On The Road by Jack Kerouac

After reading ‘On the Road’, I definitely caught the breeze of a free-wheeling, music-loving lifestyle wherein the characters feel deeply and live wildly.

I had difficulty choosing excerpts from Kerouac’s gorgeous, hopeful, yet at the same time, dingy prose. My words don’t measure up to the seamless stream of the author’s pen. So in the place of my weak attempt at conveying why I found enjoyment in this American odyssey, I rely on these passages. Read the book and see if the words and characters don’t roll into your head as the wheels roll across the continent.

“And here for the first time in my life I saw my beloved Mississippi River, dry in the summer haze, low water, with its big rank smell that smells like the raw body of America itself because it washes it up.”

“Great beautiful clouds floated overhead, valley clouds that made you feel the vastness of old tumbledown holy America from mouth to mouth and tip to tip.”

And he hunched over the wheel and gunned her; …We were all delighted, we all realized we were leaving confusion and nonsense behind and performing our one and noble function of the time, MOVE.”

“Then we started down. Dean cut off the gas, threw in the clutch, and negotiated every hairpin turn and passed cars and did everything in the books without the benefit of accelerator.” …”In this was we floated and flapped down to the San Joaquin Valley. It lay spread a mile below, virtually the floor of California, green and wondrous from our aerial shelf. We made thirty miles without using gas.”

“Dean’s California-wild, sweaty, important, the land of lonely and exiled and eccentric lovers come to forgather like birds, and the land where everybody somehow looked like broken-down, handsome, decadent movie actors.”

And I now see how Natalie Merchant’s rambling musical poetry of ‘Hey Jack Kerouac’ gave me glimpses of the exploits of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty long before I eventually found author Jack Kerouac for myself.

Hey Jack Kerouac, I think of your mother
And the tears she cried, they were cried for none other…

…Hey Jack, now for the tricky part,
When you were the brightest star, who were the shadows?…

…You chose your words from mouths of babes got lost in the wood.
Cool junk booting madmen, street minded girls
In Harlem, howling at night.
What a tear stained shock of the world,
You’ve gone away without saying goodbye.

Natalie Merchant / Robert Buck
Hey Jack Kerouac lyrics © Christian Burial Music

10,000 Maniacs’ In My Tribe 1987

‘Dissolution’ The First in the Matthew Shardlake Series

‘Dissolution’ is author C.J. Sanson’s debut novel featuring Master Matthew Shardlake, an attorney who serves the infamous reformer Lord Thomas Cromwell in the year 1536. I confess to not knowing very much about the Reformation period other than what I learned on Masterpiece Theater and films like ‘Anne of A Thousand Days.’ My Catholic grammar school history classes were, not surprisingly, willing to skip those significant chapters in church history.

The Reformation period is arguably just as much of a central character as Shardlake, his protege Mark Poer, and the cast of monks and servants at the struggling monastery at Scarnsea where the story unfolds. The historical backdrop is that of King Henry VIII and Cromwell’s relatively swift process of dismantling and closing the giant machine of monasteries that dominated England’s economy.

Tasked with investigating the gruesome murder of one of Cromwell’s commissioners at Scarnsea, Shardlake’s loyalty to The Reformation and belief that the enormous wealth of the monastery system will be equitably divided becomes as murky as the dangerous surrounding marshlands used by smugglers and a cast of nefarious suspects.

Matthew Shardlake is haunted by personal losses, his own physical deformity and he often admits to being confused, exhausted and fearful. It’s a refreshing portrayal of how hard it has always been to be a hero in times of corruption and conflict. Some things never change.

Looking for more? There are seven titles in the Shardlake series; Dissolution, Dark Fire, Sovereign, Revelation, Heartstone, Lamentation, Tombland.

 

Author Spotlight: Colette

The Collected Stories of Colette, edited by Robert Phelps

A quick review of a collection of short stories seems fitting. Spoiler: I only scratched the surface of this 600 page collection. I see it as a refreshing dip into Colette’s intimate, detailed and uniquely lovely look at life and love. Thirty-one of the 100 little tales appear in this volume translated into English for the first time.

The Colette, SidonieGabrielle Colette keeps company with other talented artists who have no need for a second name. Think Austen, Hemingway, Moliere.

I was enchanted and entertained by these richly simple vignettes. Just consider some of the titles, ‘Cheri’, “The Pearls,’ ‘My Goddaughter’, ‘The Saleswoman’, ‘In the Boudoir’, ‘What Must We Look Like?’, ‘Sleepless Nights’

Colette masterfully employs a rare writing style of Dialogues for One Voice. Seven little gems of conversation written and revealed to the reader through only one side. Par exemple from ‘My Goddaughter’.

"Is it you who's calling me, Godmother? I'm here, under the stairs."
"...?"
"No, Godmother, I'm not sulking."
"...?"
"No, Godmother, I'm not crying anymore. I'm done now. But I'm very discouraged."
"...?"
"Oh, its always the same thing, for a change. I'm mad at Mama. And she's mad at me, too."
"...?"
"Why 'naturally'? No, not 'naturally' at all! There are times when she's mad without me being mad back -it depends on if she's right."
"...!"

This dialogue style makes the brain work differently, but when it is so naturally written it takes little effort to understand the unwritten voice in the conversation.

Colette is perhaps most famous for authoring ‘Gigi and the Cat‘, which served as the inspiration for Lerner & Loewe’s musical adaptation of another singular named work, ‘Gigi‘. With an all French cast, the film feels authentic to the author’s vision and to the era. It is a warm and colorful romp through Paris following the many intricacies of love, love affairs and the stages of love through the eyes of the old and the very young.

à la prochaine.