The other day someone on Twitter dissed our boy, Jack, and I came to his defense as follows.
No one commented on my reply, perhaps because they don't dare take up the challenge. If they did, they'd be hard-pressed not to admit Kerouac's genius. So either way, the good guys win . . . .
4 comments:
We did dat! RM
Indeed, we did!
I finally got around to reading "Big Sur", "Dr. Sax" and "Lonesome Traveler" in a week-long reading jaunt a couple years ago. What an experience. What I got from those books was Jack's ability to look at the human condition around him in sympathetic and profound depths. The scenes of childhood in "Sax" and the hallucinatory divergences were stunning and so effective. I admit I cried a lot reading those books.
Kerouac, especially, is often maligned and torn down by those with rather hipster pretensions who have not yet allowed experience and a knowledge of death to enter their hearts. He has so much chatter around him, so many billboard statements about his talent, so much noise from the cheerleading squads and the diletante quarters that the unexperienced associate with the man himself. Anybody who thinks Jack's books are just automatic writing or some kind of empty druggie babble are already showing a prejudice and ignorance. No one with an open and informed heart could read Jack's books and not see the beautiful soul and the deep art that he made. It's insulting that such depth can be dismissed by a tweet, what an embarrassment for the tweeters!
Great points, all. Thanks for weighing in to help me defend Jack.
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