Atop an Underwood (21 page)
Authors: Jack Kerouac
But I have been neglecting my story. What I have just said is the result of an hour spent in the Public Library, poring over current periodicals, finding no spark of human worth in any of them, only a lot of oratory about the American Dream, freedom for all peoples at all places at all times, (let me tell you, Sir, freedom is an inner thing, and do not underestimate that remark, by all means); a lot of Rooseveltian (excuse me) blarney about the immense ideal of freedom which the world seeks today, the great shadow of death floating in the heavens, and movies in which you see the heroine looking up to heaven as the picture nears a close, looking up to heaven as the light gets brighter and the oratory is poured on, or ladled on, in great eloquent quantities, and the music mounts in fury, until you begin to imagine that there will be such a burst of light in the heavens, such a tremendous quantity of Utopian nectar, so many Gods floating around, so much oratorical heaven that you will die from the shock of it. (To think that they want to convert my beloved back-alleys, garbage pail and old redbrick wall and empty whiskey bottle, into a cloud, pink color, with oratorical angels basking in it, flapping their wings of empty eloquence.)
Well, again I have deviated. It is a tough time, folks, believe me; it is a time when a young writer knows he is wasting his time, for people have become insane, blind, foolish, they have gone off in a foolish tangent, you lose faith in them, you realize that the world of letters is no more, you wish you were an Athenian Greek, or something, so that your life's passion would not go in vain, in vain . . . but you remember Wolfe, Saroyan, and Halper, and you figure what the hell nothing is going to stop you if nothing stopped them . . .
This Kerouac I speak of who became sublime was my father's sister. Folks, she became a nun, and let me tell you that when she writes letters to my father, writes to him from the serene gloom of her religion, there is warmth! human warmth! there is no empty eloquence, there is only the kind of love that I know must still reside in the hearts of men, the kind of love that we are losing, the kind of love that I am trying to cling to, and let me tell you that my father's sister is a sublime and a great woman.
The Father of My Father
In her Lowell-based study
Franco-American Folk Traditions and Popular Culture in a Former Milltown,
Brigitte Lane discusses the “languagey language” used by the Kerouacs and others in Lowell and New England: “Franco-American French is indeed a language of its own: an incredibly direct, concrete and flexible language whose linguistic features are frequently discussed with passion by the more educated Franco-Americans
. [...]
Derived from
joual
(French-Canadian French), it is definitely a dialect of its own.” Lane explains that the regional French features “extreme modernisms (acquired through the borrowing and reshaping of American linguistic forms)” and “ancient” terms. In naming the language of his household, Kerouac used the terms
Canadian French, New England French-Canadian, patois,
and even “Canuckian Child Patois Probably Medieval” (from the note to his poem “On Waking from a Dream of Robert Fournier”).
Franco-American Folk Traditions and Popular Culture in a Former Milltown,
Brigitte Lane discusses the “languagey language” used by the Kerouacs and others in Lowell and New England: “Franco-American French is indeed a language of its own: an incredibly direct, concrete and flexible language whose linguistic features are frequently discussed with passion by the more educated Franco-Americans
. [...]
Derived from
joual
(French-Canadian French), it is definitely a dialect of its own.” Lane explains that the regional French features “extreme modernisms (acquired through the borrowing and reshaping of American linguistic forms)” and “ancient” terms. In naming the language of his household, Kerouac used the terms
Canadian French, New England French-Canadian, patois,
and even “Canuckian Child Patois Probably Medieval” (from the note to his poem “On Waking from a Dream of Robert Fournier”).
This is a very important story because it deals with a man who was also named Jack Kerouac, and who was the father of my father. This strong personage died when my father was fifteen years old, and in a very tragic manner. He died melodramatically, indicating perhaps that someday a poet would stem from his blood. And I'll be damned if it didn't happen that way.
This is a very important story. I must treat it carefully, reverently, and tragically.
Honest Jack, they called him in his home town, which was a small New Hampshire city on the banks of the Merrimac River. Honest Jack, the best carpenter in town, and the father of eight children; Honest Jack, who like the poet of his posterity, stood about five feet ten inches tall and was built like an oak, and whose footsteps my father can still hear, coming down the streets of Nashua, echoing through the lanes of sleeping houses, a firm powerful step of a firm powerful man.
Honest Jack was a staunch Catholic, and one night a whore accosted him as he was crossing the railroad tracks.
“Ma putain!” he roared in French. “Go home and go to your father and allow him to spank you. You whore! You should be ashamed of yourself. Go home!” He roared and roared, and the whore ran home.
Honest Jack was a Breton. He had the blue eyes and black hair which predominates these hardy Channel fishermen. Brittany on the Northwestern coast of France. The hardy Celts of France, blue eyes and black hair, the sea, women standing on the shore waving at departing ships, like “Riders to the Sea,” the Celts of the Sea. Honest Jack stemmed from this people. Somewhere in his blood was the aristocratic blood of a woman who had married one of his seaman ancestors, and then the Revolution, and the flight to Canada; the land grant in Quebec, and the loss of it through English scheming, and again the Kerouacs are of the land, and still are today. Honest Jack the carpenter in Nashua, N.H., in 1895. This amazes me no end.
Honest Jack was fearless. He dared God to strike him with a thunderbolt. Whenever there was a thunderstorm, he would stand on the large porch of his home and roar at the heavens, waving his bony fist at the lashing tempest.
“Frappes!” he would cry. “Varges! Varges, si tu est pour! Varges!”
He would use this enormous language against the storm. It meant this: “Strike me! Blast me, if you will! Blast me!” The language called Canadian French is the strongest in the world when it comes to words of power, such as blast and strike, and others. It is too bad that one cannot study it in college, for it is one of the most languagey languages in the world. It is unwritten; it is the language of the tongue, and not of the pen. It grew from the lives of French people come to America. It is a terrific, a huge language.
At other times, Honest and Fearless Jack would take an oil lamp and juggle it, all the time daring God to blow him up right then and there. His wife (and my father's dear mother), who was named Clementine, used to stand by with fear in her heart, watching her magnificent husband do the strong things that he did, wondering why he wasn't weak like other men, not knowing that only real men are considered mentally amiss. My father's father was a magnificent man.
One day, he suddenly grew tired of life. He began to drink each night, rising early in the morning to go to his work, always on time, but every night he would get drunk again, and come back home early in the morning, muttering. On Sundays, he would not drink, but would stalk around the kitchen humming church hymns. After a year of this, his son (my father's brother) denounced him for his actions, and he died that night. My father's brother is brooding over it today. It was tragic.
Credo
In “Credo,” the closing chapter of
You Can't Go Home Again,
Thomas Wolfe writes, in part, “No man that I have known was ever more deeply rooted in the soil of Time and Memory, the weather of his individual universe, than was I
. [...]
I think I speak for most men living when I say that our America is Here, is Now, and beckons on before us, and that this glorious assurance is not only our living hope, but our dream to be accomplished
.”
You Can't Go Home Again,
Thomas Wolfe writes, in part, “No man that I have known was ever more deeply rooted in the soil of Time and Memory, the weather of his individual universe, than was I
. [...]
I think I speak for most men living when I say that our America is Here, is Now, and beckons on before us, and that this glorious assurance is not only our living hope, but our dream to be accomplished
.”
Â
Â
Remember above all things, Kid, that to write is not
difficult, not painful, that it comes out of you
with ease, that you can whip up a little tale in no
time, that when you are sincere about it, that when
you want to impress a truth, it is not difficult,
not painful, but easy, graceful, full of smooth
power, as if you were a writing machine with a store
of literature that is boundless, enormous, endless,
and rich. For it is true; this is so. Do not forget
it in your gloomier moments. Make your stuff warm,
drive it home American-wise, don't mind critics, don't
mind the stuffy academic theses of scholars, they
don't know what they're talking about, they're way
off the track, they're cold; you're warm, you're
redhot, you can write all day, you know what you
know, like Halper; you remember that, Kid, and when
you feel as if you cannot write, as if it is no
use, as if life is no good, read this over and
realize that you can do a lot of good in this
world by turning out truths like these, by spreading
warmth, by trying to preach living for life's sake,
not the intellectual way, but the warm way, the way
of love, the way which says: Brothers, I greet you
with open arms, I accept your frailties, I offer you
my frailties, let us gather and run the gamut of
rich human existence. Remember, Kid, the ease, the
grace, the glory, the greatness of your art; remember
it, never forget. Remember passion. Do not forget,
do not forsake, do not neglect. It is there, the
order and the purpose; there is chaos, but not in
you, not way down deep in your heart, no chaos,
only ease, grace, beauty, love, greatness . . . . . Kid,
you can whip a little tale, a little truth, you can
mop up the floor with a little tale in no time; it is
a cinch, you are the flow of smooth thrumming power,
you are a writer, and you can turn out some mean
stuff, and you will turn out tons of it, because it
is you, and do not forget it, Kid, do not forget it;
please, please Kid, do not forget yourself; save
that, save that, preserve yourself; turn out those
mean little old tales by the dozens, it is easy,
it is grace, do it American-wise, drive it home,
sell truth, for it needs to be sold. Remember, Kid,
what I say to you tonight; never forget it, read
this over in your gloomier moments and never, never
forget . . . . . never, never, never forget . . . . . please,
please, Kid please . . .
difficult, not painful, that it comes out of you
with ease, that you can whip up a little tale in no
time, that when you are sincere about it, that when
you want to impress a truth, it is not difficult,
not painful, but easy, graceful, full of smooth
power, as if you were a writing machine with a store
of literature that is boundless, enormous, endless,
and rich. For it is true; this is so. Do not forget
it in your gloomier moments. Make your stuff warm,
drive it home American-wise, don't mind critics, don't
mind the stuffy academic theses of scholars, they
don't know what they're talking about, they're way
off the track, they're cold; you're warm, you're
redhot, you can write all day, you know what you
know, like Halper; you remember that, Kid, and when
you feel as if you cannot write, as if it is no
use, as if life is no good, read this over and
realize that you can do a lot of good in this
world by turning out truths like these, by spreading
warmth, by trying to preach living for life's sake,
not the intellectual way, but the warm way, the way
of love, the way which says: Brothers, I greet you
with open arms, I accept your frailties, I offer you
my frailties, let us gather and run the gamut of
rich human existence. Remember, Kid, the ease, the
grace, the glory, the greatness of your art; remember
it, never forget. Remember passion. Do not forget,
do not forsake, do not neglect. It is there, the
order and the purpose; there is chaos, but not in
you, not way down deep in your heart, no chaos,
only ease, grace, beauty, love, greatness . . . . . Kid,
you can whip a little tale, a little truth, you can
mop up the floor with a little tale in no time; it is
a cinch, you are the flow of smooth thrumming power,
you are a writer, and you can turn out some mean
stuff, and you will turn out tons of it, because it
is you, and do not forget it, Kid, do not forget it;
please, please Kid, do not forget yourself; save
that, save that, preserve yourself; turn out those
mean little old tales by the dozens, it is easy,
it is grace, do it American-wise, drive it home,
sell truth, for it needs to be sold. Remember, Kid,
what I say to you tonight; never forget it, read
this over in your gloomier moments and never, never
forget . . . . . never, never, never forget . . . . . please,
please, Kid please . . .
... Hungry Young Writer's Notebook . . . .
This homage to food prefigures ravenously descriptive passages about food in Kerouac's books. A brilliant example is the scene of Hector's cafeteria in New York City in
Visions of Cody.
Visions of Cody.
How about a thick mushroom soup to begin with? Let us place it in a rather heavy bowl, white, stained, cracked at the edges, well eaten-in; let us dip into this with a large wooden ladle the steaming sauce, spotted here and there by a piece of cooked mushroom. You find it next in the heavy white bowl, ready to eat, to slurp, to swallow in ecstatic frenzy, to completely render invisibleâand to do this, our quiet host hands us a large silver spoon with a black wooden handle. You grasp it rudely, with your whole fist, and dip the silver into the depths of the thick saucy substance. Before you extract the first large spoonful, you bend down to smell the soup. Oh, it is pungent; a scandalous sprinkling of pepper and salt, and a cute little sprinkling of paprika. You finger a small piece of brown mushroom, extract it from its hot tempting bed of glut and smell it careful: Ah, let's call our shot:âit is the smell of the Subtle Pungency and the savor, the odor, the piquancy of sublime ravishment. Ah, let us eat. You dip the large spoon in, lift it to your mouth, and insert it to your mouth. You swallow the first mouthful, and it is like the nectarous drug of heaven. A small mushroom is discovered in the midst of your palate . . . you chew it carefully with your fore-teeth, and find that its timbre is delicate, that its body is tender, succulent, dainty, spicy; and with it all is the thick creamy sauce, the savory soup, oozing down your throat, the molten lava of heaven.
Let us proceed to the steak. A thick tenderloin, Mein Host, and I'll have yet some mushroom on it; mashed potatoes covered with parsley; a side dish of saucy yellow corn, glistening in the light of this heaven; some fine fresh French-Belgian bread, with large thick crusts and yielding white dough; large crinkly crusts, the kind of crusts that you tug at, and when you tear it apart, there follows a stream of warm white dough, and with all this generous gobs of thick yellow butter . . . . Oh, I must tell you more, and I don't care how it sounds, or what defects there are, for sir this is hunger! hunger! hunger! and there is no other appeasement but the word . . . . the steak has arrived, and Mein Host fades back into the shadows, eager to serve me .... I begin to eat. The steak is huge, about two feet long and one foot wide, with a thickness of two inches. Through it runs a great bone, protruding at one end like the mighty hock of a beast. I grasp this bone and snarl into the steak, thrusting my mouth into the warm brown side of the meat, gnashing bestially with my savageful teeth and tearing off huge brown folds of meat, great flaccid flabs of bloody meat, chewing with a carnal fury never before equaled in time. O My God, but I eat. I chew with tremendous passion, swiftly, swallowing the meat in massive mouthfuls. I wash this down with a huge potful of nectarous coffee, well flavored with cream and sugar . . . it is a special pot that I drink out of, created for the occasionâit is one foot high, and looks like a tankard of ale; the coffee is in this pot, brown and deep and sluggishly steaming stained smells. I dart my spoon into the golden corn and take a bite, swallowing the mashy sauce of its yellow munificence; I carry a mountain of mashed potatoes to my mouth on a fork and let the whorly masses turn slowly in my mouth, creating taste-gland secretions, and then slipping slowly down my throat in warm full piles. Then I swipe down another magnificent slug of coffee from my tankard, and return voraciously to the slab of succulent dripping steak, sinking my teeth into the juicing mountain of meat and pulling off penchant stringings of sweating rare beef, covered by a delicate crunchly hide of browned loveliness.
Well, sirs, for dessert I had a hot fudge sundae with chocolate ice cream; I'll tell you about that some other time. At this time, I must go to bed and forget hunger.
A Young Writer's Notebook
The ending of this piece points in the direction of two of Kerouac's later works: “Home at Christmas,” a memory of preâWorld War II Christmastime in Lowell, which appeared in
Glamour
in 1961 and is included in
The Portable Jack Kerouac,
and the teenage love story
Maggie Cassidy,
published in 1959
.
The novel's opening scene has Jack Duluoz and his pals singing “Jack O Diamonds” on their way to a New Year's Eve dance at the Rex Ballroom in snowy downtown Lowell. In early 1953 Kerouac wrote a one-page “preamble” to the novel in which he explains that he wants to tell Neal Cassady how he fell in love: “How beautiful can a woman be?âthat when . . . after I met Mary Carney on New Year's Eve, at a dance, dance in the Rex .. dancing hall, it was snowing and GJ was singin Jack 0 Diamonds, and we walked by Lucksy Smith's house out in Pawtucketville
, [....]”
Glamour
in 1961 and is included in
The Portable Jack Kerouac,
and the teenage love story
Maggie Cassidy,
published in 1959
.
The novel's opening scene has Jack Duluoz and his pals singing “Jack O Diamonds” on their way to a New Year's Eve dance at the Rex Ballroom in snowy downtown Lowell. In early 1953 Kerouac wrote a one-page “preamble” to the novel in which he explains that he wants to tell Neal Cassady how he fell in love: “How beautiful can a woman be?âthat when . . . after I met Mary Carney on New Year's Eve, at a dance, dance in the Rex .. dancing hall, it was snowing and GJ was singin Jack 0 Diamonds, and we walked by Lucksy Smith's house out in Pawtucketville
, [....]”
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