Atop an Underwood: Early Stories and Other Writings Read online

  What more do I want but a woman when I am in passion,

  or a glass of water

  when I am thirsty, or music when I am lonely?

  Why, I need not your sumptuous sitting room, nor your

  full-vistaed garden!

  Nor your wainscotted bedroom with overhanging canopy

  and oils! All I need

  is my little den, with a window to let the sun shine in,

  and a shelf of

  books, and a desk, and something to write with, and

  paper, and my soul:Where can I find my soul?

  In solitude said my friend, in solitude.

  Yes. I have found my soul in solitude.

  No, I don’t want riches! This has been said so many

  times before. And

  when I say the world is bursting with plenty, I know the

  starved millions

  will laugh: but I shall laugh with them and overthrow: I

  know whereof I

  speak: I am not a prophet, I am, like Whitman, a lover.

  Whitman, that

  glorious American! Barbellion, who will go with you,

  anywhere, any time,

  any fashion, for nothing, for everything. Come, I will go

  with thee,

  said Whitman: Whitman, the underrated, the forgotten,

  the laughed-at,

  the homosexual, the lover of life.

  How shall I sing?

  I shall sing: I shall record the misery, observe on it, and point

  out how to abolish it. Blah.

  Definition of a Poet

  In 1941 Kerouac wrote: “You say, all poets like to kick. And this one here, Jack Kerouac, wants to kick in an original manner [. . . .]” Over and over in his early writings he refers to himself as a poet. To Kerouac, the poet was the ideal, the highest form of a writer, the artist-writer, of whom he wrote: “Their use lies in being able to erect structures of thought for mankind. ” He admired Walt Whitman, whom he credited with shaping “a living philosophy for his fellow countrymen.” He described Whitman as his “first real influence” and the reason he decided to hit the American road.

  Young Kerouac experimented with poetry in all forms, but traditional verse forms did not suit him. In 1940 he explained why: “I feel that the words are put backwards. I’d rather have simple prose-poetry, to the point, concise, and more digestible. Outside of that, poetry is sublime. Poets are happy people, because they too are sublime.” He later added a few original forms to the array of poetic forms, including the “pop,” a three-line American or Western haiku without syllable restrictions, and the “blues,” which he defined as “a complete poem filling in one notebook page, of small or medium size, usually in 15-to-25 lines, known as a Chorus, i.e., 223rd Chorus of Mexico City Blues in the Book of Blues. ” Kerouac connected the blues and poetry, as does contemporary American poet Charles Simic, who writes: “The reason people make lyric poems and blues songs is because our life is short, sweet, and fleeting. The blues bears witness to the strangeness of each individual’s fate.”

  A poet is a fellow who

  spends his time thinking

  about what it is that’s

  wrong, and although he

  knows he can never quite

  find out what this wrong

  is, he goes right on

  thinking it out and writing

  it down.

  A poet is a blind optimist.

  The world is against him for

  many reasons. But the

  poet persists. He believes

  that he is on the right track,

  no matter what any of his

  fellow men say. In his

  eternal search for truth, the

  poet is alone.

  He tries to be timeless in a

  society built on time.

  America in the Night

  1

  Listen!

  Kroooaaooo! Krrooooaaooooo!

  ‘Tis the train whistle, now, in the night,

  Kroooooo!

  I’m on a train, and I’ve got to whistle too....

  The real, the true America,

  Is America in the night.

  The guileful sleep, guile-less;

  The egotists sleep, ego-less;

  The timid sleep, fear-less.

  Across the midnight face of America—

  They sleep...

  2

  The real, the true America,

  Is America in the night.

  3

  What is a youth?

  I see one now—he is the youth of ages.

  Frowning silently, he smokes—

  A soldier in Alexander’s legions?

  Quietly, he adjusts his regalia.

  A young driver of Arabian caravans?

  He yawns in the night, then listens:—

  Krooooaaoooo.... !!

  Of the fleet of Nelson?

  A Tatar? A young soldier of Kublai Khan’s?

  A crusader? The young Iroquois warrior?

  A black defender of Khartoum?

  Yank in France?

  No matter—they are one, all are one.

  And the same—the youth of ages.

  An American sailor.

  With me he plies the black waters of night,

  Aboard the good ship S.S. America.

  4

  Red, white and blue they say?

  America?

  Don’t kid me, I say to they:—

  America is blue

  Right through—

  Blue!

  Improvise, black saxist, improvise!

  Tell them with your black soul

  That America is blue,

  That America is the blues.

  Play that throbbing tremolo—

  Let me stand beside you, approving.

  Bring him a soap box,

  Let him stand up and play the blues.

  Kroooaaaooooo!

  5

  Sibelius, tell us about Nature!

  And you brave Waldo—

  And thou also Thoreau.

  Tell us about the dark forest in the night—

  Patient, untelling, and wise.

  And you Gershwin, and you Runyon—

  Tell us about New York town . . .

  In the night, in the night.

  They tell me God made night to sleep—

  Zounds! My dawn is in the West!

  The darkness is over the land,

  And the melancholy lamps glimmer,

  And the train thunders through . . .

  In the night.

  Krooooaaooo!

  6

  Sandburg, Wolfe, Whitman, and Joe—

  They all work for the railroad.

  Sandburg, Wolfe, and Whitman sing—

  While Joe pulls that old whistle string:—

  Krooooaaoooo! Krooooaaooo!!

  Lordy but they’re blue—

  —Those lovers of the blues!

  Woman Going to Hartford

  I see the burnished

  tenderness of the

  countryside. Summer

  is over, and that great

  thrill I missed; next

  summer, then.

  Meanwhile, the tender

  char in the sky.

  Old earth, old old

  earth. In the city,

  leaves, air, sad people,

  something old & lost.

  Soon—winter,

  My child—in the

  park, tawny grass,

  fiery tree, wind,

  cold wind about his

  little scarf. Does

  he wonder too?

  What, Oh what is

  it?

  Something old & lost,

  Madam. Old earth, old.

  Old Love-Light

  October was a time of year packed with meaning for Ker-

  ouac, even as a young man, as is illustrated in the two fol-

  Lowing pieces. “I Tell You It Is October”
calls to mind

  Thomas Wolfe’s October rhapsody that opens Book III in

  Of Time and the River, with Eugene Gant back home af-

  ter his father’s death. Kerouac later wrote in On the Road:

  “In inky night we crossed New Mexico; at gray dawn it

  was Dalhart, Texas; in the bleak Sunday afternoon we

  rode through one Oklahoma flat-town after another; at

  nightfall it was Kansas. The bus roared on. I was going

  home in October. Everybody goes home in October. ”

  The railroad buildings, dingied

  by scores of soot-years,

  thrusting their ugly rears

  at your train window, are

  a sign of man’s decay.

  Once, I took a train

  instead of a bus. A bus

  takes you on a highway

  lined with filling stations

  & lunchcarts. A train

  runs smack through the

  forest. I wanted to

  study the forest in October

  and I took a train.

  It was astonishing to read

  what I read about October

  the following day. I thought

  I had it all figured out—

  I thought the lonely little

  houses, lost in the middle

  of great tawny grass,

  shaggy copper skies and

  mottled orange forests, were

  full of fine humanity that

  I was missing. Instead, the

  writer informed me that

  it was chlorophyll that

  colored the leaves. I

  thought I had all the

  significance of October

  under my hat & pasted.

  I thought that October

  was a tangible being,

  with a voice. The

  writer insisted it was

  the growth of corky cells

  around the stem of the

  leaf. The writer also

  said that to consider

  October sad is to be

  a melancholy Tennysonian.

  October is not sad, he

  said. October is falling

  leaves. October comes

  between Sept. & Nov. I

  was amazed by these facts,

  especially about the

  Tennysonian melancholia. I

  always thought October was

  a kind old Love-light.

  I Tell You It Is October!

  There’s something olden and golden and lost

  In the strange ancestral light;

  There’s something tender and loving and sad

  In October’s copper might.

  End of something, old, old, old . . .

  Always missing, sad, sad, sad . . .

  Saying something . . . love, love, love . . .

  Akh! I tell you it is October,

  And I defy you now and always

  To deny there is not love

  Staring foolishly at skies

  Whose beauty but God defies.

  For in October’s ancient glow

  A little after dusk

  Love strides through the meadow

  Dropping her burnished husk.

  It may be that I am mad, sir:

  Or perhaps hope in vain . . .

  But Oh! October is sad, sir,

  As mournful as midnight rain.

  The melancholy frowse of harvest stacks,

  The tender char of morning skies,

  The advance of Emperor October,

  Father! Father!

  Father November of the sombre silver,

  Oh I tell you it is October!

  [Here I Am at Last with a Typewriter]

  Written on October 13, 1941. In the Saroyan story “Myself upon the Earth” from the 1930s, the narrator longs for his typewriter, which is tied up in a pawnshop: “After a month I got to be very sober and I began to want my typewriter. I began to want to put words on paper again. To make another beginning. To say something and see if it was the right thing. But I had no money. Day after day I had this longing for my typewriter.”

  Here I am at last with a typewriter, a little more the hungrier, a little less the hungrier. There are some kinds of hunger, and there are other kinds of hunger.

  As I write the first paragraph, it occurs to me that the print of this typewriter is similar to the print of a typewriter which I used in College, exactly one year ago. This is a thing which astonishes me no end, but affects you not. But the fact remains, here I am, one year later in life, with the same kind of typewriter, only the letters I put down are different, with more truth, sanity, health, background, and backbone than the old ones. When I was in college, I used to write for the fun of it. Now I’m in dead seriousness.

  I see by the papers, and by Thomas Wolfe, that America is sick. This is a bad state of affairs, and it is being covered up by a lot of talk about hopeless Europe. Because Europe is hopeless at the moment doesn’t mean that America is to overlook her own defects. The National Defense move, a huge gesture on the part of a great nation for the benefit of a huge war, brings to my mind one amazing fact: Why didn’t we ever make such a tremendous drive for the sake of good things, rather than war? Why do huge movements such as this National Defense emergency have to be huge simply because they are propelled by greed? Why did our movement for American reconstruction measure up to this movement for war like a Lilliputian flea to a Brobdignagian dinosaur? (I’m talking about the W.P.A. and the National Defense?) It certainly makes you feel like vomiting, sometimes, in true Woollcott contempt. America is sick as a dog, I tell you. That’s why, with my new typewriter and a lot of yellow paper, I am grown dead serious about my letters, my work, my stuff, my writing here in an American city (Hartford). I will talk all about life in the 20th Century, and about America’s awful sickness and about some individual sickness I see in men and about good things in this life, namely, books, October skies, other varied weathers, women, Johnny Barleycorn, the Love of Man, a warm roof. I am alone in this boomtown, you see, but I am not silly. I am not going to rent a cheap room and starve. I’m going to rent a nice little halfcheap room, and starve halfways. That’s because I have a good job, and those silly guys didn’t, the suckers. (The lovely, the poor, the great suckers who in their solitary suffering and complaint, have added a jot of truth to America’s small pile of the stuff.)

  Oh, yes, I am about to see life whole . . . . man’s travails, man plying his self-made civilization, man’s decay, man’s dignified despair and nobility. I am about to see it and smell it and eat it. It is going to be fine for me, I tell you. Fine for me, either way.

  I am a writer, and thus it will prove valuable for me to study this place. However, before I start writing in dead seriousness, I want to add one thing. One of the remedies for American sickness is humour—there isn’t enough of it to go around—and I think it ought. to be fed to the people. This kind of humour, for instance:

  You are sitting on a stone wall in the city, watching the people go by. It is midafternoon, and two little kids come up and ask you if you work in a filling station. After you say yes, you look back to the street, and everything has turned comical. The answer is the kids. Kids are not hankerers, they are just happy living men. Perhaps this may sound childish, but the children themselves will vouch for me. I know a guy who sees something comical in everything, but he also goes too far. I just thought I’d let you know. Remember humour.

  Ha ha ha.

  It’s a great thing.... it’s irony, and add to it pity. Pity and irony, America, pity and irony. Stuff as old as the Bible.

  [Atop an Underwood: Introduction]

  Immediately following this typed introduction to Atop an Underwood, on the same sheet of paper, is Kerouac’s short story “The Good Jobs.” He later recorded the introduction as “1941, October, Hartford,” without the specific day noted. It is likely that he wrote the introduction soon after establishing himself i
n Hartford with a job at an automobile service station, a room, and a rented Underwood typewriter. He worked the clay of that real-life experience as he wrote the 1968 version of Vanity of Duluoz: “...when I came home at night tired from work, after eating my nightly cheap steak in a tavern on Main Street, came in and started to write two or three fresh stories each night: the whole collection of short stories called ‘Atop an Underwood,’ not worth reading nowadays, or repeating here, but a great little beginning effort. [...]”

  Kerouac describes himself “writing little terse short stories” in the mold of Saroyan and Hemingway. However, the stories composed in Hartford, and he claims to have written two hundred in about eight weeks, were rarely stories in the conventional sense, with a setting, plot, characters, and dialogue. Reading Saroyan and Hemingway would have given Kerouac a sense of flexibility with the form of a story. For example, Saroyan writes: “Do you know that I do not believe there is really such a thing as a poem-form, a story-form or a novel-form. I believe there is man only. The rest is trickery. ” The bursts of prose poetry also bring to mind Whitman’s Civil War writings in his Specimen Days. Whitman drew on “impromptu jottings” in notebooks for those accounts.

  The term story better suits the Hartford work if we think of Kerouac’s using it as a journalist might have, in a newspaper or magazine story, the product of a reporter. Most of the time he was reporting on his own life, filing dispatches to the world desk from his personal cultural front. He was an old-time “newsie” with his bulletins, columns, and stories. He would give himself an assignment, then spin a piece of yellow paper into the Underwood, and start chewing up the blank sheet like a man devouring an ear of native corn. He often filled the sheet of paper top to bottom and margin to margin. There was barely enough space to contain his overflowing mind, so he wrapped up the thought and punched in the final jk on the last line—and you imagine him reaching for another piece of paper to start a new line of talk. He uses the page as a compositional field in the same way he turned the American dime store pocket notebook page into the ultimate pragmatic poetic form: end of the page, end of the blues chorus.