In Honor Of Jean Bon Kerouac On The 60th Anniversary Of “On The Road” (1957)-In The Birthday Anniversary -“The Subterraneans" I
n Honor Of Jean Bon Kerouac On The 60th Anniversary Of “On The Road” (1957)
By Book Critic Zack James
To be honest I know about On The Road Jack Kerouac’s epic tale of his generation’s search for something, maybe the truth, maybe just for kicks, for stuff, important stuff that had happened down in the base of society where nobody in authority was looking or some such happening strictly second-hand. His generation’s search looking for a name, found what he, or someone associated with him, maybe the bandit poet Gregory Corso, king of the mean New York streets, mean, very mean indeed in a junkie-hang-out world around Times Square when that place was up to its neck in flea-bit hotels, all-night Joe and Nemo’s and the trail of the “fixer” man on every corner, con men coming out your ass too, called the “beat” generation. (Yes, I know that the actual term “beat” was first used by Kerouac writer friend John Clemmon Holmes in an article in some arcane journal but the “feel” had to have come from a less academic source so I will crown the bandit prince Corso as genesis)
Beat, beat of the jazzed up drum line backing some sax player searching for the high white note, what somebody told me, maybe my oldest brother Alex who was washed clean in the Summer of Love, 1967 but must have known the edges of Jack’s time since he was in high school when real beat exploded on the scene in Jack-filled 1957, they called “blowing to the China seas” out in West Coast jazz and blues circles, that high white note he heard achieved one skinny night by famed sax man Sonny Johns, dead beat, run out on money, women, life, leaving, and this is important no forwarding address for the desolate repo man to hang onto, dread beat, nine to five, 24/7/365 that you will get caught back up in the spire wind up like your freaking staid, stay at home parents, beaten down, ground down like dust puffed away just for being, hell, let’s just call it being, beatified beat like saintly and all Jack’s kid stuff high holy Catholic incense and a story goes with it about a young man caught up in a dream, like there were not ten thousand other religions in the world to feast on- you can take your pick of the meanings, beat time meanings. Hell, join the club they all did, the guys, and it was mostly guys who hung out on the poet princely mean streets of New York, Chi town, Mecca beckoning North Beach in Frisco town cadging twenty-five cents a night flea-bag sleeps (and the fleas were real no time for metaphor down in the bowels where the cowboy junkies drowse in endless sleeps, raggedy winos toothless suck dry the dregs and hipster con men prey on whoever floats down), half stirred left on corner diners’ coffees and groundling cigarette stubs when the Bull Durham ran out).
I was too young to have had anything but a vague passing reference to the thing, to that “beat” thing since I was probably just pulling out of diapers then, maybe a shade bit older but not much. I got my fill, my brim fill later through my oldest brother Alex. Alex, and his crowd, more about that in a minute, but even he was only washed clean by the “beat” experiment at a very low level, mostly through reading the book (need I say the book was On The Road) and having his mandatory two years of living on the road around the time of the Summer of Love, 1967 an event whose 50th anniversary is being commemorated this year as well and so very appropriate to mention since there were a million threads, fibers, connections between “beat” and “hippie” despite dour grandpa Jack’s attempts to trash those connection when the acolytes and bandit hangers-on came calling looking for the “word.” So even Alex and his crowd were really too young to have been washed by the beat wave that crashed the continent toward the end of the 1950s on the wings of Allan Ginsburg’s Howl and Jack’s travel book of a different kind (not found on the AAA, Traveler’s Aid, Youth Hostel brochure circuit if you please although Jack and the crowd, my brother and his crowd later would use such services when up against it in let’s say a place like Winnemucca in the Nevadas or Neola in the heartlands).
Literary stuff for sure but the kind of stuff that moves generations, or I like to think the best parts of those cohorts. These were the creation documents the latter of which would drive Alex west before he finally settled down to his career life as a high-road lawyer (and to my sorrow and anger never looked back which has caused more riffs and bad words than I want to yell about here).
Of course anytime you talk about books and poetry and then add my brother’s Alex name into the mix that automatically brings up memories of another name, the name of the late Peter Paul Markin. Markin, for whom Alex and the rest of the North Adamsville corner boys, Frankie, Jack, Jimmy, Si, Josh (he a separate story from up in Olde Saco, Maine and so only an honorary corner boy after hitching up with the Scribe out on a Russian Hill dope-filled park), Bart, and a few others still alive recently had me put together a tribute book for in connection with that Summer of Love, 1967, their birthright event, just mentioned. Markin was the vanguard guy, the volunteer odd-ball unkempt mad monk seeker, what did Jack call his generation’s such, oh yeah, holy goofs, who got several of them off their asses and out to the West Coast to see what there was to see. To see some stuff that Markin had been speaking of for a number of years before 1967 (and which nobody in the crowd paid any attention to, or dismissed out of hand, what they called “could give a rat’s ass” about in the local jargon which I also inherited in those cold, hungry bleak 1950s cultural days in America) and which can be indirectly attributed to the activities of Jack, Allen Ginsburg, Gregory Corso, that aforementioned bandit poet who ran wild on the mean streets among the hustlers, conmen and whores of the major towns of the continent, William Burroughs, the Harvard-trained junkie and a bunch of other guys who took a very different route for our parents who were of the same generation as them but of a very different world.
But it was above all Jack’s book, Jack’s travel adventure book which had caused a big splash in 1957(after an incredible publishing travail since the story line actually related to events in the late 1940s and which would cause Jack no end of trauma when the kids showed up at his door looking to hitch a ride on the motherlode star, and had ripple effects into the early 1960s and even now certain “hip” kids acknowledge the power of attraction that book had for their own developments, especially that living simple, fast and hard part). Made the young, some of them anyway, like I say I think the best part, have to spend some time thinking through the path of life ahead by hitting the vagrant dusty sweaty road. Maybe not hitchhiking, maybe not going high speed high through the ocean, plains, mountain, desert night but staying unsettled for a while anyway.
Like I said above Alex was out on the road two years and other guys, other corner boys for whatever else you wanted to call them that was their niche back in those days and were recognized as such in the town not always to their benefit, from a few months to a few years. Markin started first back in the spring of 1967 but was interrupted by his fateful induction into the Army and service, if you can call it that, in Vietnam and then several more years upon his return before his untimely and semi-tragic end down some dusty Jack-strewn road in Mexico cocaine deal blues. With maybe this difference from today’s young who are seeking alternative roads away from what is frankly bourgeois society and was when Jack wrote although nobody except commies and pinkos called it that for fear of being tarred with those brushes. Alex, Frankie Riley the acknowledged leader, Jack Callahan and the rest, Markin included, were strictly “from hunger” working class kids who when they hung around Tonio Pizza Parlor were as likely to be thinking up ways to grab money fast any way they could or of getting into some hot chick’s pants any way they could as anything else. Down at the base of society when you don’t have enough of life’s goods or have to struggle too much to get even that little bit “from hunger” takes a big toll on your life. I can testify to that part because Alex was not the only one in the James family to go toe to toe with the law back then when the coppers were just waiting for corner boy capers to explode nay Friday or Saturday night, it was a close thing for all us boys as it had been with Jack when all is said and done. But back then dough and sex after all was what was what for corner boys, maybe now too although you don’t see many guys hanging on forlorn Friday night corners anymore.
What made this tribe different, the Tonio Pizza Parlor corner boys, was mad monk Markin. Markin called by Frankie Riley “Scribe” from the time he came to North Adamsville from across town in junior high school and that stuck all through high school. The name stuck because although Markin was as larcenous and lovesick as the rest of them he was also crazy for books and poetry. Christ according to Alex, Markin was the guy who planned most of the “midnight creeps” they called then. Although nobody in their right minds would have the inept Markin actually execute the plan. That was for smooth as silk Frankie now also like Alex a high-road lawyer to lead. That operational sense was why Frankie was the leader then (and maybe why he was a locally famous lawyer later who you definitely did not want to be on the other side against him). Markin was also the guy who all the girls for some strange reason would confide in and thus was the source of intelligence about who was who in the social pecking order, in other words, who was available, sexually or otherwise. That sexually much more important than otherwise. See Markin always had about ten billion facts running around his head in case anybody, boy or girl, asked him about anything so he was ready to do battle, for or against take your pick.
The books and the poetry is where Jack Kerouac and On The Road come into the corner boy life of the Tonio’s Pizza Parlor life. Markin was something like an antennae for anything that seemed like it might help create a jailbreak, help them get out from under. Later he would be the guy who introduced some of the guys to folk music when that was a big thing. (Alex never bought into that genre, still doesn’t, despite Markin’s desperate pleas for him to check it out. Hated whinny Bob Dylan above all else.) Others too like Kerouac’s friend Allen Ginsburg and his wooly homo poem Howl from 1956 which Markin would read sections out loud from on lowdown dough-less, girl-less Friday nights. And drive the strictly hetero guys crazy when he insisted that they read the poem, read what he called a new breeze was coming down the road. They could, using that term from the times again, have given a rat’s ass about some fucking homo faggot poem from some whacko Jewish guy who belonged in a mental hospital. (That is a direct quote from Frankie Riley at the time via my brother Alex’s memory bank.)
Markin flipped out when he found out that Kerouac had grown up in Lowell, a working class town very much like North Adamsville, and that he had broken out of the mold that had been set for him and gave the world some grand literature and something to spark the imagination of guys down at the base of society like his crowd with little chance of grabbing the brass ring. So Markin force-marched the crowd to read the book, especially putting pressure on my brother who was his closest friend then. Alex read it, read it several times and left the dog- eared copy around which I picked up one day when I was having one of my high school summertime blues. Read it through without stopping almost like Jack wrote the final version of the thing on a damn newspaper scroll in about three weeks. So it was through the Scribe via Alex that I got the Kerouac bug. And now on the 60th anniversary I am passing on the bug to you.
Book Review
The Subterraneans, Jack Kerouac, Grove Press, 1958
What if a monstrously- gifted, an immensely-gifted one million bloated word man maybe working on his second million words and those words not all “and, the, and buts (although maybe butts)” but some fantastic jazzy (not Duke big band tone poems or Benny clarinet quartet swing-a-ling but Dizzy salt peanuts bop-bop-bop and Charlie solo austere heaven-reaching big note blows) sing-song reflecting childhood, red brick Lowell mill town moody street pawtucketville dying for lack of work and jobs moving to cheap labor south childhood, reflecting early brother death is eternal loss sadnesses, big sadnesses, reflecting Merrimack rocky tree-strewn river runs, hide-outs, stone-skippings, buddy-adventuring against the adult sorrows, big adult sorrows to come, reflecting father-son –and the holy ghost Gallic Roman Catholic French-Canadian (F-C to you, okay) old country (Canuck) Gaspe sad sack existences and forbear breton celtic moodinesses, big moodinesses, reflecting hard time father time day dreams and moving, endless moving from one street triple-decker to another to make the rent, from one bewildering printer job town (and odd jobs as circus promoter, oh, wrestling promoter, sad sack bowling pin ball man) to another, reflecting modern Greek god-like athletic prowesses running football-loped head-long like some Pamplona bull in holy arch-enemy Lawrence games , a slight speed burst juke here, a slight jet stream flash juke there, reflecting mad teenage boy-girl crushes (hardened Maggie), conquests (easy Paula , and half of the reflex football F-C girls all a-glitter with handsome Johnnie’s dark good looks, ooh-la-la) and woman madness, reflecting sailing out on the seven seas, or part of them, stoic, reflecting New Jack City romps, discoveries, heartaches, women taken, booze drunk, pills devoured, reflecting first-time cross country jaunts with golden- haired western cowboy heroes, more women, more wine, taken in search of the post-World War II blue-pink Great American West night, reflecting big book discoveries and plots for even bigger books and two million words passed to three million, writer blew into 1950s Frisco town.
What if that reflected writer searching for that post-World War II blue-pink Great American West night searched around North Beach looking for beat angels (although not called beat angels just then just angels, and angles- figuring angles at that), searched around Columbus taverns and bars looking for that one drink that would bring relief to his aching besotted head, that one joint that would clear the air of all the stinks of Lowell, of New Jack City, of Jersey shore sprays, of Chicago hog butcher to the world bloods, of Denver poolroom pass-throughs looking for golden-haired all-American cowboys to drive his vengeance, searched around Larkin Street wino stink-holes, smelling of urine and bad karma on top of non-fumigated beds, desperately in need of cleaning shower stalls, and small hot stoves for liberty coffee, searched around, well, you know, searched, no better waited around for some juicy woman, fresh from some Podunk town (not realizing, she not realizing, that he too came from podunk but just smitten with good looks and great writer bedroom eyes) to call at his door, to, frankly be bedded and be pushed out the door when his writing habits came on, searched for kindred (guy kindred although no fags need apply if that is what you think) to spend endless benny-nights and morning sun come-ups talking, talking of Proust (that old reprobate Frenchman, maybe kindred back, way back in old, old country days, maybe Adam time), talking rough trade fag wharf-heavy Jean Genet and flowers, talking about cold war break- outs with no word of cold war break-outs spoken , searched for that high white note that came from the negro streets blown by Lester Young, blown by Charlie, blown by some twelve year old Broadway boy when the title was vacated, searched for, alright, searched for the subterraneans, the denizens of the newer world, the be-bop world.
What if that searched writer decided, well, maybe not decided that is too strong a word but fell into something, fell into something that he needed, no, that he wanted right then, an affair, a tryst, an encounter, hell, a steady easy ride with a woman, a subterranean, an exotic, a woman of color, hell with a negro woman, no, a negress (proper usage then before black devoured negro, and negress, although not those po’boy, and girl, negro streets that beat angel, before beat, Allen Ginsberg kept jabbering about), decided that he would take her and her brown exotic (exotic from ten million American meltings with hobo gypsies, hobo injuns, hobo white trash, hell even with Mister back in plantations days when nobody ever heard of miscegenations) essence (and brown or exotic that fragrance, that perfume smell that has trapped man, men, since Adam’s day, maybe before) and ride out the storm (her storm, orphan annie , junkie, benny-high, tokay low, cheap anyway in an emergency, anybody’s girl if the mood struck her, her get it, and different, different from the F-C girls, different from the too easy New York City jewish girls looking for that first goy trick, different from white stocking lace curtain (or want to be) Maggie Cassidy, different in the head too, different in the kicks department, decided that he would chance, mother scorn chance that black-white mix (exotic and subterranean overcoming doubts on the white streets of North Beach even among beat angels), chance the mental balance nightmare of her life, decided too that he needed to move on to that second million words alone, alone like in the end we are all alone.
What if he wrote a book, a slender book, about it? Yah, what if…
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