The Search is what Kerouac Does Best

Going off of the idea of Kerouac that I constructed through On The Road, I expected a lot more from his Dr. Sax. The integration of stream of consciousness and non-linear time paths is interesting but not really my taste. Plus placing so much emphasis on the mystery behind death really is just not appealing to me.

                The matter of Dr. Sax being representative of a sax or art itself was brought up in class. For Kerouac, this comparison fits. The class discussed how Dr. Sax could be hero or is maybe actually sinister and how no one is ever really sure about his true nature. Just as art imitated life, Kerouac cast Dr. Sax in a role that allowed him to imitate life as well. Dr. Sax’s mismatched behavior seems to reflect how no one would ever really be sure about the nature of death, which seems to be what Kerouac is trying to get at. And this dual nature is also seen in Jackie himself with the question of his intent. Kerouac poses these characters with indiscriminate natures to highlight and parallel the true nature of death and of life itself. For death to permeate Book Four  seems almost natural since death is such a large question for Kerouac, of course it would be for his characters as well.

                The ambiguity of whether Dr. Sax is good or not is intentional I feel in order to show how not everything in life is as clear cut as people want it to be. The Snake is what represents evil in the novel. But if good fights against evil, does that mean that Dr. Sax is good? Jackie also has this similarity with the Dr. Jackie is caught between being a good friend and a thief. In this way I can see a similarity between the two individuals.

                Dr. Lennon’s first slide on Wednesday made a comment that the novel ultimately is about growing up. The notion of growing up fits perfectly with this book because it seems to be Kerouac’s way to work through the mysteries of life. All of the major life issues that children must face and try to figure out are what the book is focusing on, a major one being death. Kerouac writes about the comfort he gains from art and spending time with his mother while they were ill to try to overcome death and the fear that it instilled in him. But ultimately it failed. Dr. Sax is Kerouac’s chronicle of his passage into adulthood more or less. He, along with Jackie, tries to figure out and face the ultimate truth: everyone dies. Even in his book On The Road, Kerouac’s uneasiness about life was apparent. He goes in search of something to finally define his life but never really attains it. Kerouac spends his life trying to obtain “it.” And so his characters main focus is to find “it” as well. Dr. Sax is an engaging book, but it is too much confusing circular thinking for me. 

What I Have Learned

On the first day of class I was only vaguely aware of whom the Beats were, and I had no clue what they stood for. The last nine weeks for me has been a conversation about morality, freedom, individuality, and spirituality that helped to put these writers’ ideals into perspective. Without that perspective, the predominantly male value system of the Beats could come off annoyingly disjointed and uncomfortably misogynistic.

                                                                        Freedom

The main theme of the course for me has been the notion of freedom. The standard of freedom that is described by Jack Kerouac in his novel On the Road is a standard of uninhibited motion and experience. Kerouac wanted to experience every corner of the world as well as every race. And yes, that is pretentious to believe that he can literally experience an entire history and cultural environment of a different race but he still wanted to feel free enough to do that. During class, the teacher poised the question if Kerouac’s desire to experience being other races’ was authentic, even though it was incredibly racist. I feel that his desire was authentic because of how he discusses having the experience. Even though his words are slanted with racist stereotypes, his tone is very rarely one of animosity.

            The image that I constructed of Kerouac ultimately clashed with the image of he created of himself in the novel because I, for a bit, could not understand how a man could want both the road and a family. But a better understanding of Kerouac’s notion of freedom came from Burroughs’ pieces. Burroughs’ influence on Kerouac was visible through his darkly masculine tone filled with curiosity. Burroughs, just like Kerouac, insisted on experiencing everything he found interesting, especially

            Burroughs’ factual and darkly themed writings applied a very matter-of-fact notion to the idea of freedom. Burroughs seems to expect nothing more from the world than the chance to experience. Throughout the beginning of this course I have learned to experience the idea of freedom as an ideal that is not limited to the typical American Dream sense of freedom.

                                                The American Dream

            Along with expanding my opinions about what the term freedom actually means, I have learned about the development of the American Dream. The typical image of the American Dream is the white picket fence, wife/kids, and a house. This version of the dream is explored in Kerouac’s idealized future for himself in his novel. But even though he has a desired outcome in mind, Kerouac always seems to be pulled away by the lure of the road. In his short piece “The Vanishing American Hobo” Kerouac delves into the disappearance of the traveler ideal in American culture.  The death of the hobo in Kerouac’s piece can also be seen as the death of his dual American Dream. Kerouac recognized that he could not live both as a family man and a man of the road. This duality can also be seen in Burroughs’ work as well. Burroughs maintains a family while still maintaining his investigative side.

            Throughout the first nine weeks of the class I have been able to formulate a clear image of what the Beats stood for and what they fought for. 

Di Prima and the Beats

The first time through Diane Di prima’s works was a bit jarring to say the least. While certain stylistic choices such as the non-capitalization was easy to spot as important but some of the subject matter eluded me. The process of going over each section that we did in class really helped to explain more of the motives behind her work.

Di Prima’s resistance to social and gender standards comes through her seemingly purposeful shirking of traditional grammatical structure. It also comes through her subject matter. In the first piece, Di Prima discusses the potato and red sauce mush that they called menstrual pudding. This vivid imagery connected with the female body is jarring to the audience as well as shocking, just as Di Prima wanted.

But I argue that her writing does reveal her insecurities and her resistance to normal societal ways but does not establish her as a wholly radical individual. The image that arose from her writings was of a girl resisting her parent’s preconceived notions, not the norms of the world. Di Prima depicts herself in a more traditional role. She is frequently described as being in the kitchen when anything major happens, like family holidays or the cleaning of their new place. On page 28 of Di Prima’s “What I Ate Where” the first line of the piece is “the rats had already been several weeks in my kitchen.” She makes a point to designate the kitchen as her own.

For me Di Prima is a symbol of the Beats more akin to Jack Kerouac than Allen Ginsberg. The desire to reject social customs is there but there are still traces of normalcy within their lives. Kerouac could not totally give himself over to being a hobo and Di Prima could not give herself wholly over to being a radical female figure.

Another way that I connected Di Prima with Kerouac was her persistence on the subject of having a child. But even when she gave birth, the child did not become the center of her life. That statement could be seen in a negative life but only if Di Prima was a neglectful mother. I have not researched her mothering ways to any extent but from her writings her parenting skills did not seem to suffer due to still trying to maintain a somewhat normal life. Just as Kerouac wished for a family while longing for the rode, Di Prima wants the love of her little family and a life that is her own as well.

Whether she was forced in some way, by society or the people around her, to stay in a somewhat more traditional role or the chose to maintain some sense of social norms of the time, I do not know. Maybe my view of her as a Beat figure is skewed by the dominantly male Beat voice we have read so far in class.

The presence of the Beat culture for me was more apparent in Di Prima’s “Conversations.” With her confusing dialogue, reminiscent of Burroughs, and the seemingly fluid nature to the peace, reminding me of Kerouac’s non-structured structure, Di Prima shows her Beat side and the more masculine side to her writing.