'The Subterraneans' by Jack Kerouac (1958)

Preceded by On the Road (1957)
Followed by The Dharma Bums (1958)

"I want to work in revelations, not just spin silly tales for money. I want to fish as deep down as possible into my own subconscious in the belief that once that far down, everyone will understand because they are the same that far down."

— Jack Kerouac

I just read this book in its 1962 Panther Book 2nd reprint edition, picked up by Aunty B for $4 at Bondi markets recently. I love reading things in their tiny print, thin editioned, tacky artworked glory from the 60’s. It makes it more fun to read knowing that not only have countless others read the story, but that unknown numbers of people have owned and touched and read this particular actual book in all its three dimensional glory. Was it bought shiny and new and stuck inside a floral shoulder bag and taken on campus as a sign of cool, pissing off someone’s parents when they saw it on a bedside table? Who bought it since then from musty second hand shops and have read it over coffee in Sydney cafes?

Anyway, away from discussions of the book, and back to the book (if you know what I mean). Subterraneans is quite autobiographical, well it at least feels like it is and Wikipedia tells me so:
‘The Subterraneans is a 1958 novel by Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac. It is a semi-fictional account of his short romance with an African American woman named Alene Lee in New York in 1953. In the novel she is renamed Mardou Fox and described as a carefree spirit who frequents the jazz clubs and bars of the budding Beat scene of San Francisco’ (Wikipedia).

The main character Leo seems very much Jack. The story is basically ‘boy meets girl, boy treats girl badly through despite occasional bursts of intense passion mostly ignoring her by going on groovy beat benders listening to bop shagging beautiful young men and then skulking home to mums to get fed and try to write second book, boy looses girl.’ It is very stream of consciousness, so if long rambling sentences and wild asides shit you to tears, this book may not be your glass of cheap red wine.

I liked the texture of the excitement of the time and place, the musings on life as a so-far-so-good young writer, the raw and exposed outpourings of a flawed person, the swirls of madness, the ennui, the wistfulness, the slow dawning of love. The language is not tight and clean and structured, but like big dynamic brushstrokes that build up a composite image, it is language that tells you a lot despite not telling you much. You need faith that meaning will seep out from between the flurry of sentences, and from between the constant activity of characters: the characters meeting, being inspired, gearing up for nights out with a ripening sense of potential, getting blotto and then falling into despair and regret. But really, it’s less bleak than all that.

This is the ‘spontaneous prose’ style that he was famous for, and adored for, and criticised for. Like this:

also the sudden gut joy of beer when the visions of great words in rhythmic order all in one giant archangel book go roaring thru my brain, so I lie in the dark also seeing also hearing the jargon the future worlds – (insert made up words here) – poor examples because of mechanical needs of typing, of the flow of river sounds, words, dark, leading to the future and attesting to the madness, hollowness, ring and roar of my mind which blessed or unblessed is where the trees sing – in a funny wind – well-being believes he’ll go to heaven – a word to the wise is enough – ‘Smart went Crazy’ wrote Allen Ginsberg.) Reason why I didn’t go home at 3am – and example.

‘The novel has been criticized for its portrayal of American minority groups, especially African Americans, in a superficial light, often dramatizing their humble and primitive energy without showing insight into their culture or social position at the time' (says Wikipedia). I can understand that people now criticize the book for dodgy race politics, but at the time, as I understand it, he was pressure by his publishers about the including material about minority groups that it was too sympathetic. Tellingly, the film that was made of the book had a young French girl cast in the role of his girlfriend, rather than a black woman. Safer? More saleable at the time? And sure, Leo is clearly aware of the race issue, aware and sometimes distracted by it – but also aware of his awareness of it, and conscious of trying to rethink attitudes. In the book Mardou tells him not to hold hands with her as they walk down the street in the city in case people think she’s a hooker. He worries about whether if he marries her he wont be able to take her to the family home down south. This was the backdrop to their lives, it seems unlikely that these issues and attitudes wouldn’t have also formed part of the context for their relationship. Leo does indulge in some ‘black woman as primal earth mother, source of all life, vital and alive’ type stereotypes, and I guess that’s 2 dimensional, but also tied up with his views of women in general – which are interesting, not to mention his (not explicitly stated in the book but haphazardly demonstrated) bisexuality* and his highly claustrophobic and needy relationship with his mother and together these are possibly all worthy several PhD theses, but not neccessarily something that should deter you from reading the book.

Ultimately I’m torn between Leo’s offhand self-serving treatment of his lover and his wide-eyed and reeling notion of women as saviour, women as ‘good’. There is something both endearingly matriarchal, life-affirming and goddess-worshipping about such romantasising of ‘woman’:
‘knowing as I do from past experience and also interior sense, you’ve got to fall down on your knees and beg the woman’s permission, beg the woman’s forgiveness of all your sins, protect her, support her, doing everything for her, die for her but for God’s sake love her all the way in and every way you can..’ but also something on the nose about his guilt-informed idealization which seems to be the other end of the pendulum on his self-absorbed drunked adventures where she is forgotten and left at home. I suspect Mardou would have settled for some good manners and friendly treatment over being idolised and ignored in turn, but that’s just conjecture. Mind you it seems like his behaviour wasn’t deliberately hurtful but more a function of his immense capacity for awe and attention – when the focus is on her he is in awe and deeply in love, when the focus is on the magical connection between like minds and trying to get to the kernel of truth in conversation at a bar with jazz in the background, his attention is wholly there, and she is forgotten.

The character is no hero, he is confused and flawed and contradictory and stuck, and the book is honest about the tensions between his feelings of responsibility to the people in his life and to his own aspirations. He knows when he’s been crap (the benefit of hindsight? Autobiography lets us paint the appropriate feelings in at the right moments to act as counterweight to our bad behaviour?). Nonetheless it’s interesting reading that kind of gritty self-appraisal and flashes of insight. He says, I guess referring to on the Road: ‘Mardou…who’d never read my first novel, which has guts, but has a dreary prose when all’s said and done.’

*Although as highlighted in discussions with mermaidgrrl a while back the word bisexuality might be replaced to good effect with ‘pansexuality’, which seems rather less ‘bipolar’ than groovily global and all encompassing in range.