{"id":2000,"date":"2022-06-10T15:41:34","date_gmt":"2022-06-10T15:41:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2022\/06\/10\/from-hagiography-to-pathography\/"},"modified":"2022-06-10T15:41:34","modified_gmt":"2022-06-10T15:41:34","slug":"from-hagiography-to-pathography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2022\/06\/10\/from-hagiography-to-pathography\/","title":{"rendered":"From Hagiography to Pathography: Yates and Kerouac"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Yates\"<\/a>I'll admit to being more fascinated by Richard Yates' life as reported in the 671 pages of Blake Bailey's biography than in Yates' writing. So this<\/a> struck a nerve:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

I\u2019m no fan of hagiographers, obviously, but I\u2019m only a bit less distrustful of literary biographers.  Too often their books slide toward what Joyce Carol Oates<\/strong> has dubbed \u201cpathography,\u201d which she defined as \u201chagiography\u2019s diminished and often prurient twin.\u201d  Its motifs are \u201cdysfunction and disaster, illnesses and pratfalls, failed marriages and failed careers, alcoholism and breakdowns and outrageous conduct.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Since we live in an age that\u2019s obsessed with personalities and celebrities, it\u2019s not surprising that so few readers are satisfied with loving a book and so many insist on knowing as much as possible about the person who wrote it.  While this appetite has inspired literary biographers to produce a long shelf of pathographies and other monstrosities \u2013 does the world really need Norman Sherry\u2019s <\/strong>three-volume biography of Graham Greene<\/strong><\/a>? \u2013 it has also resulted in some well researched and finely written literary biographies that did what such exercises do at their best: they led readers back to the subject\u2019s books.  Among these I would include Blake Bailey\u2019s<\/strong> recent biographies of Richard Yates<\/strong><\/a> and John Cheever<\/a><\/strong> and, strangely enough, Ann Charters\u2019s<\/strong> thorough and balanced 1973 bio of Kerouac<\/a>.  In her introduction, Charters wrote insightfully, if a bit clunkily: \u201cThe value of Kerouac\u2019s life is what he did, how he acted.  And what he did, was that he wrote.  I tried to arrange the incidents of his life to show that he was a writer first, and a mythologized figure afterward.  Kerouac\u2019s writing counts as much as his life.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I would argue that his writing counts more than his life, much more.  Eventually Charters seemed to come around to my way of thinking.  In 1995, after she\u2019d edited two fat volumes, Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters, 1940-1956<\/a><\/em> and The Portable Jack Kerouac<\/a><\/em>, I interviewed her for a newspaper article.  \u201cI wanted (the book of letters) to be a biography in Jack\u2019s own words,\u201d she told me.  \u201cHis life is in his books, but on the other hand the most essential thing is missing from those novels.  What he tells you in the letters is that the most important thing in his life is writing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Why did Kerouac's writing give rise to an outpouring of biographies, commentaries, dissertations, articles, not to mention new editions and the publication of the shoddiest of his literary efforts, when Yates' novels and short stories had no similar effect?  One thought is this. Kerouac was a sort of unwitting pied piper. His 1957 On the Road<\/em> gave rise to the 'rucksack revolution' of the 'sixties.  Yates' 1961 Revolutionary Road<\/em>, his best novel, was backward-looking, in large part social criticism of the  Zeitgeist<\/em> of the fading 'fifties.  <\/span><\/p>\n

But my one thought is one-sided and wants augmentation and qualification. Later perhaps.<\/span><\/p>\n

While I admire Yates' superb craftsmanship, his writing does not move me. Kerouac moves me.  Literary slop, hyper-romantic gush, and all. So far I have found nothing in three of Yates' novels and a couple of his short stories  like this:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Kerouac<\/a>Here is Jack Kerouac on the road, not in a '49 Hudson with Neal Cassady, but in a bus  with his mother:<\/span><\/p>\n

Who are men that they can insult men? Who are these people who wear pants and dresses and sneer? What am I talking about? I'm talking about human helplessness and unbelievable loneliness in the darkness of birth and death and asking "What is there to laugh about in that?" "How can you be clever<\/em> in a meatgrinder?" "Who makes fun of misery?" There's my mother a hunk of flesh that didnt ask to be born, sleeping restlessly, dreaming hopefully, beside her son who didnt ask to be born, thinking desperately, praying hopelessly, in a bouncing earthly vehicle going from nowhere to nowhere, all in the night, worst of all for that matter all in noonday glare of bestial Gulf Coast roads \u2014 Where is the rock that will sustain us? Why are we here? What kind of crazy college would feature a seminar where people talk about hopelessness forever?<\/span><\/p>\n

Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), Desolation Angels<\/strong>, 1960, p. 339.<\/span><\/p>\n

Compare Mexico City Blues<\/strong>, 1959, 211th Chorus:<\/span><\/p>\n

The wheel of the quivering meat conception . . .<\/span>
. . . I wish I was free of that slaving meat wheel<\/span>
and safe in heaven dead.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I'll admit to being more fascinated by Richard Yates' life as reported in the 671 pages of Blake Bailey's biography than in Yates' writing. So this struck a nerve: I\u2019m no fan of hagiographers, obviously, but I\u2019m only a bit less distrustful of literary biographers.  Too often their books slide toward what Joyce Carol Oates has dubbed … Continue reading “From Hagiography to Pathography: Yates and Kerouac”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[202,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kerouac-and-friends","category-literary-matters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2000\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}