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KEROUAC


Under METHOD I was saying:

    First thought is best thought,
    let the movement of the mind
    provide the structure,
    providing there is a mind, and
    presuming it can move.
    Or is moved.

And I added the comment:


     This is a reference to 
     something Jack Kerouac said
     about spontaneous prose, but
     you probably didn't get it,
     you uncultured moron.
                          
                          
           Turns out Kerouac  
           didn't say it first,         Apparently there's some
           but being an                 room to attribute it to
           uncultured moron             Rimpoche, Ginsberg or
           myself, I don't know         Kerouac.
           where it's from.


So:

"Let the movement of the mind                       where's that from?
provide the structure of the artwork."              Kerouac quotes it
                                                    in Mexico City Blues,
                                                    I think.  Ginsberg
The excesses of Kerouac's "spontaneous              quoted it and attributed
prose" hurt many of his books                       it to someone, but I
(_Dr. Sax_ is infinitely tedious, for               missed the name.
example), but several of them work                  Some eastern philosophy
quite well. _The Dharma Bums_ seems to              stuff?
be his best.  _The Subterraneans_ is
also pretty tight.

And even the ever popular, notorious
_On the Road_... well, what *is* the
point of the book, except a
celebration of spontaneity, of
aimlessness, of dropping out of the
incredibly anal, conformist 1950s
world?  How could this theme be better
executed than with an improvised,
random structure?                                             And what
                                                              does the
                                                              structure
                                                              of the
                                                              doomfile
                                                              imply?

                                        Ultimately,          Between
                                        no questions         poetry and
                   Because...           should be            flow charts
                   the rhetorical       rhetorical.          is the dream;
(But the question  question is                               To be logical
was clearly        a device to          So, I try            but not linear;
not "rhetorical"   block further        to answer.           To be artistic
so this            inquiry.                                  and yet rational.
retrograde         It's pretentious
digression         but deceptive,              BOUNDARIES
ought to go        forcing a sense
elsewhere.)        that the issue                            Any node may be
                   is settled when                           a step in a
(Which ques?       it may not be.                            chain, or it may
structure of                                                 a branch point
doomfile, no                                                 in a tree.
it was merely
left dangling.                                               Streams of
Structure of K,                                              consciousness,
however, that's                                              organized into
a screaming rhet                                             a logical web.
ques fersure.)
                                                             Spontaniety,
                                                             followed by
                                                             editing, an
                                                             attempt at
                                                             eliminating
                                                             redundancies.


                                                             What do I hope to
                                                             build with this
                                                             structure?





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