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Jack Kerouac's Spontaneous Prose: a Performance Genealogy of the Fiction Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2006 Jack Kerouac's spontaneous prose: a performance genealogy of the fiction Justin Thomas Trudeau Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the Communication Commons Recommended Citation Trudeau, Justin Thomas, "Jack Kerouac's spontaneous prose: a performance genealogy of the fiction" (2006). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 3772. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/3772 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. JACK KEROUAC’S SPONTANEOUS PROSE: A PERFORMANCE GENEALOGY OF THE FICTION A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of Communication Studies by Justin Trudeau B.S., Oregon State University, 1995 M.A.I.S., Oregon State University 1999 August 2006 Acknowledgments It gives me great pleasure to thank the following people for their help in allowing me to produce this work. Dr. Michael Bowman, for acting as my Dissertation Chair and for his insight and wisdom over the course of my graduate education. Thanks for putting me in the chicken suit. Dr. Ruth Laurion Bowman, whose commitment to performance praxis has taught me that play is one of the most underestimated words in the academy. Thanks for letting me have some fun while I learned. Dr. Patricia Suchy, for teaching me poetry in class and in life. Dr. Elsie Michie, for agreeing to be on my committee and for allowing me to develop my ideas for this project in independent research. Dr. Kirstin Noreen, for taking the time and effort in serving as my graduate representative. I would like to give a hearty “much love” to all of the wonderful graduate students I have met and have had the pleasure to work with over the course of my time at Louisiana State University. I feel especially blessed to call all of you my L.S.U. family and look forward to working with you in the future. I would especially like to thank three men whom I consider to be extraordinary friends, one of which I am legally bound to call my brother. Bruce France and Nick Slie, with whom I originally developed my ideas for this project by means of a cooperative directing project, thanks for everything, and keep it bizarro boys. To David Terry, although there is no write club, I appreciate you working with me independently and for pushing me when I needed it the most. Over the course of my time spent on this project many people have passed away and I would especially like to thank their spirits for what I have learned as a result of their lives on earth. Jon Birdnow, may you rest in peace. Tyler Murray, Tom Murray, Pete Slie, and Harry Zeringue, thank you for welcoming me into your family. To my ii grandmothers Hightower and Trudeau, two women whose strength was forged by their historical moment, thank you for being both indomitable and always so alive. Thanks especially to my family, whose commitment to me both in this project and in life has been nothing but outstanding. I adore you all as your son, brother, and nephew. Finally this project would not of seen its completion without the dedication and love of my wife Jessica Slie Trudeau, a woman whose courage and grace continue to be the greatest source of my inspiration. More than you’ll ever know, I love you, and thanks for keeping the light on. iii Table Of Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………………ii ABSTRACT…………….……………………………………………………………….v CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION……...………………………………………..1 TWO THE “ESSENTIALS” OF SPONTANEITY…………………….23 THREE THE WINDING ROAD OF SPONTANEITY…………………..60 FOUR REVISING THE VISIONS OF SPONTANEITY……………....118 FIVE THE MEMORY AND DREAM OF SPONTANEITY IN DR. SAX………………………………………………………..…….166 SIX CONCLUSIONS………………………………..……………...219 WORKS CITED………………………………………………………………………..228 VITA……………………………………………………………………………………238 iv Abstract This study analyzes Jack Kerouac’s writing method of spontaneous prose and articulates how the method can be understood as performative writing. Kerouac’s “Essentials of Spontaneous Prose,” On the Road, Visions of Cody, and Doctor Sax are explored to evaluate both the successes and failures of the author’s attempts to break literary boundaries and create a new writing method based upon spontaneous tenets. These three novels, which were written in succession from 1950 to 1953 when Kerouac was in his most productive period, represent both the emergence and dissent of the author’s use of performative writing. To explicate the cultural genesis and dissemination of Kerouac’s writing method, the historiographical method of performance genealogy is utilized to address two fictions operating within the larger discourse surrounding Kerouac. First, by focusing on the author’s works rather than on his biographical life, this study seeks to contribute to our understanding of Kerouac’s status as an author and as a performer of fiction. Second, by focusing on the cultural historicity of his writing method, it is argued that Kerouac’s method of spontaneous prose is a much more complicated approach to novelistic discourse than both his earlier critics and some contemporary fans have acknowledged. By addressing spontaneous prose as a method of performative writing, this study articulates what spontaneous prose is and what it does. To this end, the study tracks the doing of spontaneity over the course of three separate literary performances of the novel. As the genealogical trajectory of the writing method demonstrates, in On the Road Kerouac has only begun to implement the changes he wanted to explore after discovering his literary method. Visions of Cody represents the author’s commitment to the writing v method, but as its series of literary experiments shows, Kerouac is not yet able to balance his writing method with a sustained approach to narrative story telling. Finally, in Doctor Sax, Kerouac is able to achieve what his two earlier novels had not. That is, a synthesis between the form of invention and the subjects of invention themselves. Implications for performance studies and performative writing are explored. vi Chapter One: Introduction Purpose Jack Kerouac’s novels have never been enough. Due to the thinly-veiled autobiographical nature of his fiction, Kerouac the person, and not the author, has drawn much of the focus in both popular and scholarly circles. There are no fewer than ten biographies written about the man. His journals, letters, and even his dreams have all been published. Recently, Paul Maher’s biography, which hails itself as the “definitive” version of Kerouac’s life, has been published, which would announce that perhaps the biographical versions of the author’s life might have been exhausted. We shall see. Whether casual or critical, Kerouac’s biography remains one of the cornerstones of those interested in his literary contributions. Based in part on this bias, Kerouac’s literary contributions have yet to be thoroughly mined, and commentary on his work tends either to mythologize or chastise what Kerouac would come to call his spontaneous prose method of delivery. The purpose of this study is to track the cultural genesis of Kerouac’s spontaneous prose and its genealogical performance over the course of three of his novels. Starting with the essay “Essentials of Spontaneous Prose,” and focusing on the seminal period from 1950 to 1953, I examine On the Road, Visions of Cody, and Doctor Sax to evaluate the relative success of Kerouac’s writing method. These three novels are chosen because they represent both the beginning and the apex of what Kerouac was able to accomplish before both fame and alcohol would snuff out his life prematurely at the age of forty- seven. 1 In pursuing the idea of Kerouac’s novels as a depository of performance and culture, I refer to Strine, Long, and Hopkins’s definition of performance as an “essentially contested concept, meaning that its very existence is bound up in disagreement about what it is, and that the disagreement over its essence is itself part of that essence” (183). Performance theorists relate the question of performance to culture, which itself is an essentially contested concept. Culture’s set of meanings and social- political boundaries are marked, contested, executed and revised by means of performance. Questions regarding the nature and consumption of performance are questions of culture. Specific to this study, the issues of culture and performance are interested in the effect spontaneity has on the performance culture in which it is made manifest. By locating this culture within the cultural artifacts supplied by Jack Kerouac, the author is understood as a performer. In his work The Performing Self, Richard Poirier offers an explanation as to how the author can be understood as a performer. He explains that the author’s performance is a work of power and that, “It’s performance that matters—pacing, economies, juxtapositions, aggregations of tone, the whole conduct of the shaping process” (86-7). Writing is made up of multiple performances as it is shaped and then later presented as a contested artifact of power to the culture in which it is assimilated. Poirier explains, “Out of an accumulation of secretive acts emerges at last a form that presumes to compete with reality itself for control of the minds exposed to it” (87). Often times the form of this localized power can be read as the style we come to associate with a particular author’s performance acts.
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