The following summary is adapted from Ann
Charters' "Editor's
Introduction" to the
section of The Portable Jack Kerouac, opening the section Charters
titles "The Modern Spontaneous Method."
[One] of Kerouac's writing experiments continued for years, a project begun
in 1952 that he considered his private dream-record, what the publisher
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"Kerouac's work represents the most
extensive experiment in language and literary
form undertaken by an American writer
of his generation." - Ann Douglas, writing
in the New York Times Book Review
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Lawrence Ferlinghetti called "the poetic raw material of the Kerouac saga,
the substrata of his novels and a commentary upon them."
[You will be reading two pieces of dream-writing] from Book of
Dreams, published by City Lights in 1961. Kerouac kept several sheets of
paper and a pencil attached to a clipboard on a string tied to the headboard
of his bed, so he could write down his dreams immediately after awakening.
He typed up the selections for Ferlinghetti, and his friend Philip Whalen
put them in order for publication....
[The third piece here is] from Old Angel Midnight, in which Kerouac,
influenced by James Joyce's experiments in Finnegan's Wake (1939),
pushed spontaneous prose to its ultimate expression. Kerouac told John
Clellon Holmes that his work in progress was "an endless automatic writing
piece which raves on and on with no direction and no story." He experimented
with free association in this poem, attempting to write down "the sounds of
the entire world ... now swimming thru the window." The San Francisco poet
Michael McClure recognized that in Old Angel Midnight, Kerouac had
achieved one of his most remarkable works:
Never [wrote McClure] before has inconsequentiality been raised to such a
peak that it becomes a breakthrough.... Inconsequentiality becomes a skewing
of the established values of the senses and imagination into strange and yet
familiar, but elusive, tantalizing and remarkable, constructs of image and
sound.... The politics of Old Angel Midnight is that it is a reply by
Jack to heavily armored, socially approved literature, as it was then taught
and admired in colleges.... Old Angel Midnight is contemporary
with exploratory jazz and with the painting which sought to make spiritual
autobiography utilizing the gestures of the artist and his materials....
Old Angel Midnight is struggling to be occupied by consciousness and
nothingness, and not by social commands.
first section from Book of Dreams
In a dismal studio room in New York my whole family Ma Pa & Nin and I have
taken up quarters and "all got jobs" and here it's night, one dim light
burning, we're conversing but it's a weird conversation, it seems I dont
realize what I'm doing and involuntarily or carelessly (because not fearing
wrath of women relatives and forgotten the father's because he so long gone
in death) I'm rolling a stick of tea and talking right at them some wild
excited inanities (born of T) they dont even listen to, rather they're
discussing me solemnish and my father gets up and says "He's not worried
about marijuana? Eh?" and he comes over to my side - I see him coming and I
go blind, darkness takes the place of the entire scene, nevertheless now I
feel his touch on my arm, he may have an axe, he may have anything and I
cant see -- I fall fainting dead in the darkness, with a groan that wakes
me up and prevents me from being found dead (if there is such a thing as
death) in my bed in the morning-for my blood stop't beating when that
Shroudy Traveller finally got his hand on me - He's getting closer & closer
- I know how
to be beyond him now-by not being concerned not believing in either life or
death, if this can be possible in a humble Pratyeka at this time
second section from Book of Dreams
I'm looking for a place to sit and write quietly at the baseball park and go
around a fountain and batting cage wire to a bench on the side where there's
an old typewriter & desks under a tree and here I turn into
"Malcolm
Cowley"
and start typing - but so old the Machine, to register letters ya gotta hit
it
one finger at a time hard, which I do, - & there's a sad young kid
there, of
18, definite personality, curly brown hair, thoughtful, as an interested old
Man of Letters I begin to interview him sympathetically and find he's a
young tender poet so saddened he doesnt write much, or some such, -- walked
2 1/2 miles before I wrote this, so part forgot - So he stares into space in
my
dream and I worry about him -- Who's subjective? Who's objective?
section from Old Angel Midnight
Boy, says Old Angel, this amazing nonsensical rave of yours wherein I spose
you'd think you'd in some lighter time find hand be-almin ya for the likes
of what ya devote yaself to, pah -- bum with a tail only means one thing, --
They know that in sauerkraut bars, god the chew chew & wall lips-And not
only that but all them in describable paradises aye -- ah -- Angel m
boy-Jack, the
born with a tail bit is a deal that you never dream'd to redeem -- verify --
try to see as straight-you wont believe even in God but the devil worries
you-you & Mrs Tourian -- great gaz-zuz & I'd as lief be scoured with a leaf
rust as hear this poetizin horseshit everywhere I want to hear the sounds
thru the window you promised me when the Midnight bell on 7th St did toll
bing bong & Burroughs and Ginsberg were asleep & you lay on the
couch in that timeless moment in the little red bulblight bus & saw drapes
of eternity parting for your hand to begin & so's you could affect-and
eeffect -- the total turningabout & deep revival of world robeflowing
literature till it shd be something a man'd put his eyes on & continually
read for the sake of reading & for the sake of the Tongue & not just these
insipid stories writ in insipid aridities & paranoias bloomin & why yet the
image-let's hear the Sound of the Universe, son, & no more part twaddle-And
dont expect nothing from me, my middle name is Opprobrium, Old Angel
Midnight Opprobrium, boy, O.A.M.O. --
Pirilee pirilee, tzwe tzwi tzwa, -- tack tick-birds & firewood. The dream is
already ended and we're already awake in the golden eternity.