End of the Road

I finished reading On the Road the other day. I had put the book off for many years because I thought it would be a difficult read, and an outdated one as well. I was expecting a rambling stream-of-consciousness narrative, eccentric and dense. (After all, Kerouac did put his manuscript on a 120-foot-long scroll.) I guess "rambling" does apply—it's a story about rambling, after all—but otherwise I found it very readable. In fact, I ended up loving the book and would rank it as one of the great American novels, along with The Scarlet Letter, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and The Adventures of Augie March. Here's a passage that gives the flavor of Kerouac's writing:

Meanwhile Dean and I went out to dig the streets of Mexican San Antonio. It was fragrant and soft—the softest air I'd ever known—and dark, and mysterious, and buzzing. Sudden dark. Dean crept along and said not a word. "Oh, this is too wonderful to do anything!" he whispered. "Let's just creep along and see everything. Look! Look! A crazy San Antonio pool shack." We went in. A dozen boys were shooting pool at three tables, all Mexicans. Dean and I bought Cokes and shoved nickels in the jukebox and played Wynonie Blues Harris and Lionel Hampton and Lucky Millinder and jumped. Meanwhile Dean warned me to watch.

"Dig, now, out of the corner of your eye and as we listen to Wynonie blow about his baby's pudding and as we also smell the soft air as you say—dig the kid, the crippled kid shooting pool at table one, the butt of the joint's jokes, y'see, he's been the butt all his life. The other fellows are merciless but they love him."

The crippled kid was some kind of malformed midget with a great big beautiful face, much too large, in which enormous brown eyes moistly gleamed. "Don't you see, Sal, a San Antonio Mex Tom Snark, the same story the world over. See, they hit him on the ass with a cue? Ha-ha-ha! hear them laugh. You see, he wants to win the game, he's bet four bits. Watch! Watch!" We watched as the angelic young midget aimed for a bank shot. He missed. The other fellows roared. "Ah, man," said Dean, "and now watch." They had the little boy by the scruff of the neck and were mauling him around, playful. He squealed. He stalked out in the night but not without a backward bashful, sweet glance. "Ah, man, I'd love to know that gone little cat and what he thinks and what kind of girls he has—oh, man, I'm high on this air!" ...

I suspect "dig" will be part of my everyday vocabulary for a while.

I kept picturing Nick Nolte as Dean Moriarty, apparently because I saw him play Neal Cassady in the 1980 film Heart Beat. By the way, a film version of On the Road is in pre-production; it's to be made by the director of The Motorcycle Diaries. I'm not familiar with the male leads, but the female leads are set to be Kristen Stewart and Kirsten Dunst.


Next up: Elmer Gantry, by Sinclair Lewis. This is not going to be a masterpiece but I'm hoping for a good read at least. I dig the first sentence:

Elmer Gantry was drunk.

"Shheee-it!"

One of the many delightful characters in the TV show The Wire is State Senator Clay Davis, played by Isiah Whitlock Jr. Davis had a characteristic expression—shheee-it!—that he used to punctuate his speech. Earlier in his career, Whitlock had played a character in the movie 25^th Hour who used the same expression.

Now I come across "Shheee-it!" in On the Road, spoken by a tenor saxophonist in San Francisco. Presumably it's not an invention of Kerouac's; perhaps he heard it under circumstances similar to those in the novel.

I wonder if the two usages have a common root.

Dog, Man, Book

Big Biped puts my supper dish on the carpet. It has kibble with bits of canned food mixed in. I nose around and eat the canned food, along with a few bits of kibble for politeness. I'll get back to the kibble later if I can't cadge some treats.

Big Biped is in his recliner reading a book. I sit down under the piano and give him the alert look. "You want to sit up here?" he says, scooting to one side. I hop up, turn around, and lie down next to him. It's snug.

A box fan stands on a TV tray, next to the curve of the piano. The fan rattles and whispers and pushes us a soft breeze.

Big Biped is reading Kerouac.

I walked along the tracks in the long sad October light of the valley, hoping for an SP freight to come along so I could join the grape-eating hobos and read the funnies with them. It didn't come. I got out on the highway and hitched a ride at once. It was the fastest, whoopingest ride of my life. The driver was a fiddler for a California cowboy band. He had a brand-new car and drove eighty miles an hour. "I don't drink when I drive," he said and handed me a pint. I took a drink and offered him one. "What the hail," he said and drank. We made Sabinal to LA in the amazing time of four hours flat about 250 miles....

To be on the road. Heaven.

Short Answer

For me, writing has always been an object of dread and attraction. In public school, I didn't mind taking tests, as long as the questions were true/false or multiple choice. (The math problems were OK too.) I was a little edgy with fill-in-the-blank and short answer, but essay questions were the real bane for me. I can learn the material, but good lord, don't make me form coherent sentences.

But I've also felt that people who can write are possessors of great virtue. I'd like some of that virtue for myself; I just wish it weren't so difficult. And most writers will say, hey, it's difficult for me too. Yes, I answer, but the reward for your difficulty is something pleasing or even wonderful. I labor to put together a few barely coherent words. Or so it feels.

So for most of my life I avoided writing. Instead, I took up reading with enthusiasm. My favorites are the great American writers: Mark Twain, Henry James, Willa Cather, and a number of others. I've hoped that a tiny bit of their excellence might rub off on my own writing; it's sort of a Charlie-the-tuna approach.

A few years ago I decided it was time to start giving back, if I can. I'm taking a gradual approach. First I started posting comments to other people's blog entries. Instead of commenting under a pseudonym, I've used my full name. This has required me to own my words, so to speak. It hasn't kept me from making a fool of myself now and then, but it's pushed me to work out who I am as a writer.

This blog is the next step. (I also have a second blog, devoted to movies not screened in Houston, on the Houston Chronicle website.) So far I haven't exactly been a posting machine. That's all right. Maybe I'll start posting more frequently. Maybe I'll start writing a screenplay or novel instead. Most likely I'll continue to sputter along for a while.

Having pried this handful of words out of myself, I stopped to wonder how Edward Hoagland might have written on a similar subject. Sigh. I really shouldn't measure myself against such a master; I'll just be discouraged. Friends, if you've never read one of Hoagland's essays, do a little searching on the Web. Read whatever you find. You will be rewarded.