Rucksacks in the Classroom: Teaching Jack Kerouac in the Twenty-First Century

Rucksacks in the Classroom: Teaching Jack Kerouac in the Twenty-First Century Ellis Amburn. Subterranean Kerouac: The Hidden Life ofJack Kerouac. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998. 435p. Jim Christy. The Long Slow Death ofJack Kerouac. Toronto: ECW Press, 1998. HOp. Barry Mues.Jack Kerouac, KingoftheBeats:A Portrait. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1998. 332p. Readings byJack Kerouac on the Beat Generation. Compact Disk. New York: Verve Records, 1997. Kerouac — kicksjoy darkness. Compact Disk. Salem, MA: Rykodisc, 1997. AJack Kerouac ROMnibus. CD-ROM. New York: Penguin, 1995. Kurt Hemmer Washington State University Despite public remarks within the last few years, from such well respected scholars as Ann Douglas and Albert Gelpi, that Jack Kerouac's literary contribution needs to be examined with greater academic rigor than previously has been afforded , scholars and teachers interested in bringing Kerouac into their classrooms have been hard-pressed to find sufficient scholarly material to help them. The recent controversy over the Kerouac estate1 and the inaccessibility ofa great deal ofKerouac's unpublished manuscripts, journals, and letters in private archives has frustrated scholars and contributed to an aura surrounding Kerouac studies amounting to an academic soap opera. Fortunately, Kerouac scholars and teachers ofBeat literature can take heart in the increasing public popularity ofKerouac and the Beats. On the Roadcontinues to sell over 100,000 copies annually, Douglas Brinkley is writing the much anticipated authorized biography on Kerouac and also editing Kerouac's unpublished journals, two more volumes ofKerouac's letters are being planned, and Kerouac's estate intends to continue publishing manuscripts [the most recent being Some of the Dharma (1997)]. Although scholars and teachers ofKerouac need to contend with zealous Kerouac enthusiasts, who make Kerouac's acceptance into serious intellectual circles increasingly difficult, three recent biographies attempt to demythologize Kerouac and debunk the erroneous legends surrounding his name. SPRING 1999 + ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW * 119 In addition to the recent surge of interest in the "true" Kerouac, a current emergence ofmultimedia materials will make Kerouac primed for entering the twentyfirst -century classroom. Ellis Amburn's Subterranean Kerouac is the most controversial of the three Kerouac biographies of 1998. The editor ofKerouac's last two novels, DesoUtion AngeL· and Vanity ofDuluoz, Amburn tries to pass himselfoff as an insider who was privy to information few others had access to, but his accounts of his own interaction with Kerouac seem insubstantial, and his credibility is damaged by the fact that he never met Kerouac in person. Some Kerouac enthusiasts have been upset by Amburn's contention that the alcoholism that plagued the novelist's adult life was mainly attributable to Kerouac's repressed homosexuality. Amburn writes, "rigid divisions such as hetero-, bi-, and homosexuality do not fit reality, certainly not Kerouac's, and should not be used to label him. Though everyone seems to have a genetic inclination in one direction or the other, it is dangerous to use sex to define anyone" (32). Despite this disclaimer, Amburn seems continually to suggest to the reader that Kerouac was more homosexual than heterosexual, and that an understanding ofKerouac's conflicted sexuality is the key to understanding his life and thus his literary works. Although Amburn's book is the most thorough of the recent biographies, his tendency toward lascivious voyeurism with regard to the details ofKerouac's sexual encounters makes the biography seem geared more to the present generation raised on Jerry Springer than for serious scholars and students. One of the more egregious acts of Springerism used by Amburn is his frequent citation of Kerouac's infamous "sex list," a record of all the women with whom Kerouac had sex, a number next to each name indicating the number ofencounters. Amburn treats the list, which was recently "uncovered" in the Kerouac archive in Lowell, as a major biographical find. Although he points out time and again that Kerouac was often, despite his legendary reputation for honesty and a photographic memory, unreliable when recounting details ofhis own life, Amburn, based on the meticulousness ofKerouac's concern with the files he kept presumably for the scholars of the future, takes the "sex list" at face value. "I realized that the sex list sprang from the same meticulous...