WHY
BIG SUR
1.
so of course i read ON THE ROAD by jack kerouac and loved it doesn't
everybody? but then i read this book BIG SUR too, because he wrote during
the time he lived in northport which is where i live and that's exciting
to me.
and then i read
how this guy calls BIG SUR kerouac's masterpiece because it is his "now
i begin to die" novel and that's pretty cool too but i don't get
it at first really because this book is all about a nervous breakdown
and confronting death and isn't jack kerouac all about life?
i mean isn't jack
kerouac about being young and free and unconventional and open and on
the road? about freedom, all magnetic and wonderful - like neal cassady?
so how could a book about facing death be jack's masterpiece?
but then i think
about it. jack wasn't neal cassady. he just loved something about neal
cassady. something that was all about being alive. real dangerous exciting.
life that would burn itself out and would burn you if you touched it
but you had to touch it anyway. life you had to touch before it died.
even if it burnt you and some day you could never touch it again because
it was too alive and not the way you're alive or how you are going to
die. which is your own way.
and then i look
at jack's life and its amazing and sad at the same time because right
when you think he's really living, he's dying too. it's like life is
killing him.
you can see it in
the way he drinks so much it kills him. in the way fame turns so dead
in his life. in the way his relationships with friends and women keep
dying.
you can see it in
the way he loves the world but is shy and charming and then sometimes
suddenly he turns mean. in the way he buries himself more and more into
privacy and isolation - his home, his mother, his cat, his drinking,
this myth of himself that he loves and hates so much but just can't
get himself loose of.
it is like he wants
so bad to love life but he can't and at first he keeps trying and he
can love it a lot and then a little less and after a while hardly at
all and eventually it kills him.
it is like the story
of jack kerouac, and his books, are about life and death. about loving
life and losing it. and never wanting to stop loving it.
so i start to understand
that jack kerouac being about life is like jack kerouac being about
death too.
i start to get it
and so i decide to do this marathon reading of BIG SUR. and a lot of
people get excited and wants to do it but one guy says to me, sure i'll
read, but why BIG SUR? and i'm not sure why exactly.
2.
so i start reading everything by jack kerouac and everything about jack
kerouac. and someone asks me if i am getting obsessed with jack kerouac.
and i say i hope not. but maybe i am.
because there is
a kind of october rust all over jack kerouac's life and his books, whether
he's in a bordertown in mexico or a corn field in kansas, or in a lookout
tower in the california mountains or sitting by the pounding surf at
big sur.
whether it is in
a san francisco flophouse or a holy catholic grotto in lowell, there
is this strange new englandy fall rusty feeling all over jack's life
you can almost taste it and you can tell that summer has been great
and terrible but now its autumn and the leaves are turning color and
they're going to fall off and a lot of things are dying and only some
of those things are going to come back.
there's that feeling
where you know all this is happening and you can't do anything about
it and you're tired and summer can't last forever anyway, can it, but
by the time it comes back you'll hopefully be here to be able to enjoy
it again when it's fresh and new. so you're sad and you're glad and
you're miserable and you're reflective. and you understand everything
and you don't understand anything all at the same time.
and you just have
to try to say something and tell someone now while you've still got
a chance to do it.
that's how you feel.
you touch that rust that is all over jack kerouac's life and his books.
you touch it to your lips and you taste it, and it is bitter and tangy
and still kind of alive on your tongue. and it makes you feel real sad
about life and glad about life at the same time.
and you get obsessed
about jack kerouac even though you don't want to. and you start to understand
that being obsessed about jack is like jack being obsessed about life
and in a way he didn't want to be but couldn't help.
3.
then i read in another book this other guy calls BIG SUR the penultimate
chapter in jack's legend and even though i don't really understand what
penultimate means i kind of get that.
because it is like
right in the middle of everything he writes, jack kerouac keeps telling
you that there's death in the midst of life. even in ON THE ROAD, where
life really rocks and rolls and jack kerouac gets closest to being really
and almost completely alive sometimes, the way that life can be really
alive with jazz and women and music and movement.
because even in
ON THE ROAD, sometimes you find jack standing under a train trestle
or somewhere with his hands in his pockets or hanging there empty and
he's thinking about dean moriarity. and you know that even though jack
loves going on the road he also feels cheated and disappointed and let
down by it. and doesn't understand why exactly. that's the way the book
ends and you can tell right there that he knows. right there and then
jack is telling you that it is all going to go away and he's going to
lose it.
and he does lose
it. in fact he loses it in BIG SUR where he really heads smack into
the wall. he sees death and has to face it. first he gets a letter that
tyke his cat dies. then everything starts to die. a mouse dies. an otter
dies. his girfriend's goldfish dies. the flipped over rusted out thousand
foot down wrecked car under bixby canyon bridge dies.
jack kerouac goes
out to california to rekindle the fire - his dreams and his friendships
and his capacity to love women and people and good times and nature
- and all that dies.
hope dies.
but jack doesn't
actually die. he survives the experience and a year later he writes
a book about it. jack has to go on living a couple more years even though
he knows all this stuff and always suspected it anyway and he can't
get away from having it bother him.
even though he knows
that the only way to find any kind of comfort and understanding and
truth with a big "t" in the middle of the big crack up is
to give in and give up and admit that it's there and let it all go and
tell yourself it's all going to be all right and even believe it.
it's like BIG SUR
is this big car accident with people getting hurt and twisted metal
thrown everywhere and blood-red lights flashing. in BIG SUR jack finally
has his big car wreck. the king of ON THE ROAD tries to go back on the
road, and he cracks up and lives to tell us about it. and you don't
want to turn and watch it happen. but you can't help it.
4.
so why BIG SUR?
this week i got
a letter from oakland from one of the people who will be reading a chapter
in san francisco. she's real excited but says that she can't find BIG
SUR in the bookstore, and when she checks at the library they've put
it in the juvenile section. the librarians, she says, told her that
it was checked out twice in 1999 and once in 2001. and she says that's
too bad and i agree.
and then she says
she figures that it's a good thing for literature that we're doing the
marathon reading. and i figure she's right about that too.
because the story
of BIG SUR is this story of life and death and that's what jack kerouac's
story is about. about sometimes living a lot and then not being able
to as much. about death having to win some day whether you like it or
not and it's getting closer. about how death was there a little bit
even when you thought you were most alive. and after awhile it's there
a lot more and you're not very alive at all, but you're still trying.
and about what are
you going to do about it anyhow, except love life when you can and try
to understand how it's there and then it's not. and try to tell people
about it. and how that's funny and sad and terrible and memorable and
frightening and okay all at the same time.
which is why BIG
SUR. BIG SUR is an important book and a good book and it shouldn't be
in the juvenile section. people should read it.
-George Wallace