Writing Like Jack Kerouac

I've been reading a lot of Jack Kerouac lately. After around 12 years of being indifferent to his writing, enjoying some of his novels, being bored to tears by others, I think I've finally got him.

I was doing a bit of reading about his 'spontaneous prose' method of writing. Kerouac wrote many of his novels in a matter of days using the method which focussed on an uninterrupted, trance-like burst of stream of consciousness writing.

When writing like this Kerouac seldom cared for the restraints of punctuation so used "No periods separating sentence-structures already arbitrarily riddled by false colons and timid usually needless commas."

So, I thought, can't be too difficult, I'll give it ago. What resulted was a 1000 word long sentence which is, perhaps inevitably, pretty poor. And it was pretty tiring too. I suggest any aspiring beat writer or beat cynic to give it ago.

Oh, and Kerouac also believed writing with an "image-object" in mind. Mine was the River Wear.

Here goes:

"When the icy blast hits from the Wear you will begin to associate academia with stupidity sorrow and loss as your neck cricks against a stiff pillow the self doubt will well up as you crumple on the snooze button desperate for any empty respite before you continue your quest to be elite your excuses becoming further than far fetched and instead of attend you hike up river to feel the chill in your bones dressed in your fathers jacket and murderers gloves to feel alive instead of shamefully clutching your burgeoning gut last year you still felt sad and loved the pub anticipating the disappointed look of the pretty barmaid when you order a third pint and confound her expectations after the flirting before you embarked on that glorious waste of time now swapped for books and debate and all the things you hate and love and never wanted anyway you will never be happy with what you have you have proved that time and time again the couples with their homes and their children and their duality cause much concern like nerves in the stomach between jealousy and disgust and how you fit in amongst this town you were so proud of until back there and shame at the commoners and lack of dietary concern makes you realise you were the fraud you knew you were all this time like the cod at the mouth of the North sea curiously sauntering into Roker bay to take a look up river and die in indignation at what is no longer there taking last gasps through gills while glassy eyes reflect the two pathetic cranes that are left of the shipyard standing stoic the stubborn bastards dead but for the occasional chik chik chik of the chain retracting or a knackered vessels last resort dry dock with men selling lobsters poached and took to the club at opening midday while wives do what wives do and they drink of course and why not what else if not drink work let them down and quickly followed their bodies and one day minds like car batteries left to rot the acid evaporating once toxic and real and now nothing but evaporated little more than air just disappointment and inevitability as the key turns and the engine responds in a flat fart like a complacent man sat in his home belligerent greying in the beard with watery sad eyes sunk back further than you remember but don’t want to because they look like yours miles away from the stuffy hall and fat women waddling to listen to discourse then talk about discourse then ask questions about discourse but when they ask questions they really are just giving their own little opinions banging their daft little drum for all its worth but the sound that emanates is nothing more than a fart like the dull thump of a heartbeat if they had hearts rather than giving it up for discourse and comfy offices and complaining about the stink from the Wear when it is low and the cormorants struggle to find anything to eat the cormorants are unconcerned with the fat women’s chelping if they were to ask a question they would ask it to gain an answer rather than pour out ill formed distain and opinion flat and empty like the sallow skin around necks and eyes which no longer sparkle like marbles scuffed on a concrete schoolyard where children still sway and dance and wriggle from the electricity that flows through them untamed by the disgusting concepts they are yet to learn like restraint and self awareness and not making a scene and being normal and not being considered weird for there is seemingly nothing worse than being considered weird why did you say that That’s a bit weird kind of discourse favoured by academics in stuffy halls with concrete scuffed marbles instead of life in their eyes all playfulness long gone surely there must have been something there a walk in the meadows a picnic too many drinks and the talk of big big plans together there must have been drinking and dancing in the bedroom at lunch time with the stereo turned up full and both topless with the curtains and windows wide open to feel the cooling breeze against bare skin as you pass each other the camera and strike your most Hollywood pose until collapsing together and falling into a deep contented drunken dreamless sleep as the afternoon sun falls on the two bodies squeezed together so tight like lumps of plastecine you can hardly see the join and you awake as the sun is falling and the breeze is cold and spitting in the sink there is nothing but the mix of red wine and blood from kissing too hard and before you know it you’re back in the pub and two men on stage are playing songs about railroad tracks and midnight trains in matching suits all self aware but you can’t hear anything at all but the rushing torrent of blood in your ears and the whisky burns in your throat because she is over there and talking to him and in slow motion you see it happen a touch behind the ear and then a kiss and you feel a rush and before you know it the bottle you are drinking from has been swift smash halved on the table as you tear her from him and thrust the shard edges deep into his eye but didn’t and you would have had you been a man had you not been a burnished marble a soft lad a cool kid instead you will stay quiet and seethe to yourself and it will eat you up and burn inside of you at the shame and disgust at doing the right thing knowing its far from right"

Kerouac's Essentials of Spontaneous Prose can be found here:

http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/kerouac-spontaneous.html