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The Haunted Life
talk on porches, listen to baseball games on radios,
drink lemonade, talk plans for the future and with
girls. The influence of a writer like Dostoevsky is so
apparent here, families, brothers, awful tragedy. Even
though Kerouac at points stresses his dislike of
‘European decadence.’ And then before you know it
Kerouac’s characters are left in mid thought. It’s
abrupt, no doubt about it. You turn the page hoping
for more. A work in preparation that was to result in
The Town and the City in 1950, where the Martin
family were created in his youthful imagination to
include more brothers and sisters and the coming of
war for America. And there is the portrait of his
father, far from flattering and if the later in life
Kerouac was chided for allegedly bowing to his
mother’s influence, then this father character is no
less a brute force on him. That war involvement
changed the game plan for Kerouac, he got involved
and saw a great big world outside Lowell – how could
it not? Galloway, the sleepy town by the Merrimack,
couldn’t hold him – and he stresses this in additional
essays, questioning even why he is spending time on a
novel about this small town. Maturity would bring
Maggie Cassidy, Dr.Sax, Visions of Gerard, all Jack’s
memories floating through the Lowell streets like
morning fog. Never forgotten, just stored away.
The Haunted Life is augmented with journal
notes, speculative essays of preparation from
Kerouac. He was totally committed to a writer’s life
and passionately organised. These mini essays display
how he was far from spontaneous, the mapping out of
his novel was almost military like in the precision of
it all. Of course his top pocket notebooks became
almost a part of him and thankfully any number of
them have been preserved. In addition there are
letters, observers will be keen to read letters from his
father to Jack and his sister Nin, who died so
prematurely. This is Kerouac finding his way, before
long he would be in New York, involved in seedy
murder scenes, hastily married, involved with drugs,
all the Big Apple could throw at him. He slips into
philosophical mode at points and you wish he might
ditch that and just tell the story Jack. There are
sentimental portraits of his father, Jack seems to love
him despite Leo’s scarily bigoted way. There are
Kerouac diary entries from late summer 1945.
Tellingly there is one entry which reads, “I was
reminded today of a conversation in Greenwich Village
last summer: Mimi West had asked me what I was
looking for, in my writing that is, and I had told her, “A
new method.” At this point, Lucien Carr had put in: “A
new method!...and a new vision.” Well, he was wrong;
the vision I do have, it’s the method I want….Someday
I’ll express it. I’ve no doubt that I will.” (page 186).
It seems a million miles away from the town
of his youth, the all engulfing floods, the stygian
darkness of his Doctor Sax rooftops, the overpowering
Catholicism, but the method was just waiting for him
a few years on. Lucien Carr was halfway through.
Charlie Parker with his innovative progressions in
Bebop, Ed White and his powerful sketching
suggestions, the muse that was Neal Cassady, the ever
unfolding road. All that and more was to come.
Some might question the merits of bringing
this almost juvenile work to the light. Better to leave
it alone and celebrate his master works they may
venture. There is an argument for that. And yet these
unfinished works display a wonderfully observant eye
and a talent for building characters that engage. And
Tietchen, a professor at Massachusetts University in
Lowell itself, how fitting is that. From the days when
it used to be ‘Jack who?’ in Kerouac’s town more
often than not, they now endorse his books and
eulogise him – Tietchen pens a lyrical introduction.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing – but Tietchen places
Kerouac’s work beautifully in context, he has the
luxury of what the years since 1969 have revealed to
us. Of course he has had the advantage of access to
the still largely unknown Kerouac archive. He might
care to think of improved footnotes in subsequent
editions. Any number of references are left
untouched. Who was Mimi West, for instance?
It is frustratingly brief. It is a tidying up of
Jack Kerouac affairs for certain. There are hints at
other, as yet, unpublished essays that may arrive at
some point. ‘Galloway.’ A ‘Philip Tourian novel,’ are
referenced. Kerouac was impressively prodigious in
output and meticulous in archiving all his works
(though he nearly lost this one). Some critics may
sniff and dismiss it but for the thousands of devotees
around the world it will be manna from heaven. And
that’s so right for them, because all along Kerouac
told everyone he was published in heaven anyway.
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