I suppose I'm beginning to sound like a broken record because I'm going to bring up Jack Kerouac yet again.
For many years my go-to book when I can't sleep has been Kerouac's work journals from when he was writing his first novel, The Town and The City, especially in the years from 1947 to 1949. It's interesting to listen to his frustrations as he was trying to learn, to teach himself, how to write. This would have been his mid-twenties. Ever the auto-didact, Jack had already written several unsuccessful manuscripts by then, and before he was done, he'd have over 1,000 pages for T&C, all written laboriously in pencil. He'd usually work from around midnight until dawn or thereabouts. His father had died of cancer in 1946 and his mother worked in a shoe factory. Jack never really held a steady job. Writing was his work and his life.
As a teenager in Lowell, Massachusetts, Jack was a reclusive reader and writer, but he was also a gifted athlete. He was a state champion as a sprinter and a star running back on the local high school football team. He first won a scholarship to a private school, where he shone again at football, then got a full ride to Columbia University on a football scholarship. As fate would have it, he broke a leg playing football but his coach didn't believe him and made him run on it for a week before Kerouac quit in disgust. It was then he decided to become a writer.
Although he served in the Merchant Marines during WWII, he also had enlisted in the Navy. But during drills one day in basic training, he threw his rifle onto the ground, walked to the library, sat down and began reading. For this, the Navy considered him mentally unbalanced but they did give him an honorable discharge so that after the war, he qualified for GI Bill funds and that partially kept he and his mum afloat while he labored away at his novel.
His journals, published as "Windblown World," have held my interest all this time because so many of the themes that played out in Kerouac's life were already in evidence: his interior spiritual obsessions, his early troubles with alcohol abuse, and his problematic relationships with women. But I don't really read Kerouac's journals because I'm driven to understand him more deeply. I read them because, as I've said before, Jack Kerouac talking to himself is far more interesting than Jack Kerouac -- or anyone, for that matter -- talking to someone else. He's just an interesting guy.
I'm going to attempt to read his first novel this spring although I haven't really read fiction since my late teens. When my next oldest sister would return from college with her literature textbooks, I would read them all. By the time I got into college myself, I had no more interest in that. Instead, I was on to philosophy, primarily eastern, middle eastern, and ancient philosophy. I was pursuing the big questions. In a way, I've lived my life backwards. While everyone else was busy trying to start their life, and maybe a family, I was doing what most people leave to the end of their lives: trying to figure out what it was all for. To me, life seemed quite meaningless unless I could find workable answers to those questions. Even in my twenties, I realized I was living life backwards. But I didn't really have any choice. That's just how I was made.
As the spring progresses, and if I can wade through T&C, I'd like to see if I can draw some parallels between Kerouac's journals as he was writing this book, and the book proper. If I have any interesting observations to make, I'll post them.
On an unrelated tangent, I'm going to post another John Fahey song. John had his own struggles with alcohol and spiritual questions. He also looked to the east for his answers. But that isn't really what this song is about. It's really a wistful and musical look back at America around about the time we all realized America was going off the rails. This is one of the few recordings Fahey ever did on a twelve string guitar.
Beyond the lilting, delicate beginning to the song, there follow several bars of what sounds like delta blues, and then later on, about three minutes in, John takes off into an excursion of American musical roots. I even think I can hear Native or First Peoples influences in there. All in all, just a beautiful song.
It was recorded on January 31st, 1971, so it's just a mite bit over fifty years old. But still worth listening to. And so....
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