A really interesting read. I'll have to track down more of Brett's writing, particularly this essay. I have always been sort of neutral on Pic, not great, but an interesting piece of writing in the evolution of On The Road. And when viewed with all the other stuff that has come out in recent years, the Self Portrait book with it bits and pieces of early attempts and the American Library Unknown Kerouac and the writing in there, it helps put Pic in a bigger context than when I read it like 30 years ago coupled with Satori in Paris. But I knew enough that it was one of the attempts to get to On The Road. I'd love to read that lost chapter. To me that would be a fun cross over. But the bigger issue I think your discussion does a good job addressing is this tendency to view Kerouac from a now perspective. I think the whole tendency to judge everything, Kerouac, other writers, like Faulkner, movies, whatever, from today's standards is a little odd and reductive to just call it racist or sexist or whatever. This interview does a good job addressing that. And while Kerouac was a product of his time, by and large he always seemed to celebrate the people he wrote about, even if they can seem one dimensional or stereotypical, in his body of published work he seems to want to make people he saw as interesting great to readers, even if 70 years later it can seem naive or fetishizing of black culture or something and I think your discussion here shines a light on where Kerouac was coming from
I'm in the same boat with Pic. I really want to go back and read it again. It's one book I'm missing from my current collection. I think I have a copy back at my parents' house in Scotland.
I despise the idiocy of judging people of the past by today's standards. It is like thinking a baby is stupid for having not yet learned to walk. So many liberal people of today assume they would've had views perfectly in line with 2025 liberalism if they'd grown up in a conservative town in the 1950s. Yeah right. We are all products of our environment, whether we like to admit it or not.
Just realised it's *not* missing. I do have a copy on my shelf. It's collected together with The Subterraneans as one edition. I thought it was just The Subterraneans.
You Beat me to the punch. Holding past generations accountable to today's political-correctness is more than just "odd" or "reductive". It's intellectually immature and dishonest, and ranks amongst the worst of the cognitive biases.
I completely agree. It is immature, reductive and intellectually highly dishonest for people not to be able to look at things in consideration of their time and context. I wonder if anyone reads Henry Miller anymore? Some of his stuff would tie those people in knots
This makes me want to revisit Pic too. The Cleophus information is particualry interesting too. I figured Dean was Jack's mythologized, heightend version of Neal, but the info here adds to that equation. Paraphrasing Wolfe, a writer might turn over a whole town to make one character. Or Burroughs in the What Happened to Kerouac documentary about how people assume what Kerouac wrote was all true and he could never get rid of the Burroughs fortune Jack gave him...
I have been enjoying the collections of odds and ends that have come out the past few years. Some really interesting stuff in some of it. Some a little tedious honestly. But whose 20-something journal's and scraps of writing wouldn't be? But still interesting in their way. But when from time to time I revist Jack's books, they still give me the buzz they did when I first found them as a 15 or so year old kid 30 plus years ago. Pic probably won't hit like Tristessa or something, but might be worth a visit.
Absolutely agree. As a person who considers himself very liberal, a lot of what we've been through the past decade or so has been just so absurd with a lot of kids pretending they'd have been more enlightend and never would've approved of certain language or books or movies or world views, no matter what time they lived in. It is almost like trying to make sense of an a world view that is intentionally, even well intentioned, trying to be obtuse
A really interesting read. I'll have to track down more of Brett's writing, particularly this essay. I have always been sort of neutral on Pic, not great, but an interesting piece of writing in the evolution of On The Road. And when viewed with all the other stuff that has come out in recent years, the Self Portrait book with it bits and pieces of early attempts and the American Library Unknown Kerouac and the writing in there, it helps put Pic in a bigger context than when I read it like 30 years ago coupled with Satori in Paris. But I knew enough that it was one of the attempts to get to On The Road. I'd love to read that lost chapter. To me that would be a fun cross over. But the bigger issue I think your discussion does a good job addressing is this tendency to view Kerouac from a now perspective. I think the whole tendency to judge everything, Kerouac, other writers, like Faulkner, movies, whatever, from today's standards is a little odd and reductive to just call it racist or sexist or whatever. This interview does a good job addressing that. And while Kerouac was a product of his time, by and large he always seemed to celebrate the people he wrote about, even if they can seem one dimensional or stereotypical, in his body of published work he seems to want to make people he saw as interesting great to readers, even if 70 years later it can seem naive or fetishizing of black culture or something and I think your discussion here shines a light on where Kerouac was coming from
I'm in the same boat with Pic. I really want to go back and read it again. It's one book I'm missing from my current collection. I think I have a copy back at my parents' house in Scotland.
I despise the idiocy of judging people of the past by today's standards. It is like thinking a baby is stupid for having not yet learned to walk. So many liberal people of today assume they would've had views perfectly in line with 2025 liberalism if they'd grown up in a conservative town in the 1950s. Yeah right. We are all products of our environment, whether we like to admit it or not.
Just realised it's *not* missing. I do have a copy on my shelf. It's collected together with The Subterraneans as one edition. I thought it was just The Subterraneans.
You Beat me to the punch. Holding past generations accountable to today's political-correctness is more than just "odd" or "reductive". It's intellectually immature and dishonest, and ranks amongst the worst of the cognitive biases.
I completely agree. It is immature, reductive and intellectually highly dishonest for people not to be able to look at things in consideration of their time and context. I wonder if anyone reads Henry Miller anymore? Some of his stuff would tie those people in knots
This makes me want to revisit Pic too. The Cleophus information is particualry interesting too. I figured Dean was Jack's mythologized, heightend version of Neal, but the info here adds to that equation. Paraphrasing Wolfe, a writer might turn over a whole town to make one character. Or Burroughs in the What Happened to Kerouac documentary about how people assume what Kerouac wrote was all true and he could never get rid of the Burroughs fortune Jack gave him...
I have been enjoying the collections of odds and ends that have come out the past few years. Some really interesting stuff in some of it. Some a little tedious honestly. But whose 20-something journal's and scraps of writing wouldn't be? But still interesting in their way. But when from time to time I revist Jack's books, they still give me the buzz they did when I first found them as a 15 or so year old kid 30 plus years ago. Pic probably won't hit like Tristessa or something, but might be worth a visit.
Absolutely agree. As a person who considers himself very liberal, a lot of what we've been through the past decade or so has been just so absurd with a lot of kids pretending they'd have been more enlightend and never would've approved of certain language or books or movies or world views, no matter what time they lived in. It is almost like trying to make sense of an a world view that is intentionally, even well intentioned, trying to be obtuse