Kerouac!

[man-o-steel]

With the addition of this, the board is now complete!

Any other fans?

[Dean Karpowicz]

Ha!

I am teaching Dharma Bums this semester. I haven't read it for years, but it was always my favorite. I wonder how my 237 class will respond to it. They aren't as talkative as my 227, but I hope that will change as we get through a few books.

I have taught On The Road before. I was surprised that students didn't take to it the way that I thought they would. Part of it is because of the treatment of women in that book. Even so, I can remember On The Road being one of those books that made me want to change the way I lived my life. It's great the way Kerouac blends Catholicism and Buddhism, the way transience become a form of spirituality, the way his prose parallels a long jazz riff. Great stuff...

[man-o-steel]

On the Road changed my entire perspective on life.

Reading the Original Scroll recently, it absolutely changed the way I plan to live.

Road was the first Kerouac I read, and maybe that's why it's still my favorite. But The Dharma Bums is certainly my 2nd favorite, and IT really made me want to climb a mountain. I went backpacking for two weeks in New Mexico in high school, and I really really need to do something like that again. I want to find the EXACT spot on that Seattle mountaintop........


If people don't respond well to Kerouac, screw 'em. I know an equal amount of men and women who are Kerouac fans. So how are women portrayed in the novel? There was one absolute nut, but there were two or three women who seemed absolutely lovely. I wanted to hang out with most of the people in the novel. These people are wild, zany, and beautiful. Everyone, not just the women.
Some of the wives are quiet, I guess... perhaps that is an awful quality in a person?

 

[man-o-steel]

This year I've been doing something new: keeping a notebook of favorite quotations/passages. Here are some of my favorite Kerouac tidbits:

"There's nowhere to go but everywhere."
"All you do is head straight for the grave, a face just covers a skull awhile. Stretch that skull-cover and smile."
"Ah the mad hearts of all of us."
"It sounds like the sad gun of eternity being fired in the name of mortal imperfection."
"Everything belongs to me because I am poor."
"Gods, if not help me, if instead barb me, be careful of me, I can catch thunderbolts and pull you down and have done it before. Adieu!"
"I'm the maddest liver in the world right now as well as the best watcher and that's no sneezing thing."
"Time is the purest and cheapest form of doom."
"We're crawling up a cavity of the plateau, better things and higher levels of world-wonder ahead."
"milkshake [...] to put some freeze in my hot tormented stomach."
"Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk -- real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious."
"Sociability is just a big smile and a big smile is nothing but teeth."
"So the party was over and all the screaming was done and what was accomplished?"
"For some reason or another, a Hershey bar would save my soul right now."
"... Japhy was always so dead serious about food, and I wished the whole world was dead serious about food instead of silly rockets and machines and explosives using everybody's food money to blow their heads off anyway."
"...dig out my jar of purple Jello and look at the white moon through it."
"'Okay world,' I said, 'I'll love ya.'"
"Paris is a woman but London is an independent man puffing his pipe in a pub."
"There's nothing nobler than to put up with a few inconveniences like snakes and dust for the sake of absolute freedom."
"In America camping is considered a healthy sport for Boy Scouts but a crime for mature men who have made it their vocation. -- Poverty is considered a virtue among the monks in civilized nations -- in America you spend a night in the calaboose if you're caught short without your vagrancy change."
"Sheriffs [...] having nothing to do in the middle of the night with everybody gone to sleep they pick on the first human being they see walking. They pick on lovers on the beach even. They just don't know what to do with themselves [...] except pick on anything that moves in the night."
"America is the motherland of bumdom."
"Never get married. You'll never live it down."
"No man should go through life without once experiencing healthy, even bored solitude in the wilderness, finding himself depending solely on himself and thereby learning his true and hidden strength. -- Learning, for instance, to eat when he's hungry and sleep when he's sleepy."
"Life, another word for mud."
"Why is everyone so mean? Didn't God see to it that we -- of all people -- people -- would be kind -- to each other, to animals." (through the words of his brother Gerard, who died at age 9)


But that's only from five books... there shall be more!

[Dean Karpowicz]

"... Japhy was always so dead serious about food, and I wished the whole world was dead serious about food instead of silly rockets and machines and explosives using everybody's food money to blow their heads off anyway."

What a great line. And returning to The Dharma Bums after such a long time away from Kerouac made me remember just how much oa a foodie he is.