On the Road with Jack KerouApp

In my former home of San Luis Obispo, CA, there’s a boarding house in which Jack Kerouac briefly lived. The place still stands, centrally located and easy enough to access. But though I’ve been a fan of Jack and the Beats throughout my life, I never went inside, or even walked by it. That might have changed the story for me, the one I carry around in my head: the writer hunched over his Underwood, boxers and white wifebeater, Lucky Strike hanging from his lips, bottle of Gilbey's, small dingy room with metal-barred twin bed, books on the nightstand, bathroom down the hall… The romantic images I call to mind--and the fact that everyone else who’s read On the Road has their own set of mental pictures—these are what hold resonance for me.

When a friend told me that he’d bought the new iPad On the Road app (which is now outpacing the previously #1 selling T.S. Eliot Waste Land app), I had instantly mixed feelings. Not unlike the jolt I’d felt earlier in the day, when I learned of the new Wuthering Heights video game.

I’m an English major. These things hurt.

And while I do, of course, have my kneejerk negative reaction to ebooks in general, this seemed to go a bit further in the pangs-of-dread department. The app not only provides the book’s full text, but also offers photos of the characters and the territory Kerouac passed through, historical details, an interactive map, and an entire section about the Beats.

I’m quite sure Kerouac would have hated it.

OK, in the realm of reading, I am somewhat of a purist. Books are exciting because they spark the imagination. In my mind, I know exactly what Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise look and sound like. Writing, if it’s any good, brings characters to life. Authors do their best to describe them, and our part of the bargain as readers is to make them our own. What people and places actually looked like is pretty much irrelevant. And is often a letdown. Our mental conjurings are far more dynamic.

Another charm of reading a plain ol’ book is that it trains the mind to follow a narrative without distraction. In these days of constant ADHD, multitasking, doing way too much at once, that’s hard to…imagine. A book is a great excuse to focus on one thing only, and get lost in a story in that rare and beautiful state known as flow. If you’ve ever read a book with copious footnotes and have attempted to read each one, you know how much that can distract from maintaining engagement with the narrative.

I realize that younger people who have used computers their entire life have differently wired brains and a far greater affection for doing multiple things at once. (Doing them well is another story…) But for me, that sort of manic multitasking inflicts both physical and psychic pain. My brain starts to throb, and I quickly feel like a hungry child led around at a state fair just wanting to get back to that hot dog. Flow is a need in everyone’s life, and long periods of it make us very happy humans. Just ask Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, whose name itself demands flow.

As for making classic books into multimedia experiences, I won't go into my rant about the vast Disney-fication of American culture. I understand the impetus: offering fans backstory, prodding kids to learn more, providing context of time and place. All legitimate. And of course I get the fun factor. Who knows—I might just end up playing with this toy myself someday. But my main concern is that when graphics are introduced, the power of naked, unadorned words to move our minds could become diminished. And that would be a shame. Words have incredible power—the pen being mightier than the sword and all that. It’s important to continue to experience that power, without embellishment, without distraction.

Last Day in SLO

In honor of my imminent departure, as I start my drive north into Oregon, I'd like to quote a bit from a book I picked up last night, Jack Kerouac's Lonesome Traveller (1960). He writes about traveling in CA, Mexico, NY, Morocco, Paris, and London during the Fifties, including his time as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak. I'd forgotten just how fine a writer ol' Jack could be... I found out recently that his mentor, Mark Van Doren, was also one of my mother's.

Here's a passage from the introduction:

"SUMMARY OF PRINCIPAL OCCUPATIONS AND/OR JOBS: 

Everything: Let's elucidate: scullion on ships, gas station attendant, deckhand on ships, newspaper sportswriter (Lowell Sun), railroad brakeman, script synopsizer for 20th Century Fox in N.Y., soda jerk, railroad yardclerk, also railroad baggagehandler, cottonpicker, assistant furniture mover, sheet metal apprentice on the Pentagon in 1942, forest service fire lookout 1956, construction laborer (1941).

PLEASE GIVE A BRIEF RESUME OF YOUR LIFE

...Had own mind. - Am known as "madman bum and angel" with "naked endless head" of "prose." - Also a verse poet, Mexico City Blues (Grove, 1959). - Always considered writing my duty on earth. Also the preachment of universal kindness, which hysterical critics have failed to notice beneath frenetic activity of my true-story novels about the "beat" generation. - Am actually not "beat" but strange solitary crazy Catholic mystic...

     Final plans: hermitage in the woods, quiet writing of old age, mellow hopes of Paradise (which comes to everybody anyway)...

     Favorite complaint about contemporary world: the facetiousness of "respectable" people...who, because not taking anything seriously, are destroying old human feelings older than Time Magazine...Dave Garroways laughing at white doves... "