Jack Kerouac and the Liberal Tradition

Jack Kerouac and the Liberal Tradition by Thomas Gordon Beveridge A Thesis Submitted to the faculty of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfillment ofthe Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department ofEnglish University of Manitoba Winnipeg, Manitoba @ April2003 Bibliothèque nationale l*l $a$onat-iurav du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographic Services seruices bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON KIA 0l.l4 Ottau¡a ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Out frlo Iloto rélá|w The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant à la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute or sell reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electonic formats. la forme de microfiche/fiIn, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. 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The author reserves other publication rights, and neither this thesis/practicum nor extensive extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's written permission. Table of Contents Abstract lv Aclimowledgments v Chapter One: American Post-war Liberalism and Jack Kerouac I Introduction: The Liberal Narative 1 The New Deal, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Liberalism l4 Post-War American Liberalism and its Disciples 2t Literary Liberalism: Benét, Welty, Saroyan, Bellow, Kerouac 26 Notes 56 Chapter Two: Kerouac's Early Writing and the Liberal Narative 65 "Do I contradict myself .7': Kerouac's Atop an Underwood 77 The Town and the City:'ïhe sum and substance and crap of everything" 87 Conclusion: On the Road to On the Road 108 Notes 113 Chapter Three: On the Road: The Spiritual Journey Toward a New Liberal Narrative 118 The Spiritual Journey of On the Road: "The heroic message ofthe American future" t20 On the Road to Mexico 149 Home on the Road l6t Notes 166 Chapter Four: Kerouac, Bop, and Buddhism l7t Jazz,and the Narrative of Liberalism 175 Kerouac's Buddhism t93 Notes 213 Chapter Five: After the Deluge: Bíg Sur, Celebrity' and Liberalism 218 Big Sur: The Coming ofAutumn 224 "The King ofthe Beatniks": Jack Kerouac as Mass Cultural Icon 235 Strange Bedfellows: Contemporary Liberalisrn, West Wing, George McGovern, and Jack Kerouac 246 Notes 26t Works Cited 269 iv Abstracú JackKerouac and the Liberal Tradition After World War II, nuny writers found that the pre-war version of American liberalism was unable to explain the horrors of the war and the subsequent rise of communist hysteria; nor could it account for the failure of politics to provide solutions to those realities and for the sense of alienation that prevailed in spite of economic abundance. Therefore, the narrative of liberalism seemed in need of revision. This dissertation takes as its thesis that Kerouac's writing reveals the presence of his attempt to refashion liberalism for himself, that is, to configure the world into a form that made sense to him; through this revisior¡ Kerouac reassesses both his relationship to America and his role as a writer. The thesis begins with a discussion of the cultural and historical conditions in which the need for a new narrative of liberalism arose and looks at several writers in whose work an older liberalism is apparent, including William Saroyan. Subsequent chapters explore Kerouac's early writing nAtop an Underwood and'The Town and the City to locate the presence of that older liberalism and also the emergence of a more accurate liberal vision. The thesis also shows how On the Road provides evidence of Kerouac's changing vision; and, by discussing Þ'bop jazz in several texts and Buddhism n The Dharma Bums and Some of the Dharma, it argues tÍ:m;t jazz' and Buddhism can be possible models by which liberalism may be revised. The final section of the thesis looks at Big Sur and examines Kerouac's role as a cultural icon; it concludes that, afthe end of his life, Kerouac had come to a position from which he could understand and accept the complexity ofthe world and still maintain a sense of wonder. v Acllrowledgments I would like to thank my program advisor Dr. Steve Snyder for his generous efforts in bringing this project to a satisfying conclusion and a promising beginning. I thank also the members of my examining committee for their rigor in critiquing my work: Dr. George Toles, Dr. David S. Churchill, and Dr. Richard P. Sugg. Many members of the English Department have provided advice and encouragement over the course of this project; I thank you and apologize in advance to those whom I have inadvertently omitted here: Dr. Robin Hoople, Dr. Robert Emmett Finnegan, Dr. David \ù/illiams, Dr. Brenda Austin-smittu Dr.AdamMuller, Dr. Gene Walz, Dr. Mark Libin, and Dr. Méira Cook. Your input was vitally important to me. The support staffofthe Department, past and present, has taken comforting care of the rurmerous details involved, and I thank you with sincere appreciation: Marianne Harnistr, Ruth Bagworth, Rose Fiorillo, Lucia Flynn, and Erica Lindgren. Most importantly, I thank my wife Carol Moriyama for her support and for accompanyng me on another of our many "blue highways." Chapter One American Post-war Liberalism and Jack Kerouac However much human ingenuity may increase the treasures which nature provides for the satisfaction of human needs, they can never be sufficient to satisfy all human wants; for ma4 unlike other creatures, is gifted and cursed with an imagination which extends his appetites beyond the requirements of subsistence. Reinhold Niebuhr Introduction : The Liberal Narrative Reinhold Niebuhr's statement above is taken from his 1932 essay Moral Man and Immoral Society in which he refers to an irony inherent in modern culture. According to Niebuhr, society enables freedom and allows for the attainment of material goals and appeasements, but society is also its own "nemesis" (1) because, in order for humanity to flourish as a collective and still provide the gratifications that people demand from life, limitations must be placed on human freedom and action. As Niebuhr explains it, the reason for the necessity of these restrictions is simple: "men have not yet learned how to live together without compounding their vices and covering each other 'with mud and with blood"' (1). All of "human ingenuity" -science, technology, art, education, economics, politics, history-cannot prevent the human subject from desiring to fulfiIl its insatiable "appetites" for acquisition and satisfaction beyond its basic needs, and that 2 inability is innate and unavoidable since humans are both "gifted and cursed" with a powerful "imagination." In Niebuhr's view, any change for the better is not likely to occur in the human character because the probability ofthat imaginative power manifesting itself in acts of selÊinterest was simply too great. Further complicating the issue is that the will to satisff the individual appetite for more than is ftrndamentally necessary for living is exacerbated in the context of the group; as Niebuhr says, these desires "achieve a more vivid expression and a more cumulative effect when they are united in a common impulse than when they express themselves separately and discreetly'' (xü). In other words, individuals will allow the anonymous and considerable power ofthe collective to do for them what they would never do for themselves. Niebuhr's essay w¿rs written at the beginning ofthe New Deal and his assertions about fallen humanity could easily appear to be cynical and nihilistis, especially during a time in which liberal notions ofprogress, cultural inclusion, rationality, and universal ideals provided hope for away out ofthe economic and cultural depression that gripped A¡nerica and the world. But Niebuhr was far from a prophet of doonr Coming from a theological background, Niebuhr accepted the fallen condition ofhumanity; he envisioned that a possibility existed for an improvement in the quality of life by the recognition and acceptance of human failing and by the acknowledgment that evil existed along with the good in all human beings. Ifthese all too human characteristics were not entirely reconcilable with the views of the current pre-war liberal culture, then perhaps it was liberalism itself which was in need ofreformulation. However, most liberal critical thinkers and writers (Edmund Wilson would be an exception) did not come to the conclusions 3 about the world that Niebuhr had expostulated years earlier until after the horrors of World $/ar Two-and the subsequent knowledge ofhuman depravity-had become painfully obvious to liberal writers like William Saroyan; by therL American society was beginning to move forward blissfully on a wave of economic abundance.

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