Atop an Underwood

by Jack Kerouac

  that, save that, preserve yourself; turn out those

  mean little old tales by the dozens, it is easy,

  it is grace, do it American-wise, drive it home,

  sell truth, for it needs to be sold. Remember, Kid,

  what I say to you tonight; never forget it, read

  this over in your gloomier moments and never, never

  forget . . . . . never, never, never forget . . . . . please,

  please, Kid please . . .

  ... Hungry Young Writer’s Notebook . . . .

  This homage to food prefigures ravenously descriptive passages about food in Kerouac’s books. A brilliant example is the scene of Hector’s cafeteria in New York City in Visions of Cody.

  How about a thick mushroom soup to begin with? Let us place it in a rather heavy bowl, white, stained, cracked at the edges, well eaten-in; let us dip into this with a large wooden ladle the steaming sauce, spotted here and there by a piece of cooked mushroom. You find it next in the heavy white bowl, ready to eat, to slurp, to swallow in ecstatic frenzy, to completely render invisible—and to do this, our quiet host hands us a large silver spoon with a black wooden handle. You grasp it rudely, with your whole fist, and dip the silver into the depths of the thick saucy substance. Before you extract the first large spoonful, you bend down to smell the soup. Oh, it is pungent; a scandalous sprinkling of pepper and salt, and a cute little sprinkling of paprika. You finger a small piece of brown mushroom, extract it from its hot tempting bed of glut and smell it careful: Ah, let’s call our shot:—it is the smell of the Subtle Pungency and the savor, the odor, the piquancy of sublime ravishment. Ah, let us eat. You dip the large spoon in, lift it to your mouth, and insert it to your mouth. You swallow the first mouthful, and it is like the nectarous drug of heaven. A small mushroom is discovered in the midst of your palate . . . you chew it carefully with your fore-teeth, and find that its timbre is delicate, that its body is tender, succulent, dainty, spicy; and with it all is the thick creamy sauce, the savory soup, oozing down your throat, the molten lava of heaven.

  Let us proceed to the steak. A thick tenderloin, Mein Host, and I’ll have yet some mushroom on it; mashed potatoes covered with parsley; a side dish of saucy yellow corn, glistening in the light of this heaven; some fine fresh French-Belgian bread, with large thick crusts and yielding white dough; large crinkly crusts, the kind of crusts that you tug at, and when you tear it apart, there follows a stream of warm white dough, and with all this generous gobs of thick yellow butter . . . . Oh, I must tell you more, and I don’t care how it sounds, or what defects there are, for sir this is hunger! hunger! hunger! and there is no other appeasement but the word . . . . the steak has arrived, and Mein Host fades back into the shadows, eager to serve me .... I begin to eat. The steak is huge, about two feet long and one foot wide, with a thickness of two inches. Through it runs a great bone, protruding at one end like the mighty hock of a beast. I grasp this bone and snarl into the steak, thrusting my mouth into the warm brown side of the meat, gnashing bestially with my savageful teeth and tearing off huge brown folds of meat, great flaccid flabs of bloody meat, chewing with a carnal fury never before equaled in time. O My God, but I eat. I chew with tremendous passion, swiftly, swallowing the meat in massive mouthfuls. I wash this down with a huge potful of nectarous coffee, well flavored with cream and sugar . . . it is a special pot that I drink out of, created for the occasion—it is one foot high, and looks like a tankard of ale; the coffee is in this pot, brown and deep and sluggishly steaming stained smells. I dart my spoon into the golden corn and take a bite, swallowing the mashy sauce of its yellow munificence; I carry a mountain of mashed potatoes to my mouth on a fork and let the whorly masses turn slowly in my mouth, creating taste-gland secretions, and then slipping slowly down my throat in warm full piles. Then I swipe down another magnificent slug of coffee from my tankard, and return voraciously to the slab of succulent dripping steak, sinking my teeth into the juicing mountain of meat and pulling off penchant stringings of sweating rare beef, covered by a delicate crunchly hide of browned loveliness.

  Well, sirs, for dessert I had a hot fudge sundae with chocolate ice cream; I’ll tell you about that some other time. At this time, I must go to bed and forget hunger.

  A Young Writer’s Notebook

  The ending of this piece points in the direction of two of Kerouac’s later works: “Home at Christmas,” a memory of pre—World War II Christmastime in Lowell, which appeared in Glamour in 1961 and is included in The Portable Jack Kerouac, and the teenage love story Maggie Cassidy, published in 1959. The novel’s opening scene has Jack Duluoz and his pals singing “Jack O Diamonds” on their way to a New Year’s Eve dance at the Rex Ballroom in snowy downtown Lowell. In early 1953 Kerouac wrote a one-page “preamble” to the novel in which he explains that he wants to tell Neal Cassady how he fell in love: “How beautiful can a woman be?—that when . . . after I met Mary Carney on New Year’s Eve, at a dance, dance in the Rex .. dancing hall, it was snowing and GJ was singin Jack 0 Diamonds, and we walked by Lucksy Smith’s house out in Pawtucketville, [....]”

  How a poor little guy like Shorty has to throw up a barricade of gruffness in order to survive, altho he is in himself a gentle young man, altho he never washes his face . . . . . about your Randy Shepperton, the way he smiles and then wipes it off like lightning, leaving a worried face, haggard in the light; how he laughs hollowly, to make politeness, bores you because he is always making politeness; and above all, how he swallowed slowly when you told him the bad news, instead of seeming worried, he just stared blankly, poor kid, haggardly swallowing slowly in order to conceal all the fine things that I wish he’d broadcast in sincere swoops of the hand . . . . Tell about Fabe, and the way he throws up a front of dignity in front of his kid, little father and little son; how he loves to orate with a flourish, with a driving point . . . . . Tell about work-happy N., his nervous look, his bitchiness at times, his goodness at times . . . a little bit of everything in everything . . . . tell about how a piece of work mellows if you let it alone to study later . . . . . tell how it feels to go to bed hungry, how it feels to want a woman and not have one (Ho! they all know that!) . . . . tell, tell, tell . . . . . how a cheap whore can think she is better than you . . . . how a little slip of a skirt thinks she can change the entire weather, tissue, and color of your thought by the wiles of her scrawny self . . . . . my goodness . . . . tell of the hostess juke-boxes, and the dedications . . . a man walking into a tavern, saying hello Joe, everything fine and you begin to think that men are decent after all, but when he leaves, the others begin to talk about him, behind his back, and you realize that the Brotherhood of Mankind is dead, damn it . . . . tell, tell, tell . . . . tell also the sombre silver of November . . . . the smell of cordy rawnesses in doorways and the way the cold wind goes down your jersey, freezing your chest . . . . . tell of Halloween in your mouth, the wild black orange gibberings and the screeching fury and horror of the harvest frowse, the witch, the pumpkin lit by candle and dripping, the night is black and it is Halloween, rattle the window and rattle the knee . . . . . the legend of your progenitors . . . . . tell, tell, tell . . . . about the N.Y. Times book review, how trite it is in the main, how unimportant and smug it is, how disgusting it is in the end . . . how a young writer can go to town, but not forever . . . . tell of Xmas at home in Lowell, the snow falling in the street, padding feet, the lights in the window, blue, green, red; the smell of candies and nuts inside, the bitter gum smell of the tree, the gifts, sitting in the plush sofa of the parlor with a glass of dark port wine, watching the tree and thinking things over, looking at the tree with silent melancholia, thinking happily about Xmas at home and snow drifting down past the arc-light on the corner . . . . . Halper standing in a Manhattan doorway, cold, laughing in the snowfall . . . . Wolfe walking by the Boston Harbor, smelling the warehouse and the wharves, feeling food, voyage, thrill, clangor of the heart, Faust is back . . . . . tell of Saroyan waking up in the night acro
ss the Paramount, his hair freezing on his head, laughing at the walls, the snow falls in Manhattan . . . . . and above all tell of Kerouac walking in the streets of Lowell in the winter’s night, looking up alleys illuminated by the round cold disc of the moon, knowing the clear screaming glint of star in winter, knowing the black black outline of squalid wooden porches in Lowell, Mass., dirty alleys, grimy back-porches black against the white moon of winter, narrow little alleys with solitary ashbarrels throwing a shadow on the frozen ground, walking up the long street, empty echo of steps on the frozen sidewalk, knowing the silence and beauty of winter midnight in Lowell slums ........ remember, Kerouac, to notice the thing that is New England in the winter, men riding by in a dirty grey ‘30 Essex, three of them in front on a very cold grey day, cords of wood on the back seat, the old car puffing and steaming in the dead cold New England winter afternoon .... that’s it, the dead cold winter afternoon of New England .... dead cold greyness .... snow falling on Moody St., and the light from Rochette’s diner, and the New Year’s Eve 1939, Jack O’ Diamonds, the Rex, Freddy, the snow, remember? Above all, Zaggie my child, remember the thing that counts, the great big thing that stands up alone and predominates shaggily, like a dead cold winter afternoon in grey raw New England, grey raw, raw ...

  [I Am Going to Stress a New Set of Values]

  I am going to stress a new set of values, which people have been minimizing in importance up to now on account of their apparent unimportance as compared to the lofty ideas of economists, historians, scholars, etc. In actuality, I am going to show that this scale of values surpasses the supposedly magnanimous one; that it is actually the one which builds up the world and man to meet all the vicissitudes and trials which make up the day and age.

  Dear Reader,

  What you are about to read is nothing more than

  exercise. I believe that form has been stressed too

  much. The following stuff is not written with an eye to

  form; it is written with an eye to complete expression.

  A novel form has the most complete expression, except

  that it is boring to see straight prose staring at you

  in the face every time you turn a page. Also, my system

  has more vitality, what with the dialogue, the comments,

  and the dramatic action. Do you know what I am talking

  about? I don’t either. That is the soul of imagination,

  and imagination is the soul of literature.

  So long and take it easy, because if you start

  taking things seriously, it is the end of you.

  Jack Kerouac,

  American casual poet of

  no renown whatsoever,

  but equipped with a

  complete inner con-

  fidence that would

  stagger Saroyan.

  P.S. Whenever you get tired of everything, go down

  to a saloon, or a pin-ball machine house, or

  jump in the river. However, if you do it every

  day like I do, you don’t get anywhere. But who

  wants, as Nick says, to go anywhere? And further-

  more, you can get sick of everything every day like

  I do and be one thing:—A casual poet with no

  regrets, no excess baggage, and humour and intelligence

  and goodnight my old mad masters, so long and

  forget it. It is no harm. That’s the idea of

  it all. How many times do I have to tell you.

  Sleep it off in bed, and when you wake up, work

  yourself up to a lather, world it all day, then

  go back to sleep it off at night, unless you

  have a woman with you in bed. In that case,

  don’t sleep right away, but be sure to do so

  after you’ve spent. Good night, boys.

  The Grim Reaper isn’t grim at all; he’s a

  life-saver. He isn’t grim because he isn’t

  anything.... he is nothing. And nothing is

  a hell of a lot better than anything. So long, boys.

  [I Am My Mother’s Son]

  I am my mother’s son. All other identities

  are artificial and recent. Naked, basic, actually,

  I am my mother’s son. I emerged from her womb

  and set out into the earth. The earth gave me

  another identity, that of name, personality,

  appearance, character, and spirit. The earth

  is my grandmother: I am the earth’s grandson.

  The way I comb my hair today has nothing to do

  with myself, who am my mother’s son and the

  earth’s grandson. I am put on this earth to

  prove that I am my mother’s son. I am also

  on this earth, my grandmother, to be her

  spokesman, in my chosen and natural way. The

  earth owns the lease to myself: she shall take

  me back, and my mother too. We have proven

  the earth’s truth and meaning, which is, simply

  life and death.

  “I woke up in the middle of the night

  and realized to my horror that I did

  not remember who I was. I knew not

  my name nor my appearance. When I

  went to the mirror, I failed to re-

  cognize my image. That is why I am

  my mother’s son and the earth’s grand-

  son, and nothing else. I am here to

  prove that fact, and in so doing, I

  am also the earth’s spokesman: that is

  so because I wish to prove it twice,

  once for the earth, and again for my

  brothers, so that we may live together

  in beauty.”

  Say, fellow, you know who I

  am? I’m Jack Kerouac, the

  writer: husky, handsome,

  intellectual Jack Kerouac.

  Notice how I comb my hair

  and see my handsome gar-

  ments. I’m the boy from

  Brazil. I love jazz, I

  love North Carolina, I

  love Socialism. I’m sel-

  fish, I’m irresponsible,

  I’m weak, I’m afraid. I’m

  Jack Kerouac the poet, the

  seaman, the scholar, the

  laborer, the newspaperman,

  the lover, the athlete,

  the flyer, the Lowellian? (I am my mother’s son.)

  [Howdy!]

  Howdy!

  This is Jack Kerouac, speaking to you.

  I have just returned to my little cheap room from a day’s work, ostensibly speaking, and find things in great shape. The radiator is working, and outside it’s cold and raw; the room untouched, for I have the only key and am completely the master of this certain portion of the earth, $4.50 per week. Only thing wrong with the whole affair is nights: there are bugs in the bed, and I have to scratch and rant and fever quite a bit. But I hope to get the bedbugs fed up with my blood, so that they will leave me alone some time. Then everything will be perfect, because I have my typewriter, paper, and plenty of good books in this room, plus my radio and the light bulb hanging down lighting up the whole place clearly, with the precision, might I venture, of cubic realism. Above all, there is myself in this room, wearing a red football sweatshirt, great brown crepesoled shoes, white football socks, green gabardine pants, ring on the right hand’s small finger (10¢ ring); wallet with no money in it, some loose change, a half a bread and some slices of cheese; keys to the kingdom; paper, manuscripts, notes, books, typewriter, cigarette butts, toothpaste, towels, radiator heating well, and hidden behind my desk an old gas stove slimy with black grease, lards, and fat. On the wall, spots of grease. On the floor, old cigarette butts; on my bed, the oldest blanket in the world, in America at least; a face cloth hanging from the bureau drawer; my filling station suits piled against the bottom of the writing desk; the top of my writing desk a bit greasy, but not enough to disconcert; the
smell of urine predominant, I believe; and outside my window, an alley grate covered with discarded boxes, wrapped-up swill, apple cores, various refuse; opposite that, a massive bleak red-brick wall rising to a small aperture of the Hartford sky at dusk, the windows sadly and luminously gray, shabbily drear, facing the ending day with phosphorescently haggard weariness; and then I pull down the old brown shade to hide this scene, as I turn to ply my life within this dreaded four-walled prison, the kingdom of the slave.

  2

  I will tell you what this is—my life at this moment. Just now, I was reading Halper on the bed, engrossed, hungry, eager, happy, very alone. I had a mirror beside me, in order to catch glimpses of any fleas that I suspected were playing about my hair, jumping from the filth of the room into myself, intruding into the private cleanliness of a clean young man from a clean home; I wanted to see them and kill them, but it turned out to be my imagination, and I wound up just looking at my face in the mirror. It was not at all handsome, I thought; it was wild, old—my hair horrifying and crazy, lines running down my face, and with my head on the pillow, it looked to me like the portrait of a dying man; a stubble of beard, and bright shining eyes, lines down the side of the face. There were no fleas, just my old face and old wild hair.

  Then,’ let us finish this up. What is this life? What is Hartford? Hartford is cold now, November 11, 1941; sombre silver November, the old father of October, older than time itself; cold on the streets, raw and wooden-like odors in the hallway of this cheap dive; but once you are inside the barrooms with their spittoons and booths with people in them, music from the juke-box, men playing pinball machines, all the fine rich heat of humanity under one roof laughing and laughing, and the smell of beer and food; now the music grows louder, my typewriter resounds through the flimsy walls, and they bring me a plate of hot powerful food and I water at the mouth. That, then, is Hartford; raw wooden-like doorways, biting wind in the streets, clear precise lights on Main Street, people hurrying by red-nosed and on the way to a real palpitating destination; the entrance to the taverns, and then the taverns themselves, the food steaming and glistening in the tavern light, music streaming love through your heart, blame it on the heart, because this is my life at this moment.