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SUBTERRA
July 17, 2005
Jack Kerouac's
"The Subterraneans" (1958)
(Written in 1953, about events in 1953.)
I liked this book when I first read
it as a teenager, though it's a
little hard to say what I liked
about it at this point. I remember These days I would say that
thinking that it was tighter than the trouble with "On the
something like "On the Road", Road" is that it has a
because it's focus -- a love affair similar focus; but it isn't
with a woman -- automatically willing to admit that that's
provided some structure. what it's about, because it's
a love affair with a man,
I probably liked the idea of an
in-crowd of smart, cool people Fantasies from The Ghost World:
with regular hang-outs... Trapped out on The Island
without much of a people to
call my people.
Maybe I liked the interracial
romance aspect, though years HOLLOW_LANDS
later I didn't remember it was
there.
Re-reading it now, I can only barely
stand it. Kerouac seems like an One nice thing about this:
annoying whiner, a confused alcoholic Michelle Tea's "Valencia"
fool who wants credit for being willing struck me as an even worse
to admit what a fool he is -- he's a case, and I was afraid that
jerk, but he feels bad about it, this might have been a
doesn't that count for something? sexist reaction on my part.
Evidently it's just
age... Nowadays I have
trouble stomaching the
confessions of sensitive
A brief catalog of jerkiness: fuck-ups.
He keeps alternately thinking about
dumping this girl, and getting upset
about the idea that she might be
sleeping with someone else.
He can't seem to make up his mind
whether he likes the fact that she's
black, or is disgusted by it. In
general, he treats dark skinned
people more as symbols than as people,
but at least he claims that he likes Really he seems to
the things that they symbolize. prefer living with
Maybe he prefers Mexican women? his mommy.
He worries about what people will And there's a strong
think seeing them together, and suspicion that he
is also pissed off that she really prefers
sometimes worries about this. men, but he's having
trouble coming to
He always wants to go out to bars terms with it.
and do some heavy binges with the
boys, dragging her along, though
she's not really into drinking.
He's full of plans to run off
to Mexico with her, but never
really wants to do it.
"The Subterraneans" are supposed to be
a bunch of heavy intellectual types,
but there's nothing much happening on stage
to show their intellects in action.
Exceptions:
Kerouac was a big fan of Reich in those
days, and complained about the rest of
the gang being disdainful of Reich.
There's a young writer who wanders
in and wants to talk about the
importance of Selectivity. Kerouac
snaps at him -- and then (of course)
feels bad about it -- a conscious
process of selection is not the kind
of thing Mr. Spontaneous wanted to
hear about.
Kerouac engages in some literary
critique of his lover's letters... (Maybe he needed to
learn something about
Kerouac's only interested in spontaneous reading.)
the original "spontaneous"
version under the cross-outs,
not the edited, re-thought
words.
When Mardou is breaking up with him,
she asks him if he remembers
anything about what his posse was (Mardou =
talking about last night, and he Arlene Lee)
responds "No, of course not."
But the reason I re-read this book
is that I've been looking for traces
of Joan Vollmer...
LOOKING_FOR_JOAN_VOLLMER
[ref]
What have we got here? We've got this,
a discussion with a "Charles Bernard" And in case
(based on Ed Stringham, or so I've heard): you can't tell: Jane = Joan,
Frank = Bill,
"And Charles Bernard, the vastness of the Adam = Allen.
name in the cosmogony of my brain, a hero
of the Proustian past in the scheme as I
knew it, in the Frisco-alone branch of it, So, Kerouac
Charles Bernard who'd been Jane's lover, equates his work
Jane who'd been shot by Frank, Jane whom with Proust.
I'd lived with, Marie's best friend, the
cold winter rainy nights when Charles would
be crossing the campus saying something
witty, the great epics almost here sounding Is the idea that
phantom like and uninteresting if at all he worries what
believable but the the true position and his Columbia
bigburn importance of not only Charles but friends think of
a good dozen others in the light rack of my the black girl?
brain, so Mardou seen in this light, is a
little brown body in a gray sheet bed in He knows that
the slums of Telegraph Hill, huge figure in Yeah: she's just
the history of the night yes but only one "slums". another
among many, the asexuality of the WORK -- More incident
also the sudden gut joy of beer when the anon. in his
visions of great words in rhythmic order biography?
all in one giant archangel book go roaring
thru my brain, so I lie in the dark also STAGGERING
seeing also hearing the jargon of the
future worlds [...] "
-- p. 41, Grove Press edition
And we've also got:
"[...] and had the worst nightmare of all,
which was everybody, the whole world was
around our bed, we lay there and everything
was happening, Dead Jane was there, had a big
bottle of Tokay wine hidden in Mardou's
dresser for me and got it out and poured me a
big slug and spilled a lot out of the So as far as
waterglass on the bed (a symbol of even Vollmer
further drinking, more wine, to come) -- and material goes,
Frank with her -- and Adam, who went out the what we've got
door to the dark tragic Italian pushcart is bupkes.
Telegraph Hill street, [...]" -- p62
The name of
a guy she slept
with, and a cameo
role in a nightmare.
On the plus side: Still, the name
Ed Stringham
This book has some nice bits of celebrity might turn
gossip: He mentions an incident in the past, out to be
where he was having sex with Luanne Henderson a lead.
in the bathroom at Gore Vidal's place, while
her husband, Neal Cassady was left outside, (Is that
getting upset, driving off into the night. dream also
recounted in
"The Book
Then there's that unique, Kerouac flow of words: of Dreams"?)
" 'But baby it isn't anything like that' but I don't
believe her -- I can tell by looking at her she's
got eyes for the youth -- you can't fool an old
hand who at the age of sixteen before the juice was
wiped off his heart by the Great Imperial World
Wiper with Sadcloth fell in love with an impossible EMDASH
flirt and cheater, this is a boast -- I feel so
sick I can't stand it, curl up in the back seat,
alone -- they drive on, and Sand having anticipated
a gay talk-alive weekend now finds himself with a
couple of grim lover worriers, hears in fact the
fragment 'But I didn't mean you to think that baby'
so obviously harkening to his mind the Yuri Yuri =
incident -- finds himself with this pair of bores Gregory
and has to drive all the way down to Los Altos, and Corso,
so with the same grit that made him write the half more or
million words of his novel bends to it and pushes less.
the car through the Peninsula night and on into the
dawn." -- p. 87
The Problem of Place haunts this work.
"The Peninsula night"... does that phrase
mean anything? Is the Peninsula night any
different from the Oakland night, or the San
Jose night, or the Ohio night, the Florida
night... or the Long Island night?
The events written about in this book did
not take place in San Francisco's North Beach,
but rather in New York's Greenwich Village.
My guess is that the first draft of this
work was spontaneously (or nearly so) banged
out using the original place names (perhaps
even the original people names), but before
publication the decision was made to hide
the setting, and all of these were changed.
In 1958, it was probably already clear
that the media circus surrounding "On the Road"
was a total zoo. Publishing this book with the (Or perhaps, a media
original names could easily have destroyed the circus equipped
San Remo bar. So the double-indirection of moving with a zoo? If I
it to another city made a lot of sense to me. were someone who
cared about keeping
Until my current re-reading: metaphors pure.)
I found that there weren't just a
few place names to change, there
were hundreds of references.
Kerouac constanly uses names as
adjectives, implying that the "... stopping now and then to
character of the setting, the raise the bottle of Four Star
magic of the locale really means California Sherry and drink as
something... the Frisco A.M. All Morn Sun
wind flapped their tragic
topcoats to the side ..."
Really San Francisco -- p. 33
is not just the same At least
as New York. not yet...
Or why bother to rush from one
to the other, ala "On the Road"?
Many of the details ring
false when transposed into
the San Francisco setting.
The weather is wrong: Mardou
looks forward to the oncoming
winter bringing an end to the
sweltering summer. That's a very
New York thought.
That mention of the "slums of
Telegraph Hill" is complete
nonsense -- today, it sounds like Telegraph Hill was already a
a total joke, but even back in favorite movie setting, and none
the 50s I suspect it was pretty of the 50s "film noir" that I've
crazy. seen shows anything like a slum on
that hill (and you'd figure they
There are also lines something would've if they could've, "noir"
like "we were talking about being "noir").
tunnels, you know the Stockton
street and the new one under
Broadway". What possible
equivalent could there have been
in the original New York setting?
Bridges? What tunnels there are in
New York are completely different.
One change I like: He
renames the San Remo bar-- BLACK_MASKS
the main hang-out of the
Subterraneans -- as
"The Black Mask".
Kerouac often name drops the
likes of Proust and Reich, but LONG_SHADOW
only occasionally lets on that
he's got roots in the world of
pulp fiction and 30s radio shows. And the name
"The Subterraneans"
"... warm sad Frisco with its has a pulpy
damn old scows mooing on the science fiction
tide out there, voom, vooooom, sound to it.
and stars flickering on the
water even where it waves Reminiscent of
beneath the pierhead where you that two-part
expect gangsters dropping episode of the
encemented bodies, or rats, or Superman show.
The Shadow -- " p. 73
"Superman
and the
Okay, one last sermon for the day. Mole-Men"
(1951)
People like to make excuses for Kerouac:
o The accuracy of his reporting, his perception
of character often seems a little dubious...
Well hey, these are novels not
biography. Imagine they're tall "The point is, as with any story
tales told in a bar... told with good friends over
beers, it becomes all but
This is not what Kerouac impossible to separate fiction
claims that he's doing. The from fact, and all of Jack's
finger of god has pointed at characterizations should be
him and told him to "Speak taken as he meant them: with a
thou well and truly." wink and a smile."
-- RougePoet, the everything2
The "spontaneous prose" "Kerouac Character Key"
schtick does not imply
spontaneous lies. (Good old "Smiling Jack".)
o Why was he so reluctant to talk about
homosexuality? At least in the
Subterraneans he's
That was a really repressed time, willing to admit that
it was dangerous to admit that some secondary
kind of thing, pre-Stonewall. characters are queers
(Stringham, Vidal),
True enough. And yet, his though he himself
friends Ginsberg and Burroughs gets all huffy and
found ways to manage it. insulted if told he's
acting like one.
In Kerouac's defense, though:
I think the trouble is that
he's too obviously autobiographical.
You don't go outing your friends
if you can avoid it, not in 1952.
o Why did he have so much trouble
with alcohol?
Why the man was practically
hounded to death by clueless This is pretty classic, from
kids after "On the Road" the Kerouac article on litkicks:
became a big hit...
That's the price of fame. "Trying to live up to the wild
image he'd presented in 'On
The Road,' he developed a
severe drinking habit that
dimmed his natural brightness
and aged him prematurely."
-- brooklyn aka "Levi Asher".
(he mentions Kurt Cobain, too).
And yet, here in "The
Subterraneans", back in 1953 --
four years before "Road" was
published -- he's got severe
problems with booze already. Though I guess you could
argue that the "Big Sur"
Alcoholics, like all drug era Kerouac (1960, three
addicts, are always full of years post-"Road") was in
excuses... there's always a even worse shape.
reason they couldn't quite get
their act together.
The really intelligent ones are
even better at coming up with
elaborate excuses and persuasive
routines...
But you don't do them any favors
by falling for the rap.
And there's no reason that you or
I have to buy this from a man long
dead that we've never met.
You can call Kerouac a great writer but
a lousy human being. That's okay: he'd
hardly be the first or last example.
Don't let your respect run
away into hero worship.
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