All of Life Is Creation: Jack Kerouac’s Art | Hacker News Reader

All of Life Is Creation: Jack Kerouac’s Art

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38 pointssamclemens15 comments

For anyone who’s read Kerouac and didn’t quite “get it”: try listening to it as an audiobook. His work takes on an entirely different flavor when heard aloud. Akin to listening to a jazz recording vs. seeing it played improvisationally live.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVPg69sblWk https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H7aHumxaQ4A

100% spot on. Kerouac is one of the few authors who need to be read out loud (preferably by someone on speed) to be appreciated the way I assume he wanted it to be.

Not to get too far afield, but I would put Ginsberg on the same list. Howl is a great epic poem, until you hear it screamed out loud over a crowd by someone with an attention disorder. Then it's transcendental.

To get even further removed, if you struggled with the translation of The Canterbury Tales, read the Middle English translation, but read it out loud at 80-120 beats a minute. The words you don't know suddenly become clear, and the entire thing makes sense.

I find it fascinating that some works are seemingly intended to be read out loud and 'performed', but we force people to hear it in their internal voice alone. And then we wonder why folks hate 'classics' of literature or poetry.

I'm not sure what videos those are, as youtube is blocked at my work, but this is absolutely essential viewing:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...

I'm a serious fan of Jack Kerouac and I knew he dabbled at painting having read all the biographies written about him.

Someone, might have been his Mother, was quoted as saying that nothing he ever painted was good enough to hang in her house.

So I'm a bit gobsmacked that he was actually regarded as a good artist. I can only hope that someone organizes a travelling collection of his work because I want to decide for myself.

I read and loved "On The Road" but had to give up on Desolation Angels it just read like an incoherent stream of consciousness and felt like such hard going.

That was exactly my take as well. Absolutely loved On the road, found Dharma Bums to be too incoherent.

I think On the Road and Big Sur are his strongest works.

I agree 100%. Reading On The Road first is essential, but Big Sur for me was the best example of that sharp, cynical ennui which for whatever reason was exactly what I was looking for during that period of my life when I read as much Kerouac as I could find.

Great book.

I once tried to trek up Matterhorn Peak in the eastern sierra but it was a rainy day and we felt we had to give up the plan. As a result I permanently have an association of sort of a foggy confused state of affairs staring up at the mountain that I can't even see. Apt perhaps

Huh, I had no idea there was a 'Matterhorn peak' in California. I'd only heard of 'the Matterhorn' in the Alps.

Interesting article, but I'm disappointed with the lack of photographs of the paintings in question. You would expect to see at least one, considering the detailed description of each. It's difficult to follow such descriptions having never seen the object.

On The Road helped kick start the 60s revolution. Great read

I don't think the beats actually shared much with the hippies that came after. Certainly Kerouac himself didn't, he hated hippies.

So true. Kerouac was actually <gasp> conservative and quite religious.

I'm from Lowell. Good to see Jack on the front page of HN.

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