ORP: Jack Kerouac part 2

Since I am far from being a literary critic, and in fact I am only an avid reader of books, I would recommend a quick google search on the internet or a trip to the library to find critical in-depth analysis of the works of literature that I comment here on this blog. So, I will just quote a number of passages from “On the Road” and give a brief commentary on the story. One of the most well known quotes from this story captures in a few lines the mindset of some of the characters in the ‘beat’ world.

Here it is:

They rushed down the street together, digging everything in the early way they had, which later became so much sadder and perceptive and blank. But then they danced in the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”

And then there is this inadvertent confession from a passage about a party after an opera show in the Rockies above Denver:

The night was getting more and more frantic. I wished Dean and Carlo were there—then I realized they’d be out of place and unhappy. They were like the man with the dungeon stone and the gloom, rising from the underground, the sordid hipsters of America, a new beat generation that I was slowly joining.
End quote.

From what I’ve seen of the use of the metaphor of the underground man by Dostoevsky and the hint of it in this passage, there are many ways you can go up from the underground—to totally shed morality and burn out, to suffer the indignity of life and hope to be regenerated, or in despair curve inward and be frozen. The path is wide and it is so easy to go aside from the way. I remember the generation before mine that was the next devolutionary step from the beat generation. The line from the song went, “Is it better to burn out or to fade away?” I am beginning to see that if you burn out on yourself, you just die. Now if you burn out for God, for truth, for eternal life, you won’t die or fade away.