Beat Generation

I remember being awed by him and amazed by him. Allen Ginsberg What are writers trying to do? They are trying to create a universe in which they have lived or would like to live. To write they must go there and submit to conditions which they may not have bargained for. Sometimes, as in the case of Kerouac, the effect produced by a writer is immediate, as if a generation were waiting to be written. William S. Burroughs Kerouac came roaring down each new highway like a man possessed Moving on not from a sense of disenchantment, but with a voracious and insatiable hunger for experience. Lester Bangs I read On the Road in maybe 1959. It changed my life like it changed everyone elses. Bob Dylan

ONEWORLD CLASSICS

Beat Generation
Jack Kerouac

ONEWORLD CLASSICS

ONEWORLD CLASSICS LTD

London House 243-253 Lower Mortlake Road Richmond Surrey TW9 2LL United Kingdom www.oneworldclassics.com Beat Generation rst published in US in 2005 by Thunders Mouth Press Copyright 2005 by Jack Kerouac and John Sampas, literary representative of the Estate of John Kerouac Introduction A.M. Homes, 2005 All rights reserved This edition rst published by Oneworld Classics Limited in 2007 Notes and background material Oneworld Classics Ltd, 2007 Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
ISBN-13: 978-1-84749-007-0 ISBN-10: 1-84749-007-7

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Contents
Introduction by A.M. Homes Beat Generation Note on the Text and Illustrations Notes Extra Material Jack Kerouacs Life Jack Kerouacs Works Adaptations Select Bibliography
I

1 83 83 85 87 97 103 103

Introduction by A.M. Homes

a cultural context it was 1957, Dwight D. Eisenhower was president, Richard M. Nixon vice-president, the Pulitzer Prize in drama went to Eugene ONeills Long Days Journey into Night no ction award was given. West Side Story opened on Broadway, Leave It to Beaver premiered on television, and if you were going to the movies, chances are it was to see The Bridge on the River Kwai, Twelve Angry Men or Peyton Place. On the home front there was still a struggle to integrate the schools, while the Russians launched Sputnik I and the space age began. It was 1957, and Jack Kerouacs On the Road was published other books that year included Bernard Malamuds The Assistant, James Agees A Death in the Family and Noam Chomskys Syntactic Structures. At this point, Kerouac and his band of scribes were all about em bracing and celebrating this beat life. Kerouac himself had already coined the term, according to some accounts as early as 1948, suggesting societal conventions were beat, tired, worn out. Many have sug gested that Kerouacs use of the term Beat Generation evolved from being a post-war reference to Hemingways Lost Generation to a more positive label: the beats were enlightened, beatic ones a nice conuence of the Buddhist and Catholic philosophies that were so im portant to Kerouac. In 1957, Kerouac wasnt yet what he is today a gure as or more dominant in contemporary culture as the faces on Mount Rushmore. In 1957, he still had the benet of a certain anonymity he was still, for the moment, the purest version of Jack Kerouac, not a personality, not a celebrity.
i

N ORDER TO TALK ABOUT IT you have to put it into some sort of

BEAT GENERATION

Unlike the World War II vets who came home, got married, moved to suburbia and fully embraced the American dream and the blossoming culture of more, more, more, keeping up with the Joneses and then some, the beat life was lived on the edges. Beats had nothing to lose and not far to fall. Holy men, mediators, anti-materialists, they were the exact opposite of company men. Kerouac and his experimental fraternity aspired to something else a kind of freedom. They wanted to soar, to y, to move through time and space unfettered. They wanted to nd spirituality and deliverance among the dispossessed. And they wanted to have a good time, win a few bucks on the horses, have some drinks and get laid. Compared to the average Joe they were wild aweinspiring and threatening. Kerouacs style was not just philosophically bold; it was linguistic guerrilla warfare a literary atom bomb smashing everything. On one side of him were the hyper-intellectual Beckett and Joyce. On the other, the anti-academic: Hemingway, Anderson and Dos Passos. Kerouac absorbed it all and went beyond. In order to make sense of this play you have to keep it in perspective. Its now 2005, a line of Jack Kerouac clothing is about to be released, the manuscript of On the Road is on tour across America. A few months ago in a New Jersey warehouse this new play by Kerouac was discovered three acts, written in 1957, and typed up by Kerouacs everloving mother, Gabrielle, also known as Mmre. The play was never produced at the time there was a lot of interest but no action. In a letter Kerouac wrote he described his interest in theatre and lm in this way: What I wanta do is redo the theatre and the cinema in America, give it a spontaneous dash, remove preconceptions of situation and let people rave on as they do in real life. Thats what the play is: no plot in particular, no meaning in particular, just the way people are. Everything I write I do in the spirit where I imagine myself an angel returned to earth seeing it with sad eyes as it is. The play Beat Generation marks a wonderful addition to the Kerouac oeuvre. It will be great fun to see what happens with it I can easily

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INTRODUCTION

imagine it being performed and each staging being incredibly different from the last its all about what you bring to it. It is a play of its time which is why context is important. In bits and pieces it is reminiscent of Tennessee Williams, Clifford Odets and a bit of Arthur Miller. But by comparison to those playwrights whose work is formal and well dened, this play is loose, unfettered; it is about jux taposition, relation, words and ideas boucing off one another, rifng in a bebop scatter. Beat Generation opens in the early morning in an apartment near the Bowery, with drinking the reverie of the rst glass. It is a mans world these are working men, brakemen for the railroad, drinking men, who spend their day off betting on horses, men who swear by saying durnit, men who have a girl waiting on them, warming their coffee womens liberation never made it into Kerouacs world. It is set in a disappeared New York City, with the smoky scent of cigarettes hanging over all, men playing chess, the racket of the elevated subways, the feel of life lived underground, everything a little bit beat. And Beat Generation is pervaded by the music of conversation. Working in spurts, Kerouac spewed this spontaneous bop prosody, or jazz poetry. The play (and the novels) are everything and the kitchen sink too. It is a kind of demolition-derby pile-up, a jazzy musical of words picking up speed and hurling themselves forwards in a bumper-car version of dialogue. Beat Generation is about talking and friendship and shooting the shit, it is about the biggest question of all existence. Kerouac and his rough-hewn characters just this side of hobos want to know how and why we exist and then in some spontaneous combustion they come to know that in the end there are no answers, there is just the moment we are in, and the people around us. Here is the romance of the road, rebirth and karma Kerouacs peculiar and deeply personal combination of the working man dis cussing astral bodies, karmic debt, past lives and the selling of Jesus. Here is the power of ideas and the difculty of escaping belief. And here is the love of God and the fear of God despite Kerouacs interest in the alternative, his exploration of Buddhism and eastern philosophies, he could never escape his Catholic upbringing. Yet the play has a masculine swagger, a brand of bravado. Language and characters careen off each other in a kind of doped deliciousness,

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BEAT GENERATION

in which one feels the heat of an afternoon, the smell of hay and shit and beer at the race track, the greasy squeal of brakes, and the kind of down-and-dirty that never really washes off. Kerouac was the man who allowed writers to enter the world of ow different from stream-of-consciousness, his philosophy was about being in the current, open to possibility, allowing creativity to move through you, and you to be one with both process and content. It was about embracing experience rather than resisting; it is in fact the very Roman candle Kerouac writes about in On the Road. On a more personal note without Kerouac, without Jimi Hendrix, without Mark Rothko, there would be no me. I used to think Jack Kerouac was my father (sometimes literally) and Susan Sontag was my mother. I could diagram out one hell of a family tree, with Henry Miller and Eugene ONeill as my uncles and so on. Kerouac raised me spiritually, psychologically, creatively he gave me permission to exist. In the end, Beat Generation is a treat, a sweet found under a sofa cushion. For those of us who never had enough Kerouac, now there is more. A.M. Homes, 2005

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Beat Generation

Act One
(Scene is early morning in New York near the Bowery, standing in the kitchen, cheap kitchen, are a coloured guy called JULE and a white guy called BUCK, and theyre both raising glasses of wine to each other in little glasses, and BUCKS saying:) BUCK: All right Jule, lets have one. JULE: I wonder what the vintner buys, one half so precious as what he sells BUCK: Wow! Give us another one Hey you drink fast! JULE: Drink! For tomorrow you may be one with yesterdays 7,000 years BUCK: But thats not right, you didnt get the whole thing there. Aint you got any others? JULE: Not now sit, man. BUCK: All right Jule Here I am sitting in Julius Chaunceys kitchen in a clear cool morning in October 1955, the freshness of the days rst jug, ugh You know Jule, theres nothing, theres no way to recreate the effect of that rst glass which you get in the morning when you wake up, yet, all over the world drinkers will gobble gobble and bulp they want more more more of what they cant have, because it can only happen once isnt that right? Lets have another quote, Jule. 

BEAT GENERATION

JULE: No Im tired. BUCK: Well here we go, lets have another one (drinking) I wonder where Milo is. (The door opens and in walks MILO, who is a mediumheight, dark-haired fellow in a full brakemans uniform, hat, cap, the blue uniform, the racing form in one pocket, the Bible and other books in another pocket, and a few utes sticking out of his pocket, followed by another brakeman but hes six foot six, fully cleanly dressed and shaved, in full conductor uniform, followed by a little tiny four-foot-eleven not-quite-midget in a full suit with vest, hatless they are MILO, SLIM and TOMMY.) BUCK: Hey there you are, I knew youd get here Well well well, look at all these brakemens uniforms here Winos and brakemen getting together early in the morning, hey? TOMMY: Hey there Buck, what you say, boy? Say can I sit at the table, Vicki? (as a girl, white girl, comes in from the other room, having heard the visitors arrive) Can I sit at the table and dope out these horses? Today Ive got a couple horses running at Jamaica Id give my left arm if I could go out and play them at the track but theres a little matter of a job at Rikers at two oclock, durnit. MILO: All right Tommy you move over the end there Tommy mboy, thats right, Buck sits on the oor sos me and old long tall Slim Summerville here can resume our best four-out-of-seven series championship chips 

ACT ONE

chess game of the world (looking at Vicki) Ah, just what I like to see in the morning, boys and girls. You got any coffee Vicki? VICKI: Yes I have some, Ill warm it up here. MILO: Just a little bit of sugar in that coffee Vicki, mdear. VICKI: Yes sir. MILO: Well now listen here, old buddy Buck (taking out the chessboard and pieces), so its true as you do say, that God is us, is just us, right here, now, exactly as you say, we dont have to run to God because were already there, yet Buck, really, now face it old buddy that sonumbitch trail to heaven is a long trail BUCK: Wal, thats just words MILO: Boy, we start out in our astral bodies, man, and you know the way a ghost go when headin out there to that bright blank night go in a straight line, that, and then, as he wanders, just astral-born and new to the game he gets to wigglin and a-goin from side to side, that is, to explore, much as H.G. Wells says about a maid sweepin out a hall from side to side, the way migrations advance? VICKI: What are you talkin about again? MILO: And so astral, hell go migrate out there to the next or martian level where he bumps into all them 

BEAT GENERATION

levels you see, but with that spectral astral special interprenation how do you pronounce that, interpe-ne-tration speed. BUCK: Words. MILO: True true but then after now lay out these things Slim, Ill take the Ill tell you what well do, Ill take the black, you take the white, Im going to give you a chance today so now listen Buck, here was a guy who had such a bad aura of traitorship around him, in fact he was a later entity of Judas, hed, or peopled sense him, sense him and turn in the street and say, Whos that betrayer just went by? all of his life suffering from some curse people had of him, which was that karmic debt he had to pay for selling Jesus for a handful of silver BUCK: Words I keep saying words. Milo and I really mean it, Im trying to get you to say God is Words Its still all words, aint it? MILO: No no no no no no no no no no no When that astral body gets to Saturn certain conditions there may seek might get to change him into a rock and so on, you gotta watch out boy, you want him to turn into a rock? BUCK: Tell me seriously Milo, doesnt the entity go to God in heaven? MILO: That it does, after a long trail and trial, you see hmm. (lighting a cigarette suavely) 6

ACT ONE

BUCK: Ah words. MILO: Words as you will. BUCK: Or birds MILO: Till nally, puried and so spotless to be like the garment that was never rented, the entity does arrive in heaven and back to God, so is why I say were not there now. BUCK: How can we help not being there now? We cant be anywhere else the world, or heaven, is what form is We cant avoid our reward heaven so sure, Milo. MILO: Ahh All right Slim your move, youre white. TOMMY: Hey Milo you wanta look at the sheets I worked out? MILO: No, I dont have to look at anything, I tell you Ive got it made. JULE: The horses? Youve got the horses made, how you got it made? MILO: Sit down here Slim, and well take out these, ah well take out a elding lance at each others hide Pawn to king four? By God I know how to answer you, Ill lay my Bible here beside me in case I got something to quote to old Buck there sittin on the oor, that unbeliever Vicki you got that coffee ready yet? Just a little bit of sugar, you know, nothin fancy, unless Buck wants to run out and buy pork 

BEAT GENERATION

chops with that w-i-n-e money hes about to run out with and buy wine. BUCK: No no no, you look over all the form charts for the day, nd only horses that have won thirty-three per cent of their races, and especially run within the last eight days dropping weight and running their favourite distance, several other items MILO: Pawn to king four, hey? Well, well try knight here, well try knight here. SLIM: Knight to bishop ve. BUCK: How many times Milo have I told you you cant beat the horses my father lost his business doin it, man Course years later he kept sayin that he lost his business on account of some ood or other but it was that old mutuel ood, boy. MILO: Yass yass yass, your move big buddy. TOMMY: Running a mile and a sixteenth in 1:43 at comes to a mile and an eighth today, I dont know, I dont know if he can stand another another half a furlong. BUCK: Bearing impost of seventeen hundred thousand million pounds he will nd sumpin MILO: Lazy Charley, Lazy Charley, why you, man, dont you realize they found that guy dead on the racetrack with forty thousand dollars worth of uncashed tickets in 

ACT ONE

his pocket, he had em so gured out now wait a minute now man, now look here honey thats right, just a little bit of sugar, thats right, ne. VICKI: Eggs? MILO: Eggs, eggs ne, ne, ne, FINE hmm, its better than Chinatown. VICKI: Anybody else? MILO: Sunny side up and a bit of hot strong coffee to go with it, you know, make some more coffee, and I like it pipin hot. JULE: (singing bop) Swap swapa diddleya deel do. TOMMY: There oughta be a hole in there for him to sneak through, you know? JULE: Did you nd my pussy last night Tommy, huh Tommy did you nd a nice little old broad lyin on the sidewalk and take her to you know, you know, your pad? TOMMY: Not last night Jule, I was I just had a few beers in the Pink Angel and there was a couple of old gals there but they didnt appeal to me too much, too drunk. JULE: Did you make it with any big old broads last night Tommy? Did you did you did you did you did you? VICKI: Oh Jule! 

BEAT GENERATION

JULE: Swing, somebody, swing! BUCK: Yeah. JULE: Yeah. MILO: Well now old Lazy Charley see SLIM: all right Ill move this bishop MILO: he gets up there in the club lounge you know, and hes comin post time, hes standin there by the fty-dollar window and the warning buzzer rings, Old Charley takes one casual look to see whos third choice and lays the money down Thats why I wanta go to the racetrack today because man I tell you and dont you see really its all really worked out for us in advance and all we gotta do is pile right on thats why I say I wanta go to that racetrack today, I gotta win that money back, and besides the money I lost, you know and theres something I want you to know, how many times have I gone to that bettin window and asked the man for number ve because somebody just then said number ve and the ticket Id originally wanted was number two, and Im standin there you know, and Im lookin around, and instead of buyin my number two, which goes accordin to Lazy Charleys system, I buy number ve. BUCK: Why dont you just say, Give me number two instead of number ve, I made a mistake wouldnt he give it back to you? The guy that sells the tickets there? 10