On Staying Put

The 50th anniversary of Kerouac's consensus classic On the Road, and Sal Paradise's travels continue to dissolve into disappointment like my own, I find. A shocking confession lurks from a lit major, a Columbia man, a liberal, a New Yorker, and a dreamer and it must come out at last: I've never found Kerouac compelling.

It's the so-called automatic writing, spewed forth on the famous scroll, and the soul-of-a-generation ambition, I guess. Thick as mud. A mid-level blog of a book. I went back in this summer for the first time since it appeared on some long-ago reading list, and I didn't make it to Mexico with Sal and Dean.

Last night in National Airport (as all the cabbies still call it, despite the re-naming for the Gipper a while back), I was thinking about the modern road and musing on Kerouac's famed cross-country journey inspiring many imitators in the years since. I've never bummed it across the continent, alas. I tend to fly, stay in decent but unfancy hotels, and still arrive at either end entirely exhausted, and feeling no more noble or enlightened by the process. Sometimes it's the lighting, of course. The illumination of airport concourses is among the sickliest in the world - why, the last time I was in DC, it made Tim Russert look positively ancient as he checked in on the shuttle ahead of me.

Then too, I can be easily annoyed by  many different kinds of people. All of them loud. There was this fellow on the train the other morning, early. Met a friend on the platform, and proceeded to blather on at high volume, face turning red and arms gesticulating like a crazy man, the entire way to Grand Central. Property values in Bronxville. His job (God preserve anyone who has to work with this lout). His investments. I know the names of his wife, his kids, his firm, and his favorite porn star. And if I wrote them here he might well be identified. But I'll let the fool go, unless I get stuck one seat away next week at 7 am. Then he's blog meat.

Open question to Bobby, my b-roll conductor friend from Metro-North: how do you deal with people like this? The entire car wanted him to shut up. People exchanged knowing looks. One lady kept shushing him. but he rattled on, oblivious, like a fat cicada in summer. What's the correct procedure, Bobby?

Some of the taxi drivers went on strike in New York this week. Strange issues, though: GPS tracking systems and credit card scanners in cabs. I don't care about the former, but the latter would be convenient. Except that the city wants the drivers to pay the credit card fees. I think that's wrong, and wouldn't mind a 5% surcharge for the convenience of swiping a card, much as I often fork over a couple of bucks to take my own money out of somebody else's bank. The margin on cab work is thin enough, and most drivers don't own their own vehicles or medallions. One of my favorite columnists, Juan Gonzalez of the Daily News, said it's Bloomberg elitism and a battle for the drivers' soul.

Then there was the guy at LaGuardia yesterday who asked me for $300 as I checked in. His story: he was in town for a big interview for an engineering position. He'd checked out of his nice hotel (he showed me a dog-eared receipt) but had missed his flight. He offered me his driver's license if I'd run over the ATM and hand him $300 in cash for a room. (This was 10 am, mind you). "I'm a good guy, it'll be a mitzvah. I'm Jewish, you can trust me." I demurred, as most would. He instantly lashed out: "you prick, you balding prick. Get some Rogaine, asshole!" And he shuffled off.

Nice. I'd failed the humanity test. The airline staff at the desk said he'd been hanging around pestering people as they arrived, and they changed my middle seat to a window - in the emergency exit row. I stretched out all the way to our nation's capital, and meditated on the comely inverse of the wonders of travel. Staying put.

Comments

[bcelaya]

Well, I also have a confession to make: despite being an enthusiastic child of the sixties, I hadn't read "on the Road" until last year. Despite my initial apprehensions, I actually loved the book. Wished it would never end, was totally able to put myself in the perspective of the era it was a product of. But then I'm totally pre-ironic, a lover of honest, unguarded earnestness. I realize today's hip, with-it cynics find old-school passion to be totally naive, but for me "On the Road" portrays one of the last periods of true non-conformity in what has now become a very predicatble social structure in this image-driven (largely as a result of advertising suggestion) society.

[Dan Leo]

No opinion on Kerouac, Tom, since I haven't read him in about thirty years, but, even though I don't regret any of the traveling I have done, someday I'm going to write a book called "Not on the Road", all about how nice it is just to stay the hell home.

But then I'm the guy who, when asked by one of my friends, "Don't you ever feel like just picking up and taking off?" replied to her, "Uh, no, not really."

[grasshopper]

Begging for $300? You must look like big bucks, Tom, a billionaire a few times over. Either that or the guy was crazy.
I read "On the Road" when I was fourteen, and "Naked Lunch," by William Burroughs, the junkie-writer who killed his wife by shooting an apple off her head--a joke she died for--the same year. (Undoubtedly some older boyfriend pressed these out-law novels on me, trying to pry me from my school-girl shell.)
Does anyone know which novel featured a guy having sex with a random woman, pressing her into the carpet, but getting ecstatic over her chin hair? It was Kerouac or Burroughs, I'm almost sure, and the fantastically sexy bearded lady impressed me so much she's never entirely lost her place in my mind.

[Bobby]

Tom,

This is out of the Metro North Customer Service Manual:

As a courtesy to other customers, crew members will politely request that customers:

Use cell phones sparingly, speak softly and in a civil tone, and turn off audible ringing devices. Use of walkie-talkie type cell phones should be limited to the vestibule areas.

Not much for we conductors to go on...so we try to use common sense. If the cell phone user is being as loud as your friend there, we approach them and ask them to keep it down,(this usually works for about 30 seconds and then they go back to screaming.) I usually ask a second time and then...I give up (Do passengers really want to be delayed waiting for the police over a loud mouth?) Then there's the freedom of speech issues
...yada...yada...yada.
I recommend that you move to another car,(life is unfair sometimes.)

[Tom W.]

Bobby - how about some quiet cars? I have to say, it's only the early mornings that bug me...

[Tom W.]

Grasshopper - the guy was crazy (I mean c'mon, you've seen me). And Giuliani went after the squeegee men for a buck...

[Ralph]

"It's the so-called automatic writing, spewed forth on the famous scroll..."

Actually, a new biography shows that, contrary to popular belief, Kerouac wrote draft after draft - much like conventional writers. His pure automatic writing is a myth. BTW, check out his spoken word albums (Steve Allen on piano, Al Cohn on sax) -- they are great. Have never read On The Road (just started reading Lolita for the first time) -- but plan to soon.

[Ken Houghton]

What Ralph Said about the "automatic writing" being no such thing.

There's an alternative history somewhere where Kerouac doesn't break his leg freshman year, finishes at Barack Obama's alma mater (and yours), and Ginsgerg instead of "Lowell Jack" (h/t Eric Andersen) becomes the iconic leader of The Beats. But I don't want to go there again.