Jack Kerouac: Novelist, or (Auto)Biographer ?

Zorro <sinbad.RemoveThis@sailor.net> wrote:

> There are numerous other examples of the Novel/Autobiography, such as
> "Autobiography of Red A Novel in Verse", written by Anne Carson. There
> is also "From Labor to Letters:A Novel Autobiography" by Miquel Mendez.

It would be amazing if it wasn't so.

Think about it; where's the nearest directly accessible source of
experience?

My favourite novel sequence is the twelve novels in Anthony Powell's
'Dance to the Music of Time'. I've read them a great number of times,
not for their language and style which, for much of the time, I find
fussy and convoluted, but for its extraordinary richness of story and
character. The fascinating thing is that although based quite closely on
Powell's own life and especially his writing career and military
experiences in the second world war, the characters and incidents are
quite radically transformed and absorbed into an imaginative construct.
I knew a woman who had been a girl friend of Powell's son, and she told
me once that when she was going to America, Powell asked her to 'Find me
an interesting American'. She did, coming across a couple in Atlanta,
the man very rich and his wife a super-sexy Phillipino, who invited her
to stay in their home. Their garden was full of illuminated nude statues
of the wife, and in the bathroom of the guest suite the walls were
painted with a life sized representation of a man being flayed by a
voluptuous woman. The man was clearly the owner, the woman was
recognizably his wife.

By her own account dazed, my friend reported back. Powell incorporated
this in an almost unrecognizable form in the novel 'Temporary Kings',
mixed in with a great number of other elements, but the moment she told
me the story- she'd never read the novel- I could see how he'd used it
and transformed it into a parable of voyeurism.

But from what I know of the settings and the people he describes, the
stories are absolutely true to their time, the incidents in the wider
world that I remember are described with exactly the social impact that
I remember them having at the time; the flavour and texture are
absolutely realistic.

Goddamit, I've got to go off and read it again...
--
Peter
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Peter Ceresole wrote:
> Zorro <sinbad.DeleteThis@sailor.net> wrote:
>
> > But my contention is with the people that say "he was a great
> > American novelist", or "have you read his other novels?". I say,
> > everything he wrote was about himself (and, of course the friends around
> > him) and that what he wrote was a multi-volume autobiography, the Duluoz
> > Legend, e.g. non-fiction. He was not a novelist.
> > Am I the only one who sees this?
>
> There's a fine tradition of autobiographist novelists. If Kerouac used
> the raw material of his life in a rather direct way, it doesn't mean
> that he didn't rearrange it fairly radically. Look at his relocation of
> his affair with Alene Lee in 'The Subterraneans'- and the romantic
> flourishes like Mardou walking naked through the San Francisco night.
> I've never known if that was real or imagined- Lee seemed more coherent
> than that to me, but I don't know...
>
One thing about the real people who he based things on is that many of
them were or did become well known. I guess there's an argument over
whether some of them stood alone or were famous because of Kerouac's
books, but it adds an element that many writers don't have.

If I wrote a book about the people around me, nobody could know how
biographical it would be, since the people around me aren't
particularly
well known. Nobody could or would pick apart the book to see who
they really were, Anne Charters wouldn't put a chart in her biography
of
me that decoded who the characters were, few would give any thought
to how biographical the book was. They'd just read it, and accept
or dismiss it based on what was in the book.

Kerouac doesn't have that position, since the people he knew and
wrote about were well known.

Michael
 >> Stay informed about: Jack Kerouac: Novelist, or (Auto)Biographer ? 

<blackm00 RemoveThis @cam.org> wrote:

> If I wrote a book about the people around me, nobody could know how
> biographical it would be, since the people around me aren't
> particularly
> well known. Nobody could or would pick apart the book to see who
> they really were, Anne Charters wouldn't put a chart in her biography
> of
> me that decoded who the characters were, few would give any thought
> to how biographical the book was. They'd just read it, and accept
> or dismiss it based on what was in the book.
>
> Kerouac doesn't have that position, since the people he knew and
> wrote about were well known.

That's true, but remember that when he wrote about them initially they
weren't well known at all. They were fellow writers and quite obscure
outside of their own circle, except for Gore Vidal/Lavalina in 'The
Subterraneans' who became famous independently of the Beats.

The fact that they later became known, even if to a slightly specialised
public, is as you say due to the success of OTR and to the Beats as a
movement.
--
Peter
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