this literature is... The reason why we're even here is because, 1512 01:25:09.100 --> 01:25:12.279 as far as I can consider it, whoever I am, 1513 01:25:13.039 --> 01:25:18.750 is that it's huge. It's integral to me, to the 1514 01:25:18.829 --> 01:25:22.029 upbringing of anybody in the 60s and 70s, and I 1515 01:25:22.069 --> 01:25:26.109 think it really means something. And so it's not something 1516 01:25:26.130 --> 01:25:29.479 to be toyed with. And so, yes, I throw things 1517 01:25:29.569 --> 01:25:32.060 out to you, and you're honest enough to say, let 1518 01:25:32.079 --> 01:25:33.739 me go and check about that, and that's what we 1519 01:25:33.760 --> 01:25:39.920 should do. But also, before we go, also, Diane, if 1520 01:25:39.979 --> 01:25:42.960 people want to go into this, if people are saying, like, 1521 01:25:43.020 --> 01:25:45.840 what is this all about, where would you direct them 1522 01:25:45.880 --> 01:25:49.359 to right now with regard to what's on the net? 1523 01:25:50.039 --> 01:25:52.859 Well, I wouldn't refer them to anything on the Internet, 1524 01:25:52.880 --> 01:25:55.800 to be perfectly honest. There are a number of interesting sites. 1525 01:25:56.100 --> 01:26:01.539 You know, Levi Asher's Literary Kicks is a really good one. Litkicks.com, 1526 01:26:01.579 --> 01:26:05.399 I think it is. just type in literary kicks, you'll 1527 01:26:05.859 --> 01:26:09.199 find Levi. There's a lot of stuff that would also 1528 01:26:09.300 --> 01:26:12.239 relate to Joyce, and he studies a lot of different 1529 01:26:12.279 --> 01:26:16.899 kinds of literature. He's very, very interested in romanticism and 1530 01:26:17.579 --> 01:26:20.159 the da-da and everything else you can possibly think of 1531 01:26:20.239 --> 01:26:22.510 in terms of literature. So Levi is like the

first 1532 01:26:22.590 --> 01:26:25.729 and the best. But I would refer people to books, 1533 01:26:25.949 --> 01:26:28.350 and the book I would refer them to, the first 1534 01:26:28.430 --> 01:26:32.779 book is called Jack's Book by Barry Gifford and and 1535 01:26:32.840 --> 01:26:36.600 Lawrence Lee. And they wrote a beautiful little book called 1536 01:26:37.500 --> 01:26:41.500 Kerouac's Town. It's a tiny little book, about 50 pages long. 1537 01:26:41.539 --> 01:26:45.489 They wrote it in like 1974, I think. They made 1538 01:26:45.510 --> 01:26:49.250 the first pilgrimage back to Lowell to document where he was. 1539 01:26:49.329 --> 01:26:53.869 And they interviewed both Gabrielle and Stella in this book. Very, 1540 01:26:53.890 --> 01:26:56.659 very good book. So, Barry Gifford, he's quite brilliant. And 1541 01:26:56.699 --> 01:26:59.239 Lawrence Lee, I'm not sure what Lawrence does besides take photos, 1542 01:26:59.319 --> 01:27:02.810 but Jack's book. If you want to read about Jack, 1543 01:27:02.890 --> 01:27:05.170 what you're going to read is all of his friends 1544 01:27:05.270 --> 01:27:08.720 talking about him. And most of what they say is 1545 01:27:08.960 --> 01:27:11.659 really right on. So that's the first place I'd go. 1546 01:27:11.840 --> 01:27:13.979 The second place I'd go is Big Sur, the book 1547 01:27:14.119 --> 01:27:18.899 Big Sur. If you read those two books together, you'll 1548 01:27:19.489 --> 01:27:21.890 learn everything you need to know. Oh, I have to 1549 01:27:22.010 --> 01:27:25.689 add a third. Joyce Johnson's Minor Characters. I think this 1550 01:27:25.710 --> 01:27:27.609 is one of the most beautiful books ever written. She's 1551 01:27:27.670 --> 01:27:30.500 a brilliant writer. And she writes about her love affair 1552 01:27:30.520 --> 01:27:35.680 with Jack, and the way she expresses things as an eyewitness, 1553 01:27:35.859 --> 01:27:40.899 being there the minute On the Road was reviewed, it 1554 01:27:40.920 --> 01:27:45.909 gives you chills. So, Joyce Johnson, minor characters, Barry Gifford, 1555 01:27:46.590 --> 01:27:49.909 Jack's book, and Jack's own book, Big Sur. Those three 1556 01:27:49.949 --> 01:27:54.090 books together will give you a really three-dimensional look at Caroline. 1557 01:27:55.369 --> 01:27:57.689 You know, one of the things I... was doing in 1558 01:27:57.729 --> 01:28:01.659 a graduate project back in 2001, was to show how 1559 01:28:01.720 --> 01:28:08.060 much fiction really does tell about the human, in particular society, culture, 1560 01:28:09.300 --> 01:28:11.800 that would not be considered part of the record because 1561 01:28:11.859 --> 01:28:14.560 it's not in the newspapers and such. But, you know, 1562 01:28:14.859 --> 01:28:17.699 going there, you do find a whole lot more about 1563 01:28:17.760 --> 01:28:22.760 what's going on. The tenor of the culture and where 1564 01:28:22.779 --> 01:28:26.109 people are going And so, you know, fiction where once 1565 01:28:26.170 --> 01:28:28.630 upon a time I said, well, you know, what's the 1566 01:28:28.710 --> 01:28:32.350 use of it? But true things are said in fiction, 1567 01:28:33.670 --> 01:28:36.930 you know, when they are definitely based on the time 1568 01:28:37.189 --> 01:28:41.310 in which they're written, not science fiction necessarily. And I 1569 01:28:41.369 --> 01:28:46.899 think this is obviously the province of Kerouac and others 1570 01:28:47.319 --> 01:28:51.199 about that time, from the 50s through probably just close 1571 01:28:51.220 --> 01:28:53.500 to the end of the 60s, and that they should 1572 01:28:53.520 --> 01:28:56.699 be consulted because that is telling you a lot about 1573 01:28:56.739 --> 01:28:58.979 what was going on at the time. How do you 1574 01:28:59.000 --> 01:28:59.539 feel about that? 1575 01:29:00.890 --> 01:29:04.890 Yeah, and what Kerouac and his friends were doing was 1576 01:29:04.909 --> 01:29:09.439 a backslash, was a response to World War II in 1577 01:29:09.460 --> 01:29:11.739 that period of time. And World War II was a 1578 01:29:11.800 --> 01:29:16.939 backlash against the Depression. And the 60s were, well, Kerouac 1579 01:29:16.960 --> 01:29:19.890 during the 50s certainly was, it was a backlash against 1580 01:29:19.899 --> 01:29:22.989 the conservatism and Joe McCarthy and all those other things 1581 01:29:23.010 --> 01:29:25.770 that were going on, the witch hunts and the persecution movement. 1582 01:29:26.399 --> 01:29:30.079 And the 60s were embracing Kerouac. You know, that's what 1583 01:29:30.239 --> 01:29:33.439 the hippies were all about. And that was the backlash 1584 01:29:33.479 --> 01:29:38.529 against the 50s again. And so everything that you can 1585 01:29:38.569 --> 01:29:41.649 look at, and I'm getting lost in your question now, 1586 01:29:42.069 --> 01:29:45.829 is a backlash against what's previously come. And I'm waiting 1587 01:29:45.869 --> 01:29:50.090 now for the backlash against our current government. 1588 01:29:50.409 --> 01:29:50.649 Hello? 1589 01:29:50.670 --> 01:29:55.079 I'm ready. I'm ready. So, yeah, you just have to 1590 01:29:55.140 --> 01:29:57.770 wait long enough. If you wait long enough, the backlash 1591 01:29:57.789 --> 01:29:58.069 will come. 1592 01:29:58.789 --> 01:30:01.069 Well, I'll tell you what, my thought is this. You 1593 01:30:01.090 --> 01:30:03.310 do what you do, you lay it out there, and 1594 01:30:03.350 --> 01:30:04.689 when it comes back, it comes back. 1595 01:30:04.710 --> 01:30:05.729 Yeah, yeah. 1596 01:30:06.430 --> 01:30:07.930 And that's all we can do. Listen, you're going to 1597 01:30:07.949 --> 01:30:08.890 come back again, aren't. 1598 01:30:08.770 --> 01:30:12.340 You, D.D.? Sure, sure, I'd be happy to. I'm honored 1599 01:30:12.380 --> 01:30:13.100 that you have me. 1600 01:30:13.079 --> 01:30:13.479 On at all. 1601 01:30:13.560 --> 01:30:14.079 Thank you. 1602 01:30:15.399 --> 01:30:17.399 Believe me, I tell you what, this has bothered my soul, 1603 01:30:17.420 --> 01:30:19.600 and I hope other people can at least appreciate it. 1604 01:30:20.409 --> 01:30:22.260 You don't have to go into fiction, but at least 1605 01:30:22.300 --> 01:30:25.439 to tap into what he was doing at the time, 1606 01:30:26.060 --> 01:30:30.359 which is a very revelant look at the way things 1607 01:30:30.399 --> 01:30:34.819 were back then. And one other thing, I want to 1608 01:30:34.899 --> 01:30:37.270 ask you this. Are you jealous of the fact that 1609 01:30:38.010 --> 01:30:41.869 when I was coaching, I was an assistant coach at Columbia, 1610 01:30:42.670 --> 01:30:48.489 in those beautiful fall days up in upper Manhattan, that I, 1611 01:30:48.840 --> 01:30:51.760 after we got done working out, we would go through 1612 01:30:51.960 --> 01:30:56.899 the football stadium, and I would watch, you know, Columbia's 1613 01:30:56.939 --> 01:31:00.859 team working out. And in my mind, I said to myself, 1614 01:31:01.039 --> 01:31:03.260 this is where Kerouac played. Yeah, yeah. 1615 01:31:03.600 --> 01:31:05.279 Oh, yeah, I'm jealous. I'm definitely jealous. 1616 01:31:05.319 --> 01:31:06.300 That was pretty neat stuff. 1617 01:31:06.319 --> 01:31:09.050 When I went to New York to, not to follow 1618 01:31:09.090 --> 01:31:11.789 in his footsteps, but when I went to McSorley's Bar 1619 01:31:11.810 --> 01:31:14.409 to find a kettle of fish and the Blue Note 1620 01:31:14.550 --> 01:31:17.829 Jazz Club to the village, There was nothing left. The 1621 01:31:17.869 --> 01:31:20.949 heart and soul of Karen White was not there. So, yeah, 1622 01:31:21.109 --> 01:31:21.569 I'm jealous. 1623 01:31:21.949 --> 01:31:23.029 That's great stuff, isn't it? 1624 01:31:23.569 --> 01:31:24.050 It is. 1625 01:31:24.810 --> 01:31:27.819 All right. Listen, thanks for being with us, and we'll 1626 01:31:27.840 --> 01:31:30.020 try to get back out here to talk about Jackie again. 1627 01:31:30.699 --> 01:31:31.619 All right. Thank you, Keith. 1628 01:31:31.720 --> 01:31:33.939 All right. Thank you, sister. Bye-bye now. Bye.