A Cock-a-mamie Saguaro Meets Tom Mix In The Kerouac Dark

[Bob Boze Bell]

January 25, 2013

I had a speech this morning at the Dude Rancher's Association which was held at the Rancho de Caballeros outside of Wickenburg. Always fun. On my drive home I finally stopped and took a photo of a cactus I have admired for decades on the road from Wickenburg to Cave Creek.

 

The Cock-a-mamie Saguaro

Yesterday I finished the second pass of "On The Road." The first time was the cleaned up 1957 version and this time I read "The Historic Scroll Version". Both have the same poetic power proving even the neutered one doesn't sap the power of the tale.

 Got up this morning to skim my notes on the Kerouac biography. For one thing I've thought of him being closer to my age, but the Dude is my parents age! He graduated from high school in 1939 which is the same year my mother graduated from Kingman High! So to think of him as younger is probably a testament to the timelessness and power of the book more than anything.
Secondly, Jack and Neal come off like such rebels. Precursors to the hippies and rock star gods of the late fifties and sixties. And when you scratch the surface on that prototype they are usually sensitive types, the anti-jocks. But Kerouac was a lifelong Catholic AND a jock. Check out this photo of him at Columbia:

 

So that is kind of a mind blower, that Kerouac was coming from a jock background. It helps explain his total rejection of the hippie movement. He thought they were all Communists! Just like our parents did. Ha. Because he's my parent's age and has their values.

 

One of the slams on all the subsequent portrayals in the movies of Neal and Jack is that they are invariably portrayed as hipsters, and as Carolyn Cassady puts it in the foreword to the bio book, "I am periodically subjected to attempts to dramatize the lives of Kerouac and Cassady by playwrights and filmmakers who have so far ignored these influences [that they were middle class guys with middle class values, in spite of the fact that they were flaunting them or abusing them, and by the way, they felt very guilty about it which led to their alcohol and drug issues] and portray their characters in present time. This results in the persons depicted appearing to be no more than hedonistic airheads or juvenile-delinquents, or both—really boring people who couldn't possibly have changed the history of society and literature."

 

With that said, a new movie version of "On The Road" produced by Francis Ford Coppola, came out last Dec. 21, but it has been withdrawn from full release and according to a movie reviewer I know, it's indefinitely shelved. One of the reviews I read basically agreed with Carolyn, above.

So it's heavier when you know it's a couple of WWII kids who are rebelling, but struggling for their place in the world. They still want a family and a home. And they both paid dearly. Cassaday died in Mexico in 1968 and Karouac in 1969, both from substance abuse.

Does knowing any of this change the book? Yes, it makes it deeper, but it also points out some of the flaws. It is, after all fiction in spite of the real names and specific sex acts. But, when all i said and done, the poetic imagery is what carries it and will carry it for a very long time.

 

Here's Kerouac on the first moving picture he saw which was a Western featuring Tom Mix:

 

"Mix galloped across the amazing "muddy movie screen california" in a white hat so snowy it makes him "look like a glowworm." He finally leaped "across rainy shacks. . .landing on maniacs in the dark."

 

That is sweet! I need to get the full quote (it's from the bio, quoting from Visions of Cody, page 270. If you have it I want the whole quote. Thanks.

 

"Kerouac was a writer. That is, he wrote. Many people who call themselves writers and have their names on books are not writers and they can't write—the difference being, a bullfighter who fights a bull is different from a bullshitter who makes passes with no bull there."

—William Burroughs

[Eric James]

Kerouac's books inspired me to run away from home at age nine to become a writer. All I took with me was my portable Royal. At the Greyhound depot I ordered a ticket to New York City, but my paper route left me with insufficient change for the fare. "Where can I go with what I have," i asked the ticket agent. He mused, then answered, "Nashville." Next morning, I arrived to a cold, drizzly, Nashville on a bleak Sunday morning, seeing no one like Kerouac in sight. Not even a soul who didn't look like Kerouac. I looked at the forbidding facade of the Ryman, and wondered. Was this the place I listened to at home on WLS Radio? My fantasy was crumbling. I needed to be in Greenwich Village. I hitched a ride with a trucker back to Chicago through a blinding blizzard. At 7 am on Monday morning I used my last dime to telephone a girl I knew. "I need to borrow some money. I'm going to New York City." "Stay where you are," she said. Fifteen minutes later, the police drove up, handcuffed me, and took me to jail. The girl friend turned me in. I didn't get to Greenwich Village until I was fifteen. My first work was published two years later. 

[Bob Boze Bell]

Holy crap, Eric, that is incredible. You are one of the fearless leapers. I am always amazed at people like Kerouac who can just leap out into the unknown without enough money, but go anyway. I am not that brave which is probably why I admire Billy the Kid so much. Ha. Painfully true, I think. I am a fearless dreamer. I have made a few leaps but nothing like what you just described. And, by the way, did that bitch, I mean, wayward girl, I mean woman, ever get her comeuppance?

[Eric James]

She sure did. I married another woman.

[Bob Boze Bell]

You funny bastardo.