Jack Kerouac Turns 100

Warning: I am not a Jack Kerouac acolyte. I think I first read On the Road in college. By that time I had seen do many movies and TV shows of men making road trips that the original left me unimpressed. Re-reading him in prison left me more impressed with his style while I placed the book as belonging to a particular place and time. Look, Dal Paradise was an even bigger mooch than Henry David Thoreau. That left me unimpressed with the character, the writer, the whole mythos. I prefer Thoreau as a nonconformist - he admits he is a mooch, he does not get trapped at walden Pond. As a writer with ideas, I prefer Nelson Algren.

But this year marks a hundred years of Jack Kerouac.

The Guardian published Jack Kerouac The road well travelled: 100 years of Jack Kerouac and Unherd has The failure of Jack Kerouac. Both lean towards my skepticism of the Kerouac mythos. That nonconformity has now been co-opted as the mainstream, that Donald Trump could sell himself to the electorate as a nonconformist, that the Republicans are the party of rebellion undermines the whole concept. I would say there remains only the nonconformity of having values and judgment of how one should live a life that is morally grounded so that one knows where following the herd betrays one's conscience and thereby undermines one's integrity.

sch 

3/12/22