The Road Ahead

Disappointment Bear: Stuffed bear found in an alley, Hot Springs, Ark.Once in a while we're all lucky enough to recognize something beautiful at its point of origin, before it has been run through the groupthink, both overt and subtle, that will shade our opinions later. Watching "Pulp Fiction" for the first time at age 14, I could feel my mind wrapping around it thisissofuckingawesome with lusty tenacity, like finding candied dynamite. I remember seeing Jeremy Shockey catch a pass during his senior season at the University of Miami and bull his way around and through defenders on the way to a touchdown, and thinking, "That guy's going to be in the NFL."

You can feel that same awe when you read the New York Times original review of "On the Road." I listened to it last year during a multistate road trip, which is a little like mirrors on the ceiling, I reckon. You can't 10 lines of that full-bore coyote call to wanderlust without wanting to stomp the accelerator through a floorboard, peel the roof off your ride and fly like some hell-sent black bird burning across the hills, slinging asphalt in your wake and gulp in the tarry air until it glues your squirming tongue to your molars. Here's a bit from that original review:

"On the Road" is the second novel by Jack Kerouac, and its publication is a historic occasion in so far as the exposure of an authentic work of art is of any great moment in an age in which the attention is fragmented and the sensibilities are blunted by the superlatives of fashion (multiplied a millionfold by the speed and pound of communications).

This book requires exegesis and a detailing of background. It is possible that it will be condescended to by, or make uneasy, the neo-academicians and the "official" avant-garde critics, and that it will be dealt with superficially elsewhere as merely "absorbing" or "intriguing" or "picaresque" or any of a dozen convenient banalities, not excluding "off beat." But the fact is that "On the Road" is the most beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac himself named years ago as "beat," and whose principal avatar he is.

Just as, more than any other novel of the Twenties, "the Sun Also Rises" came to be regarded as the testament of the "Lost Generation," so it seems certain that "On the Road" will come to be known as that of the "Beat Generation." There is, otherwise, no similarity between the two: technically and philosophically, Hemingway and Kerouac are, at the very least, a depression and a world war apart. ...

This search for affirmation takes Sal on the road to Denver and San Francisco; Los Angeles and Texas and Mexico; sometimes with Dean, sometimes without; sometimes in the company of other beat individuals whose tics vary, but whose search is very much the same (not infrequently ending in death or derangement; the search for belief is very likely the most violent known to man).

There are sections of "On the Road" in which the writing is of a beauty almost breathtaking. There is a description of a cross-country automobile ride fully the equal, for example, of the train ride told by Thomas Wolfe in "Of Time and the River." There are details of a trip to Mexico (and an interlude in a Mexican bordello) that are by turns, awesome, tender and funny. And, finally, there is some writing on jazz that has never been equaled in American fiction, either for insight, style or technical virtuosity. "On the Road" is a major novel.

I got an aftershock of that same prescient frisson when the inestimable Jonathan M. Katz dredged up an old Google Talk chat of ours, which I'll here paste in its relevant entirety:

Jonathan: Have you read the new WaPo piece about leaving children in hot cars?
me: Nope.
Jonathan: Do. It's spectacular.
me: Weingarten's solid. Their heavy hitter.
Jonathan: I started and was like, "The hell is this." Then I got to page two and was like, this is fucking painful, I can't read this. And then on page four I realized I was reading it to the end. And that it was awesome. If they let you win two Pulitzers in a row, he's got it in the bag.
me: Thanks for the tip. I'll definitely check it out.
Jonathan: don't mention it

Well, I'm mentioning, in part because he did again today when the Pulitzers were announced. If you haven't read Weingarten's story, take Katz' advice: Do. It's one of the most ethical ambiguous stories you're likely to run across in a newspaper anywhere. It's proof that while many journalism awards contests are ego-fueled pony shows, the cream still rises. No pat storytelling formulas here; "Fatal Distraction" is that rare newspaper piece that will forever alter your thinking about a topic (inadvertently leaving children in cars) powerfully as his previous Pulitzer-winner, about a violin virtuoso decamped in a Metro station at rush hour, ignored by the punchclock masses.

We move too fast these days. Unless we're driving across the country. Then, everyone best getthefuckouttatheway. But do stop in DeValls Bluff, Arkansas, if you need not-quite-the-coldest beer in the state:

Happy Times Liquor