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LONG_SHADOW

                                              August 30, 2005

I've been meaning to write something about
the wide influence of the Shadow...

For example, on Jack Kerouac.
     
  The Beats, for all their reputation as    
  hedonistic barbarians, had a pretentious    
  intellectual streak, and they only very     
  rarely let on that they cared about any  
  low-brow popular art.                   
              
     But in places, Kerouac lets it show                    There's a bit
     that he grew up on The Shadow.           SUBTERRA      in the "Dharma
                                                            Bums" where
       "Dr. Sax" is a collection                            he mentions
       of childhood fantasies                               "going back to
       involving a figure much                              my Western
       like the Shadow.                                     magazines".
  
                                                        I know what kind of
  I have a theory (two theories,                        magazine he's
  really) that the Shadow was a                         talking about --
  powerful influence on Kerouac.                        though I doubt many
                                                        readers these days
  Theory the First: the                                 do -- and they were
  Shadow pointed the way                                pure pulp, complete
  to the wisdom of The East:                            with garish cover
                                                        paintings.
     ZEN_FLESH
                                                        Presumably he didn't
  Second theory:                                        just find a stash of
                                                        them, he took the
  Kerouac famously became an                            trouble to lug them
  advocate of the importance                            up on top of the
  of writing "spontaneously",                           mountain: he calls
  avoiding the process of                               them *my* Western
  revisions...                                          magazines.
  
  The pulp writers had long
  ago adopted the same
  principles out of economic
  necessity, surviving the
  depression cranking out
  penny-a-word prose.
  
  Part of the legend of Walter
  Gibson (aka Maxwell Grant) is
  that he worked furiously, needing
  to keep a spare typewriter             If Kerouac knew
  available because he wore them         about this, I
  out so frequently.                     think it likely         In one of
                                         it planted a seed.      Kerouac's
                                                                 writings
                                                                 *about*
                                                                 Beatness,
         Kerouac could work                                      he cites
         "spontaneously" because he                              the Shadow
         stuck to autobiography,                                 as some sort
         albeit an autobiography                                 of influence.
         censored on-the-fly           KEROUAC_GORED
         (e.g. with little mention                             Something
         of anyone else's homosexual                           about the
         activities, and absolutely                            appeal of the
         none of his own).                                     underworld,
                                                               the underground?
         In contrast, the pulp writers
         could work this way because they
         relied on formula.  They were
         filling in the blanks of an            ANASTRUCTING
         outline, invoking archetype to
         enliven the story.  And relying on
         the reader's familiarity to cover
         any gaps in the writing.
  
                  Not the sort of work
                  that gets much respect
                  from the academic world,           (And at their
                  but at their best                  worst, well...)
                  they hit on a strange
                  prose poetry...

                       LIGHT_OF_SHADOW


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