by
Jack Kerouac
January 10, 2009
Revised: 11/2010
This update covers: part one: Chapter 1 thru Chapter 14
Major events that have occurred thus far:
We are introduced to Sal, Sal Paradise who lets us in on some personal background about himself and his current state of despair. Then he hits us right off with Dean Moriarty to tell us that the coming of Dean began his life on the road. From there he begins his litany of names and events that are confusing, chaotic and generally laborious. There are so many names coming at you from every angle that is it is difficult to keep track of just who is who.
Chad king is thrown at us, Wham! Who is Chad King? No time for that because next we are confronted with Carlo, no last name? Who is Carlo? It doesn’t matter because we are right back to Dean and as quickly as we are told about Dean’s confused past we move now to Dean is coming to New York and married to a girl called Marylou. Then Chad and Tim Gray, (who is Tim Gray?) tell Sal where the long awaited Dean is staying. Sal goes on about Dean and his girlfriend Marylou and some of it almost makes for interesting reading. Marylou is referred to as “dumb and capable of doing horrible things”, like what I don’t know. Sal is supposed to be a writer, Sal in actuality is Jack Kerouac and in fact just about all the main characters are writers or trying to become writers. Kerouac claims to have written this book using no drugs or stimulants outside of coffee. Trying to follow this chaotic, Marx Brothers like story makes me think it must have been some strong coffee and lots of it. Unlike a Marx Brothers movie however, it is not funny but mostly rather disturbing.
After some madcap silliness with Dean, Sal and Carlo, (we learn Carlo’s last name is Marx, how appropriate and telling). Sal finally makes it out of New York on the subway and heads upstate.
Having traveled little more than an uneventful 40 miles he ends up getting on a bus to Chicago where his long drawn out hitch hiking saga begins. A plethora of characters flash in and out as we progress, I wouldn’t even call most of them bit characters, they are more like an annoyance. One or two stand out though, just enough to keep you turning the page hoping for something to make sense.
Sal ends up with Montana slim in a wild drunken night of rampage in Cheyenne. This little adventure yields no surprises but is slightly amusing nonetheless and thankfully kept short. He ends up in Denver where Chad King reemerges, living with his mother. We learn that Tim Gray, (remember Tim Gray?) has a place for him to stay with someone named Roland Major. Sal fears a divide in his “gang”, separating Dean and Carlo from the others.
Sal gets in touch with Carlo and Dean, nothing much happens. Carlo is a nut case and Dean is just as bad. Sal sees Dean as some kind of Holy man, though he comes off as more like a real loser. They spend some time together; more bit characters, and he meets up with Eddie, someone he met during his hitchhiking days, then Eddie disappears again. Sal goes into a typical all night session where Dean and Carlo talk all night until morning. It is the nonsensical ravings of two mad men as best as I can tell. Three if you include Sal.
Sal does not see Dean and Carlo for five days and goes to the mountains with others. They have a cabin and Sal goes to the opera with one of the girls. (A Night at the Opera?) After, they return to the cabin where things soon turn into another night of drunken mayhem. Again, like a Marx Brothers movie, only with everyone drunk and completely out of their mind. No revelations, nothing of any significance. It ends with everyone leaving and feeling miserable. After the next sad chapter, Sal bids good-by to Dean, Carlo, Tim and others too many to mention, to board a bus to San Francisco and meet someone named Remi Boncceur?
Sal arrives in San Francisco; he offers an interesting account of the bus trip and his arrival into California. (a little time to catch your breath!) He goes to meet Remi and things quickly take a turn back to the ridiculous. No big surprise there. Remi is a raving loony just like the rest it seems, he has a girlfriend named Lee Ann who fights with Remi and hates them both. Jack seems to not favor women too kindly in this particularly directionless story. Sal is supposed to write something for Hollywood but is unsuccessful so Remi gets him a job where he works. A lot of time is spent telling about this job, working as a guard at night with a handful of typical insignificant characters. Towards the end he does offer a little background on Remi which does shed some light on his quirky demeanor. Regardless, you can’t help but wonder where all this is going and in truth is seems to be going nowhere, just like Sal.
Before his departure Sal takes a hike up the nearby mountain as he vowed and this little passage is quite a welcome departure as he reflects on the experience. It is as if you can feel a change coming for Sal, a much needed change. Maybe for a moment Jack stopped to catch his breath?
He leaves Remi, their friendship damaged, and quietly slips out the window. The same way he came in. From Oakland he hits the road again, but something feels different this time with all the craziness behind him. You feel sadness for Sal as he laments that nothing has turned out the way he imagined. He starts his trip back with a sense of purpose and clarity and you want things to go well for Sal.
Bakersfield brings the change Sal needs, sudden, as if emerging from a storm into the still calm. He meets a young Mexican girl on the bus to LA and so begins a sweet and endearing chapter in Sal’s life. Though not without its characters, it is still the best story of his life on the road thus far. Jack takes a departure from the lunacy of earlier chapters and gives a good illustration of live in America for many at that time, he shows us something human and real even with the expected distractions. When Sal has to leave Terry you know it has to happen yet you are saddened because for the first time Jack has given you something to care about. New York is calling however and Sal must be on his way. With one last look, off he goes back on the road.
Things that will be important to remember:
Sal has a very eclectic group of friends and his life is surrounded in chaotic, unpredictable adventures and misadventures which he will never be free of. However he does have a sensible human side though he keeps it well hidden. More juvenile high jinks are sure to follow.
Choose one of the 20 questions you haven’t answered yet and answer it here:
If you were an English teacher, would you want to share this work with your students?
Yes
It is a good example of a very unique and targeted writing style or genre. This genre was very popular for its time and was important for fueling the emergence of a new generation of Americans. Much of the vocabulary used in the book is carefully selected and skillfully used to convey a specific feel and attitude, although, I’m not sure just how intentional it was on Jack’s part at the time. There are also many references to society at that time.
This update covers: part one: Chapter 14 thru part two: Chapter 4
Major events that have occurred since the last update:
Sal gets a bus ticket as far as Pittsburgh not having enough money to get all the way to New York. He buys bread and salami to make sandwiches for the trip. He gives a good account of the bus trip back. He meets a girl on the bus who rides with him as far as Columbus, Ohio. She had money and paid for his food after the sandwiches ran out. He leaves the bus in Pittsburgh and hitches his way back to New York. He meets some interesting characters along the way, though not as crazy and overly colorful as those in the beginning of the book. Maybe the drugs were starting to level out at this point. Oh, did I just say that? So sorry!
Sal has made it back to New York and found his way back to his aunt’s home in Patterson, NJ. They buy a new electric refrigerator and he learns Dean had been staying with his aunt a few days while he was making his way home.
After more than a year Sal finally sees Dean again, he has been home mostly working on his book and is going back to school. So it appears Sal is getting some direction in his life at least for now. While visiting family during the Christmas holiday in Virginia, Dean pulls up in a new ’49 Hudson with none other than Marylou and Ed Dunkel in tow, it’s a long story. They all have some Christmas dinner and the family thinks Dean is a crazy man, I think so too. Later they take a ride to town, the four of them, and all Sal can talk about is Dean like he is some holy man or mystic and Sal is under his spell. Before long Dean is become the focal point and everything is starting to take a turn toward the silly side again and Sal is so influenced by Dean. He is about to hit the road again. They go here and there and do a lot of nothing for a while. They reunite with Carlo who has calmed down quite a bit since last we heard from him. It is almost funny at one point when Sal refers to Dean walking in a manner that looked like Groucho Marx. It seems that Jack Kerouac really is trying to get in all the references he can from the era, from the lingo to the music and lyrics and movies as well. Perhaps I was not far off when I made my reference to the Marx Brothers in my first report.
Sal has a girl in New York that he wants to marry, her name is Lucille (the name B.B. King gave to his guitar) and she has a child. She is not keen on Sal’s friends, Sal says “she sensed the madness they put in me.” Well I’m glad someone other than me can see it. This relationship is doomed however, she was married already and Sal knew it was impossible. He is aware of his own confusion, as he put it and that is all he has to offer.
Sal and assorted friends and strangers celebrate the New Year with the usual drinking and carrying on. A friend of Sal’s named Rollo Greb springs up out of nowhere and suddenly the four are staying with Rollo and Dean is in awe of him and takes a real liking to him. It seemed Rollo reminded him of a jazz pianist, George Shearing, he and Sal went to see at Birdland only recently and they had been smoking something other than cigarettes.
This update covers: part two: Chapter 5 thru part three: Chapter One
Major events that have occurred since last update:
Sal is itching to take one more trip to the west coast before his spring semester at school. Dean and Marylou are going back with Ed and Sal decides to go with them. He wants to see what Dean will do next and he has hopes of starting something with Marylou. Before they leave they spend some time with Carlo at his house. Carlo has gotten more serious about things but is still strange all the same. He grills them all on just what the hell they are doing. They have no answers for Carlo and nothing really becomes of it.
They telephone an old friend Sal calls Old Bull Lee. Bull is in New Orleans with his wife and kids. Ed Dunkel’s wife is also there waiting for them. Finally they leave in the rain and head south. They arrive in Washington D.C. on the day of Harry Truman’s inauguration. Ed took over the driving and they got a speeding ticket in Virginia. The cops took twenty-five of their forty dollars leaving them with little money to continue the trip. They pick up hitchhikers for gas money. None have money so they end up stealing the gas as well as food.
They drive through North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia the Florida panhandle then straight through to Louisiana and New Orleans. They cross the river and make it to Bull’s house. Bull is a wacked out character with a drug addiction. Ed is reunited with his wife and they all spend time going to the bars. Bull takes Sal to the betting parlor. They don’t win anything. Bull questions them on just what the hell they are all doing, much the same as Carlo had done earlier. They really had no answer other than they just had to be on the road and that was all there was to it.
After a couple of days they leave New Orleans and head west. It took two days to get across Texas, stealing gas and food and cigarettes all the way. They pick up a couple of hitchhikers who promise them money. They drive through New Mexico and into Arizona where they get stopped by another cop. He wanted to see their papers, believing the car to be stolen. Everything is cleared up and they move on. In Tucson they stop at the home of an old friend of Sal’s, Hal Hingham. He is a writer working on his book. They descend on Hal and his family like locust. After eating they take five dollars from him and move on. Outside of Tucson they pick up another hitchhiker, a cowboy from Bakersfield. Dean reminisces about growing up in Bakersfield. They drop off the cowboy and the other rider and head for Oakland.
In San Francisco Dean drops off Sal and Marylou and takes off to see his wife Camille. He left them stranded with no money and nowhere to go. They find a hotel clerk who lets them have a room on credit. After a couple of days Marylou separates from Sal and begins prostituting herself. (It seems Jack can’t give a girl a break.) This was Sal’s lowest point, alone and hungry. This goes on for a couple of days until Dean finds him. How I do not know. Back at Camille’s house Dean ask what happened to Marylou and Sal tells him. Dean has a job as a salesman but this is short lived. Sal stays with them a few days. Camille wanted him to leave and Dean didn’t care if he did or not. As soon as Sal got his GI check he made ready to leave. Sal realizes the trip was for nothing and wonders what he accomplished by coming to Frisco in the first place. I do too.
On Sal’s last night Dean finds Marylou and they go out on the town and have a thoroughly miserable time. Sal is ready to leave. Sal gets on his bus to New York in the morning. Dean and Marylou want some of the sandwiches Sal made for the trip and Sal refuses. Finally Sal has had enough at least for now anyway. They depart with the thought that they would never see each other again and not caring either way. I couldn’t help feeling the same.
Things that will be important to remember:
Sal has the road bug and his traveling days are not over. Dean is not out of Sal’s life; Sal is too wrapped up in the mystery that is Dean. Their lives are now intertwined and they won’t be apart long.
This update covers: part three: Chapter 2 thru part five
Major events that have occurred since the last update:
As far as what happened since the last update, I read it and it is just too exhausting and repetitious to go into. But I’ll try Anyway. Dean is with Camille, he has an injured thumb. He is divorcing one girl, living with another one, trying to marry another, he is having babies, and he is still a lunatic. Sal comes to see him in San Francisco and Camille throws them both out. (Jack and his ill-tempered women) Sal has money he got from a girl in Denver. She just gave it to him out of the blue. Is any of this making sense yet? Sal and Dean decide they will go to Italy but first they have to get out of San Francisco. What foolishness is this? They visit Galatea Dunkel, Ed’s wife. She agrees with Camille for kicking them out. They go to little Harlem with a bunch of people. They all have a wonderfully terrible, confusing and idiotic time. Everyone but Sal picks on Dean. Are you getting this?
Mercifully they leave San Francisco and get a ride back to Denver. Instead of telling us some interesting insights of traveling and anything the least bit interesting about anything, Sal (Jack) continues to bore us with his same laborious, by now all too familiar insane ramblings about Dean. Enough already! I get it that Sal has a bizarre; almost God worship of Dean but it seems to take over everything else in the story. In his effort to make this ludicrous point, Sal continually hits us over the head with it until we are numb. Yes, Dean is the driving force of Sal’s whole reason for being. Sal’s beginning and his end or so he thinks, Sal is confused. I sure hope that at least Jack intended this story to be more than just that!
This whole trip back from San Francisco to New York perhaps tells the most about the relationship between Sal and Dean so far. Not that it actually is poignant or makes you think something meaningful is going to come of it. For the most part it is more incomprehensible hipster, beat, and pseudo philosophical poetic dialog.
Jack has a way of spanning weeks and even months, changing from one situation to something else completely different in one sentence. He says things that make no sense and moves on to another situation with no concern for the debris left in his wake. This is the madness that ensues when Sal and Dean are together.
In New York Sal finally sells a book, how is beyond me. Now he is in the money. Dean is still in New York and has become a real sad sack. He has another wife, Inez. Sal feels the pull of the road and must go. Why I really don’t know and I really don’t care. He meets some goofy character on the bus. There seems to be no normal people on the road, if there are Sal never meets any of them. Sal goes to Denver for some reason, just to go I think. He just rambles on about spending days and nights in Denver saloons. This is so old by now and has worn miserably thin at this point. Dean once again goes off his rocker (where he apparently is the most comfortable) and comes out to meet Sal in Denver. They make plans to go to Mexico; Dean wants to get a Mexican divorce. Stupid Alert!
I actually still had hopes that maybe one redeeming chapter might burst forth and surprise me. Maybe Mexico would be the road trip to breathe life into this poor battered story.
Alas, it was not to be. It was interesting that they were going across the border, and they had never been there before. That they were so excited about going, but Jack once again had nothing redeeming to offer, it turned out to be just another predictable drunken fiasco. It starts off amusing with some interesting dialog about Mexico, and then it quickly gets out of control. They go to a whorehouse which ends up being the bulk of the whole story of their trip. They don’t discover anything; they don’t realize anything, nothing is really any different. Even though Jack would have you believe they were having some great religious experience or something. They continue on to Mexico City where Sal suddenly goes into a fever and Dean abandons him, again. In one very too long sentence Sal leaves Mexico City and then is in Dilly, Texas. He offers nothing about how he got over his fever, how he got out of Mexico or how he even got to Dilly. Then in another ridiculous sentence he is suddenly out of Texas and on a dark street in Manhattan where from a window above him he meets the true love of his life. They make plans for the rest of their life. All of this hits you like a bucket of ice cold water. Jack races through all of this with light speed in an effort to apparently wrap things up when he realized (or not) this entire story was a long rush of incoherent thought brought on by some kind of stimulant, supposedly coffee. I can’t say what exactly but it must have been waning at this point.
Sal writes Dean and he comes right away to New York to take Sal and his girl Laura back with him. Dean goes back to Inez and she throws him out but he is living with Camille on the west coast anyway. Do we care? Dean is pretty much a miserable wreck by this time and Sal and Laura are unable to go back with him. They go off with Remi Boncceur and his girl to a concert. Remi just suddenly appears after having traveled around the world a couple of times. Really! But he doesn’t like Dean. Really! Dean has to go back to San Francisco alone and Remi will not even give Dean a lift to the train station. Really! This makes Sal and Laura very very sad and they have to wave good-by to Dean from the back of the Cadillac. All the while Sal is worried about his friend Dean and how will he make out on the train back home. Sal ends by telling us that he never stops thinking about Dean and wondering how or what he is doing. Poor sad, pitiful Sal. This could almost bring tears to your eyes if you actually cared the least little bit.
