Boys Don't Cry Part 1: Jack Kerouac

The Subterraneans by Jack Kerouac (novella)

Originally this was going to be a blog of two halves and I suppose it still is, but it's also become a bit of a mind-splurge so I've divided it (hence Part 1). Recently I've read something brand new while also revisiting a story in a book that I bought on a whim a couple of years ago. Polarised by their styles and forms and geographically by the nationalities of their authors, both stories nonetheless share a similar concern- the catharsis of story-telling to mend a broken heart. In this post, we're starting with the new book, and heading back to 1950s America.

Jack Kerouac is often touted as the poster-boy for the hard-drinking, hard-living Beat Generation and his novella The Subterraneans is a portrait an ultimately doomed love affair so intimately connected with his own reality that Ann Douglas gives the reader a 'who's who' character list of the Beat generation in her introduction to the Penguin edition. In terms of love affairs 'romantic' is not often a word used to describe Beat texts and this book is a case in point. In the story the volatile treatment of Kerouac's stand-in Leo Percepied towards love interest Mardou Fox borders on the sociopathic as lust gives way to irrational jealousy. Not, then, an enduring love over the course of its 90-odd pages, the extremes of emotions between desire, love (though in hindsight, writes Kerouac, 'she never did use the word love') and the final demise in the relationship between the two characters are nonetheless as important as Leo battle to write about the relationship in hindsight as a means of self-therapy. 

The hypnotic, jazz-infused language which characterizes and structures the narrative reflects the life-as-art duality of the text; it's written as a Modernist stream of consciousness for the Post-modern age. It's this tone and almost musical phrasing of language in the novella which, for me, is its strongest element. Kerouac sets himself the unenviable task of 'just... [starting] at the beginning and [letting] the truth seep out' and as the waves of happiness become riffs of insecurity and distrust through his reaction to Mardou's perceived indifference and/or infidelity, the text is punctuated like trumpets: '...in my heart, 'O why did you do it?'- sensing, in my desperation, the prophesy of what's to come'. 

Leo, and by extension I suppose Kerouac, is constantly fighting his inner self-loathing voice with the recollection of his feelings for Mardou as they become inextricably linked to, and therefore consume, all of his other relationships. This raging is characterised by Kerouac through constant asides to his (Leo's) reader and temporal jumps between 'then' and 'now'. But despite its jumpy nature, as with much all-consuming romance, the downward trajectory is almost gravitational: the relationship begins in a heady dreamlike state 'she'd turned her face to me close, it was an ocean of melting things and drowning' and ends with a clunk: 'And I go home having lost her love. And write this book'

In writing the novella Kerouac's main objective may be an exercise in finding the emotional closure at the end of the relationship. However, this seems unlikely as, through the cyclical structure of the story, beginning, as it does, at the end, Leo is trapped in perpetual misery. Emotional catharsis is definitely not attained by either protagonist or reader (and reading it this way actually makes the story downright miserable: you may need to have some kind of biscuit-based treat available after you've finished). Alternatively it may be that this is Kerouac's attempt at artistic catharsis, and in the perhaps misguided, perhaps deliberately evasive optimism that comes from creation of the work, the novella, at any cost and regardless of emotional fall-out. Ultimately though, Mardou sums it up most neatly in an admittedly hackneyed metaphor: 'Men are so crazy, they want the essence, the woman is the essence...but [the men] rush off erecting big abstract constructions'. 

In truth (and biscuits aside), The Subterraneans is not an easy read, not least because of the chauvinistic attitude which always seems to find its way into Kerouac's writing: there's definitely more than a whiff of his Madonna/Whore complex here- and this is before we factor in his views on ethnicity which make for uncomfortable reading. But whether you're on the side of love as essence, or on the side of the big abstract construction, one thing is certain: in this book love is hard and boys most certainly do cry. 

Part 2 to follow and we're heading for Italy via Japan (now might be the time for that biscuit...)