Burn a Little Brighter Now

We interrupt this blog about children for something their father has got to get off his chest. One of my favorite song writers (I’d say he’s a favorite singer, by my wife has informed me that he cannot sing no matter how creative his lyrics) wrote “I read some Kerouac and it got me on the track to burn a little brighter now.” I’ve always wondered what inspiration he gained from Kerouac and what the mystery of “On the Road” was.

As some of you know I’ve been downloading books to my iPod and listening to them during my frequent travel (gift certificates to audible.com are much appreciated). I’m two thirds of the way through this American classic and I’m dumbfounded. I cannot figure out what the big deal is. He writes some creative descriptions, but this is not a novel that speaks to my soul. If something other than wandering from NYC to SFO and back getting drunk over the course of a decade doesn’t happen soon, I fear I will find myself as the only person in American that thinks Kerouac was a crank.

I have three theories on this:

1. I am just too old. Kerouac seems to be going about the whole nihilist thing that the American expatriates in Paris did in the 1930s. Hemmingway, Stein, et. al. I studied them when I was the right age to get their angst and appreciate the idea of deciding that since they couldn’t figure out what to stand for in life they would focus on standing for nothing. Kerouac just seems to be repeating that exercise in a less interesting way. I am so old that I want to slap Salvatore Paradise, tell him to get a honest job, get married, have a kid or two (not at the same time, we’ll spare him that drama) and realize that philosophical pretensions don’t necessarily preclude having a life. As my Junior English teacher said to me about a proposed Economics/Philosophy double major, “Oh, a philistine with a conscience.” (Ironically, I opted for just the philistine part in the long run).

2. I’m missing the point. Listening and reading are two different things. This production is pretty good, but it’s possible that the nuance of the written word is not translating. Or that there is some subtlety that has eluded my apparently ever-closing mind (see point 1 above for evidence). There is also the fact that I haven’t actually finished the book maybe it will have a “bang, wow” ending as Kerouac would say.

3. I need a field test. In 1984 my father gave me a book called Rabbit Run by John Updike to read with the request to let him know if it was as bad as he thought it was. It was. None the less, it made TIME magazine’s 100 Best English Novels from 1923 to 2005. I would try this with my sons, but one would destroy the book and use it for insulation and the other would simply try to eat it for having the audacity to not have pictures (see I got back on blog topic). Anybody want to read Kerouac and get back to me?

There are a few quotes I have found amusing and wanted to share. However, I doubt this is why “On the Road” is considered great literature. Yes, they are taken out of context but I laughed at them when I heard them in context.

“We made love under the tarantula.”

“We came down on him like a cloud, every one of us hungry, even Alfred, the crippled hitchhiker.”