Kerouac

I just finished the Subterraneans by Jack Kerouac. I found the style a little gimmicky until I reached the end and realized the bull-rush prose - no punctuation and frequent asides - were all tied in to the story.

Kerouac's stuff has really influenced me. Of course, I don't hold any misconceptions about him or his writing - he was a slobbering, bullying drunk most of the hours he was awake for many years. There is footage on Youtube of him outside a NY bar being ultra-aggressive and seemingly manic in discussion with some woman; even Ginsberg is visibly disturbed by his antics.

His prose is far from magical, most of the time it is clunky and vague. However, the ideas that Kerouac expressed and his philosophy is thoroughly engaging. He laid it all out there. He expressed with honesty and striking guts.

I admire his belief that true writing should be like jazz: an expression of what you are feeling at the time with no filter, no rethinking, straight from the head to the typewriter. Even if this didn't create the most amazing prose, it did give you a literal explanation of what Kerouac was feeling at the time.

I also greatly respect his anti-materialism, his anti-consumerism. This was in striking contrast to prevailing post WWII America and certainly to 21st Century American thought. Kerouac got off on experiencing the people and places in America. Too often today, our experiences are hinged to materialistic conceptions of good times: Disneyland, Las Vegas, big weddings, etc. Kerouac and the beats were all about sensing and experiencing each other, irrespective of price tags and marketing driven pseudo-events.