The unspeakable visions of Kerouac
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The name of this site hails from Jack Kerouac’s “Belief & Technique for Modern Prose”, in which he shares his list of essentials for writing. I’ve been trying to bust through some closed doors of the mind. Closed doors like “Who the hell are you to write? You have nothing interesting to say.” And then! I’m reminded of all of the unspeakable, beautiful and vital visions in each of our minds. I’d love nothing more than for all of you to start writing too. I’m deeply curious— maybe too curious— about the visions of the individual. I’m also deeply grateful to live in time when self-publishing is so easy, inexpensive and accessible. Otherwise I’d be handing out written essays in the town square all day. To be honest, I might start doing that anyway.
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“Beliefs & Technique for Modern Prose”
by Jack Kerouac, published in The Portable Jack Kerouac, edited by Ann Charters (I bolded some of my favorites)
Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
Submissive to everything, open, listening
Try never get drunk outside yr own house
Be in love with yr life
Something that you feel will find its own form
Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
Blow as deep as you want to blow
Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
The unspeakable visions of the individual
No time for poetry but exactly what is
Visionary tics shivering in the chest
In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
Like Proust be an old teahead of time
Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
Accept loss forever
Believe in the holy contour of life
Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better
Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
You’re a Genius all the time
Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven
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I first met Jack Kerouac in the summer. I was in high school, working a summer job with the school district and came home each afternoon to read On the Road and lay in the sun. He stayed with me through college, where I hung a disturbing poster of him in my freshman dorm room (apologies to my roommate) and spent a fair amount of time writing bad poetry. I couldn’t get enough Kerouac and soon the book Dharma Bums took over as my touchstone. Sometime in my junior year, a fellow lost Beat poet lent me a copy of Minor Characters by Joyce Johnson and it opened my eyes even more to his world and, importantly, to a woman’s perspective of that world. Kerouac provided my first encounter with the pain of loving someone’s art while having misgivings about the artist as a person.
Years later, I read Big Sur while sitting on the porch of a yurt in Big Sur eating a California avocado with a Napa red wine. I found that particular book to be nearly incomprehensible but loved the moment all the same.
I may undertake the risky adventure of re-reading a bit of Kerouac soon. I’m eager to see whether his books still live in my heart and imagination or, instead, if they’ve lost their charm and relevance for me. It’s like when people warn you not to meet your heroes. These books were my heroes, and I’m nervous to meet them now so many years later.
