JACK KEROUAC
ONE PURE AFTERNOON in that prime of time which is Indian Summer in the sad northern earth, in America hard heard echoed in the trumpet’s slow blues as chewed thoughtfully from the lips of dejected jazz musicians with rings under their eyes philosophizing upon things of the day in the depths of the club night, olden & golden light falling thru fire escape & registering bars shadowy in alley of oldtime tar, 1922, the sky singed a burnt hazel orange as if the summer worn edges of the blue, & from the streets of towns & cities there rises that sleepy good shimmer of sun heated manures & oils and befumed activities of the daily workaday dream, Man you see there self believingly & heartbreakingly walking forth with the perfect accommodation of some liquid ghost in a magical action inside mind or imprinted upon the bliss screen of essential Pity in some central Void Night for naught, so that in the instant of death you can imagine someone must have thought “Oh all things were but ignorant forms of pity!,” a young printer who was my father Leo Kerouac of Lowell Mass. sat at his rolltop desk his curly black head caught in dust motes snowing in their shaft of afternoon, his face stormy with frowns of Breton dark, ceremonious in a vest & shirtsleeves rolled back showing thick earnest arms, body propped forward eagerly at the iron glooms of an old black typewriter with the arch of his back where the glistening vest drew out the frowsed shirt belying his excitement, thinking, in the honesties of his French Canadian heart “To write this old column right, how things were 25 years ago in Lowell why then, by gosh, how’m I gonna make the folks read it to sound like it was real then like things are real now, unless I sneak in a little oldtime regrets.” With both forefingers he plapped on the keys, popeyed to compose, time of the essence for his Friday night edition of the 8-page theatrical tabloid the Spot Light, 2¢ a copy but distributed free on Friday nights to patrons of Lowell movie theaters elbowing out at midnight to streets so sad you’d think the fresh rose of 8 o’clock curtain lay there tired and worn and nowgrit, and it came out on the page as follow: “25 YEARS AGO In the old days one of the biggest of the theatrical hits ever scored here—”
Reflection on Leo (1963)
JACK KEROUAC
I thank God that, in bringing me to birth in this world which is so sorrowful that the bones of delicate ladies are laid to dust, dust indeed, I mean dirt, dirty old muddy old dirt all that sweetness of face and hands and ladylike arrangements all gone to worms who come a-eyein’ em even before the last Te Deum is done in the chapel or the church, in this world so really paradoxically unbearable when you come to think of it, where little infants die without a blot on their brows, God, in giving me birth in this mess of messes called life, did at least let me issue from the loins of my father Leo Alcide Kerouac who was the only honest man I ever knew and the only completely honest expresser of what he thought about the world and the people in it.
Not that there aren’t other honest men but I haven’t met them yet, except one or two, who nevertheless have some kind of false optimism to cover up the shame of their knowing that they have so much, have tricks borrowed from the philosophies of others, or bury themselves in aimless works, devices, explanations like eager condemned men on the witness stand, name it. But my father sat stunned and naked under these stars and breathed nothing but despair and knew it and said so, and told me so.
The last months of his life on his deathbed he told me things in the middle of the night that would make your hair stand on end.
I’ve written elsewhere about his early days, his birth in St. Hubert Quebec (not the St. Hubert near Montreal but the one up north near the Gaspe Peninsula, near a town called Rivière du Loup which was said to belong to the Kerouacs before the English entrepreneurs of 1770 or thereabouts took it away by legal shenanigans). I’ve written about his early hale days as insurance man, printer, happy-go-lucky strawhatted goodtime family man of Lowell Mass. and even got to the later days when, after losing his printing business because of gambling debts (horses and cards), he fell on evil days wandering around dismal little New England towns as part time linotypist going wherever the union sent him. It was during this time that beastly bastardly nature was making me, his son, hit a tremendous halcyon glowing youthful stride . . . the thought of it makes me ashamed. But so now he was transferring the hopes of his own youth onto me.
I was a good athlete and a good scholar and I was headed for college in New York with a halo round my hair and big thick legs in wool socks.
Acknowledgments
My deepest gratitude is reserved for John Sampas, literary executor of the Kerouac estate. John’s comprehensive knowledge of Kerouac’s archive continually astounds me, and this book would not have been possible without his insightful, generous, and intrepid spirit. I have taken great joy from our conversations regarding these materials (and a wide range of other topics), many of which have taken place in the very home in which the youthful Sebastian and Jack conspired upon their literary ambitions. I hope that John will be pleased by this book, as it owes much to his enthusiasm and sagacity.
Justine DeFeo logged a great number of hours as my research and editorial assistant on this project, though her eagerness and commitment to detail never dimmed. Her rapt fascination with all things Kerouac and her exhilaration in the face of new ideas made Justine a true pleasure to be around. I am extremely proud of the work that she did on this volume and I hope that she learned as much as I did along the way.
Several years ago, my longtime friend Bob Comeau drew me into his knowledgeable fascination with the life and music of Dmitri Shostakovich. The closing pages of my introduction would have been unthinkable without his influence.
This book also owes a tremendous debt to several of my colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, each of whom contributed their particular wisdom and intelligence to the thoughts collected here. At an early stage, Andre Dubus III looked over the archival materials I had assembled, then aided me in thinking about how they might be arranged. His insights and questions were instrumental to the structure of this volume. Mike Millner and I have worked together on numerous Kerouac-related projects since I arrived at UML in 2011, and I am continually inspired by the degree of fervor, thoughtfulness, and rigor animating his teaching, scholarship, and public humanities efforts. Mike’s ideas and sense of intellectual commitment have been invigorating and influential. The various insights of Anthony Szczesiul, Keith Mitchell, Jonathan Silverman, and Chad Montrie have also influenced my writing in this volume. I hope that each of them recognizes his distinctive contributions.
Robert Guinsler of Sterling Lord Literistic provided tremendous help and support at every stage of this endeavor, as did the editorial team at Da Capo—especially Ben Schafer, Carolyn Sobczak, and John Searcy.
Melissa Hudasko—my darling Mishka—has lived with this project across the entire arc of its development. She remains my first and final reader, my fellow traveler through a world of ideas and experience uniquely our own. The range of Melissa’s curiosities and abilities continues to astound and humble me, and I am incredibly grateful to share this life (and all of its involving mysteries) with her.
T. F. T.
TODD F. TIETCHEN is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, where he teaches courses in Beat writing and contemporary American literature. He is the author of The Cubalogues: Beat Writers in Revolutionary Havana, along with numerous articles on American art, literature, and intellectual history.
Jack Kerouac, Haunted Life
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