Yesterday I went to the British Library in London to see Jack Kerouac's scroll of "On the Road". "On the Road" is my favourite book because of the typical desperate enthusiasm coherent within the works of the Beat Generation. My favourite thing about the book is the way the characters are so thirsty and enthusiastic for life, they're so active and really live life with amazing lust and speed; they live life in that "live every day as your last" sentiment that is normally an impossible cliche. But more than this, I love the subtle whiff of desperation and emptiness beneath the actions that would be more associated or comfortable with the sentiments of the existentialists. It's like an incredible, vibrant joy that seeps over and almost masks that instinctive feeling of being lost and not sure what you're feeling that I think is fundamentally human. It's cheesy to say a book changes your life or the way you think, but this book really did that for me, it made me think positively and gratefully about living, whilst making me wish I was alive in 1950s America, drinking coffee, listening to jazz and writing literature about being or discussing poetry in cafes.
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| From "oztypewriter@blogspot.com" |
So, I was really excited to see the scroll in the flesh - and it didn't disappoint. It was really thrilling to see the handmade notes on the scroll and the editing that Kerouac had done himself. In addition to this, it really gave you a physical feeling of the continuous prose. I've read around the subject widely and I've always thought of that image of Joe Strummer in the sleeve of "London Calling" (right), but I've never really understood what it meant, or what it would be like. But seeing the scroll gave an overwhelming sense of the process, it was so clear to visualise Kerouac sat there frantically writing and drinking coffee.
Because the strength of the presence of the scroll was so great, I didn't think it was necessary to have a lot of the things that were in the exhibition. Having read widely around the area, I knew most of the information that was displayed, and they didn't provide any new depth of the subject. There was a paragraph of information that began "Wired on coffee..." that was repeated 5 times around the quite small exhibition, which gave the impression that they didn't have much to say about it so had to repeat themselves. I also thought they had got some small elements of information wrong, for example the origin/coining of the word "beat" in this context was attributed to a different time and even meaning than the one I have commonly read (the one of "upbeat, beatific and on the beat" that was said in a conversation Kerouac had with John Clellon Holmes). Because of this repetition and lack of real insight, I thought the information cheapened and distracted from the actual scroll quite a lot. The scroll was in a glass case, partly unrolled and surrounded by boards of pictures and information. I noticed at one point that every visitor in there was looking at the walls rather than the scroll which I thought was a bit sad, because only a few people gave the actual work enough time.
However, I did like the photographs that were enlarged. The whole 1950s aesthetic is so seductive and Kerouac seems so handsome and charismatic Most of them were taken by Allen Ginsberg, and I especially liked the ones where they'd left his descriptions scrawled across the bottom. I also really loved an illustration by Kerouac that he'd sent to his publishers depicting how he thought the cover of "On the Road" should look. The drawing and letter he'd sent accompanying it were quite funny and charming.
And again, commercialism had its place there. The directions were all to the gift shop that was full of Beat books and merchandise - posters, notebooks, luggage tags and card holders (?!) I thought it was a little bit demeaning to the work itself, in the same way the boards and information around the exhibition seemed to be. I think they should have let the work be appreciated and viewed on its own merit, and not allow it be cheapened by expensive novelty items - it's literature, not novelty. Despite this, it was amazing to actually see the scroll and I think it's great that treasured cultural artifacts like this can be shown in England and transported around.
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