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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 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 like                              my Western
       the Shadow.                                          magazines".
                                                        
  But there's a possibility that                     I know what kind of    
  there was an even more fundamental                 magazine he's      
  influence:                                         talking about --   
                                                     though I doubt many     
  Kerouac came to conclude that                      readers these days 
  it's important to write                            do -- and they were   
  "spontaneously", avoiding the                      pure pulp complete      
  process of revisions...                            with garish cover  
                                                     paintings.         
                                                                         
  The pulp writers had long                          (The question in        
  ago adopted the same                               my mind: did he     
  principles out of economic                         take the trouble      
  necessity, surviving the                           to lug them up          
  depression cranking out                            on top of the       
  penny-a-word prose.                                mountain, or did    
                                                     he find a stash     
  Part of Walter Gibson's legend (aka                of them there?      
  Maxwell Grant) was that he worked                  But he does say *my*   
  furiously, needing to keep a spare                 Western magazines.) 
  typewriter available because he wore                                       
  them out so frequently.                                                   
                                                                        
                                  
         Kerouac could work             
         "spontaneously" because he 
         stuck to autobiography,     
         albeit an autobiography    
         censored on-the-fly        
         (e.g. with little mention   
         of anyone else's homosexual   
         activities, and absolutely     
         none of his own).          
                                    
         In contrast, the pulp writer's    
         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,
                  but at they're best
                  they hit on a strange
                  prose poetry...

                       LIGHT_OF_SHADOW 
                                          

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