The only Jack Kerouac book I have read through so far is The Dharma Bums. I read it about 15 years ago out of my curiosity not about Jack's prose style but about how Gary Snyder was modified into a fictional character. I liked the book, but Jack's other books such as Lonesome Traveler remain unread somewhere in my store-away boxes.
I had a copy of On the Road in my undergraduate days but couldn't read it. The style bored me or I couldn't get any grip on it when I tried. Then yesterday, I came across a recorded version of it and began listening to it and suddenly it clicked. Hey, this may be a piece of cool writing... the CD is read by Matt Dillon. His voice and rendering ring so true and fit the rhythm and style of the book's self-generating soul. I can't say I can thoroughly follow his reading; my ears are not very keen. There are words that I miss out like a bad fielder. This happens with me all time. But there is a flow with which I can drift my consciousness that becomes alert on hearing a series of unexpected words. It's absorbing, and the narrative's beginning is fascinatingly filled with a sense of longing... for CREATION.
He was simply a youth tremendously excited with life, and though he was a con-man, he was only conning because he wanted so-much to live and to get involved with people who would otherwise pay no attention to him. He was conning me and I knew it (for room and board and 'how to write', etc.), and he knew I knew (this has been the basis of our relationship), but I didn't care and we got along fine---no pestering, no catering; we tiptoed around each other like heart-breaking new friends.(...) "Man, wow, there's so many things to do, so many things to write! How to even BEGIN to get it all down and without modified restraints and all hung-up on like literary inhibitions and grammatical fears..." (10)
To write is to fashion oneself is to move around is to live is to be influenced is to influence is to confluence is to converse is to cry out is to write. And again and again. This yearning for beginning is overwhelming. Maybe this time, almost at the age of Jack's death, I will read through for the first time in my life this sloppy-looking, eternally young book for the road.
