Jack Kerouac and the Process of Spontaneous Revision

by Kevin Smith Author

Jack Kerouac, a progenitor of the Beat generation writers, maintained notebooks and journals throughout his life in which he recorded, in a stream-of-consciousness style, his observations about the things going in in his life.

From those notes, he later developed some of his novels, one of which, "On the Road," he is famous for having typed on a single spool of paper. An innovative, exhilarating ride through America, the novel was seen by critics and readers alike as important enough to subsequently warrant inclusion on several noteworthy lists of the best American novels of the 20th century.

One reader summed up his experience of reading the book thusly: "Can you believe how many cars they wrecked? Is this really autobiographical? If so, it's amazing he lived to tell the story."

No Spoilers Here

Out of respect for those of you who have yet to acquaint yourself with the story's characters and their carousing, this column will forego further plot summary and look at other matters relevant not only to the novel's what, but also its how. But if your enthusiasm for the car crash aspect of the book verges on the obsessional, you may want to research the incident regarding the fate of the used Mercedes in San Antonio, TX, but not if you're faint of heart. (Hint: If you do pursue this line of inquiry, you might begin with this quotation from the book: “Now we were on the great Texas plain and, as Dean said, 'You drive and drive and you're still in Texas tomorrow night.'")

Although he reportedly wrote the book in a fit of spontaneity during a period of just a few weeks in the Spring of 1951, the manic author did not see its first publication until 6 years later.

Six years is a pretty good stretch of time to edit, cut, revise, rearrange, and polish the prose that arose in a burst of writing and to make it sound even more spontaneous, while structuring it so that it takes the reader on a journey that conforms--to the extent it is possible to direct the mind of the reader--to a conscious design.

The Writer's Process

For many writers, it is at the intersection of the lines where the mind, conscious of the things it believes it has witnessed, crosses paths with the mind that seems to think it has no idea where it's been or what it's beheld but is absorbed entirely with creating what might and will be, that thought manages to travel from their fingers onto the page.

It is unknown whether that was true for Kerouac, but what is known it that it was during one of the more intense editing sessions--picture Kerouac sitting on the floor next with a half-pitcher of now warm margaritas so close to his foot that you are anxious that he might kick it over--that the writer, waving the scissors in his right hand above his head describing a circle in the air where birds might begin their annual migration and Dean and Carlo and Neal might hold on to their tail wind and follow, excised a passage about an incident where Dean, taking a rest from the exhausting migratory flight from Denver to South America, hotwires a used Mercedes in San Antonio, TX, and promptly crashed it. But even with that excision, there's a load of excitement waiting for you on this bundalious journey.