thesis proposal

i was going to write about how i find that Jack Kerouac talks about spiritualiy alot in the Dharma Bums but he does not really talk about that in On the Road but then about 5 seconds ago i realized something. in both books Jack has a hero, a sort of mentor, an inspirational person that influences his actions in the future. in "On the Road" it was Neal Cassady and in "the Dharma Bums" it was Japhy Ryder(aka Gary Snyder). So what does this tell me? well to me it means that these people both inpsired the books and they inspired him. Neal inspired him to be more adventurous while Japhy inspired him to be more spiritual and content with life and earth. His writing style even though still pretty much his own style changed as well, i think the difference between Neal and Japhy can be seen in his writing and i would like to study the connection the heroes in the stories have to do with the writing. because; because Jack writes down the thoughts in his mind, his writing style changes as his thoughts change because the two are connected. i will be studying closely how his life changed after the writings of these books, and about his relationship with Neal and Japhy to better understand how his thoughts about life differed and how that affected his typing. To help me prove this i will probably read some reviews of books he wrote later in his life to see if what i am trying to prove is actually true.

reading

i just finished On the Road tonight. and in the story then end up in Mexico and have a crazy day with Gregor a man they met and a bunch of hookers. they then begin to drive and they drive straight into a jungle with a bunch of bugs and because they don't know the way and their lights are acting weird they decided to just sleep on the road right outside of the jungle. they have of course been bitten by many bugs and there is not wind and extremem heat. in the morning the keep driving and arrive at a village full of indigenous people. Neal gives one of the girls his watch in exchange for a crystal the girls were trying to sell. they then leave and drive straight for Mexico City and Jack catches a fever. (at this point in the book the editor has written a note saying the last bit of the scroll was missing and that was because Luican Carr's dog had eaten it, so the editor gathered from Jack new edition from the ending what he thought was the actual ending.) Neal leaves him to settle his divorce with Carolyn and to live with Diana but ends up returning to Carolyn after having argued with Diana who was pregnant. Jack recovers and returns to NY and gets married. Neal comes to help him move to San Francisco a few weeks too early and has changed so much so that he can not talk straight. because Jack's friend does not like Neal they leave to go to a concert without him and Neal leaves for San Francisco. the book ends with Jack saying how sometimes he thinks of Neal, indicating that they did not see each other again since the time Neal left that night for San Francisco.

i find the ending of the book unexpected and bittersweet. because Neal and Jack do not see each other but Jacks love for him as a person, friend, brother never ends.

reading...

recently i read from 360 to 381. in those pages what basically happens is Neal has setteled down with a new girlfriend is trying to get divorced from Carolyn and is working in a parking lot. Jack decides to leave NY and go to Mexico with his friend Frank so he leaves for Denver to hang out with his friends one last time. after a couple days he gets the news that Neal is coming to Denver and has decided to go to Mexico with him. So Jack, Frank and Neal leave for Mexico after a weekend of partying and fall in love with the country. The last bits of what i read was Jack talking about some of the characteristics of the land. how the people were, and they were especially amazed with how lovely the cops were, and just admiring the country.

I am still not sure what to write about for an essay, but his descriptions of the emotions he is going through and the thoughts he is thinking fascinate me and if i see more of the in the secong book, i will probably write about something that has to do with that.

2nd reading post

since my last post i have read from 322 to 334. what happens in those pages are Neal and Jack must leave Denver as soon as possible because Neal has made their hosts back neighbores angry and has stolen a car so Neal and Jack get hired by the man who needs his limo to be driven from Denver to Chicago with passengers in it. Neal while driving some of the passengers mad because he is late to pick them up from the spot (because he was on a date with a waitress he had just met) was able to drive the limo. He does make some of the passengers worried, but they get used to him after a while. On the way they stop at a farm to see Neals friend whom Jack sees has also given up on Neal, and they still do not know Neals fathers whereabouts. After their visit they keep on driving and manage to get into an accident but the limo driver does not care and the police let them go.

that is all i have read so far.

Reading On the Road

i have recently read pages 304-321. and in these pages what basically happens is Jack and his friend Neal decide that they are going to go from Frisco to New York and on the way are going to stop and stay in Denver and try to find Neals family. but due to Neals enthusiastic character the couple go through many adventures before leaving San Fran and on the road to Denver and in Denver which is what those pages mainly talk about.

Themes that this book particularily has is dealing with humans inner most emotions and nature and the beauty of things in life that people normally take for granted. I think in my paper i will be analyzing these ideas of human emotions and the small but important things in life that Jack Kerouac seems to notice.

Jack Kerouac: On the Road

"Along about three in the afternoon after an apple pie and ice cream in a roadside stand a woman stopped for me in a little coupe. I had a twinge of hardon joy as I ran after the car. But she was a middleaged woman, actually the mother of many sons my age, and wanted someboody to help her drive to Iowa. I was all for it. Iowa! not so far from Denver, and once I got to Denver I could relax. She drove for the first few hours; at one point insisted on visiting an old church somewhere, like as if we were tourists, and then I took over the wheel, and though I'm not much of a driver drove clear through the rest of Illinois to Davenport, Iowa, via Rock Island. And here for the first time in my life I saw my beloved Mississippi River---dry in the summer haze, lowwater, with big rank smell that smells like the raw body of America itself because it washes it up. Rock Island----railroad tracks, shacks, small downtown section; and over the bridge to Davenport, same kind of town, all smelling of sawdust in the warm Midwest sun. Here the lady had to go on to her Iowa hometown by another route; and I got out. The sun was going down. I walked, after a few cold beers, to the edge of the town. and it was a long walk. All the men were driving home from work..wearing railroad hats, baseball hats, all kinds of hats, just like afterwork in any town anywhere. One of them gave me a ride up the hill and left me at a lonely crossroads on the edge of the prairie. It was beautiful there."

this is a section from "On the Road" that i really like because of its descriptiveness of the details that people notice daily but don't think is important. Jack Kerouac turns something that could be so simple into something else that is very engaging and interesting. He makes a story out of something that could be simple as this : I saw a woman who needed help getting to Iowa, so i decided to go with her, first she drove then i drove. we passed the Mississippi River and she left me to go another way into Iowa. Some guy gave me a ride up to the egde of the prairie. Instead he adds small details and his thoughts into the text which makes it interesting to read, because it helps us visualize the situations and places.

American Author Proposal

American Author Proposal
Author: Jack Kerouac

The author I would like to read for my American Author project is Jack Kerouac. Jack was born in Massachusetts in 1922 to French-Canadian parents. He went to college in Colombia University but later on dropped out because his scholar-ship in college football didn’t follow through after he broke his leg. He later went to New York where he would meet the people he would travel with and eventually form the Beat Generation.
Kerouac wrote many short novels and poems (some that were even in French which was his native tongue) throughout his life, but his first real novel was “On the Road”. Jack Kerouac wrote his novel “On the Road” after 7 years of travelling with his friends across the United States. He and his friends often went from New York to San Francisco, down South, and to Texas. In his book he uses first person and talks about real events that actually happened but some editions puts in some fictional characters that are based on real people in his life. The story is a continuous diary entry of the events and his thoughts on life and anything in it. The story has no plot, but has secret messages within the text and they are things that Kerouac is trying to tell people. By writing down his every thought he captures the audience into his story and mind so that you better understand and feel what it is like to be there doing what he and his friends are doing.
The books I plan on reading are “On the Road” and “The Dharma Bums”. I began to read “On the Road” and am enjoying it a lot. I want to read “The Dharma Bums” because it talks about his life after he became a Buddhist and it sounds very interesting. I decided to read it in that order because “On the Road” is his first book and to me it makes more sense to read the first book and then read the other ones so I can see how his writing has improved or changed and compare the two to each other. The edition of On the Road that I am reading is the original scroll that has his and his friends’ actual names instead of the fictional character names that were given to them later on.
Jack Kerouac is considered very important to the world of literature because he brought a new style of writing and influenced many people like, Allen Ginsberg, who wrote his well-know and controversial poem “Howl” based on Kerouac’s style of writing. Kerouac called his style “Spontaneous Prose” which was influenced by Jazz and Bebop and is similar to the technique: stream of consciousness; which seeks to portray an individual's point of view by giving the written equivalent of the character's thought processes, either in a loose interior monologue, or in connection to his or her sensory reactions to external occurrences. Stream-of-consciousness writing is strongly associated with the modernist movement (wikipedia). Kerouac preferred to type non-stop on a long scroll of paper. In his original scrolls he did not use paragraphs, just one long one, or chapters. His style was to his dislike very influential to the Hippie Movement. Kerouac was very influenced by Gary Snyder and wrote about their mountain trip in “the Dharma Bums”. It is said that another reason he writes on one scroll is because he writes so fast. This could be so that he can get down every detail of thought on to the paper and changing the paper might make him lose his thought which would have been very disappointing on his part.
His style captures me as a reader and I really enjoy reading about his experiences because they influence me. I would love to read his books and write about them because his style of writing is the type that I like because it is free and without limits.