Happy Monday! I have BIG news to share today. Burning Furiously Beautiful: The True Story of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” is now available as an eBook! You can get it for $8.99 at Lulu.
Here’s a bit about the book from Lulu:
Burning Furiously Beautiful: The True Story of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” is the most up-to-date and accurate account of the development of American writer Jack Kerouac’s groundbreaking 1957 novel, On the Road. Using archival resources as the foundation of this book, Kerouac scholars Paul Maher Jr. and Stephanie Nikolopoulos have fashioned a gripping account of the internal and external experiences of Kerouac’s literary development.
And here’s our synopsis:
Fueled by coffee and pea soup, Jack Kerouac speed-typed On the Road in just three weeks in April 1951. He’d been traveling America for the past ten years and now, at last, the furious energy of his experiences flowed through his fingertips in a mad rush, pealing forth on a makeshift scroll that he laboriously taped together. The On the Road scroll has since become literary legend, and now Burning Furiously Beautiful sets the record straight, uncovering, among other things, the true story behind one of America’s greatest novels. Burning Furiously Beautiful explores the real lives of the key characters of the novel—Sal Paradise, Dean Moriarty, Carlo Marx, Old Bull Hubbard, Camille, Marylou, and others. Ride along on the real-life adventures through 1940s America that inspired On the Road. By tracing the evolution of Kerouac’s literary development and revealing his startlingly original writing style, this book explains how it took years—not weeks—to ultimately write the seemingly sporadic 1957 novel, On the Road. This revised and expanded edition of Jack Kerouac’s American Journey (2007) takes a closer look at the rise of Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation.
The ebook can be read in the following formats: Windows, PC/PocketPC, Mac OS, Linux OS, Nook, Apple iPhone/iPod/iPad, Android, Kindle (Amazon), Sony Reader, Blackberry Devices, Palm OS PDAs, Cybook Opus, Bebook (Endless Ideas), Papyrus (Samsung) Jetbook (Ectaco), Windows Mobile OS PDAs.
On Friday, December 14, I attended a special sneak preview of On the Roadat IFC Center in Greenwich Village. It was history in the making. At long last, Jack Kerouac’s seminal road novel had made its way to the silver screen. Kerouac himself wrote a lot about going to the movies, and he wanted his novel turned into a film. In fact, he even wrote to Marlon Brando, asking him to buy it and star in it.
Francis Ford Coppola bought the film rights decades ago. I have a friend who wrote a screenplay that he showed to Coppola, and there have been numerous actors associated with the film adaptation, but the project always seemed to stall. Finally, Walter Salles came on as director and Jose Rivera as screenwriter, and soon after an impressive cast lined up, and the film looked like it would finally take off. And it did! It debuted at Cannes Film Festival in May 2012. Throughout the summer and into the fall, the film showed at theatres across Europe and South America. Those of us in the States read reviews, watched clips, argued about whether the novel could be adapted for film in a successful way, and debated the choices for the cast while we waited for the quintessential American story to come to us. At long last, when it was announced that a sneak preview of On the Road was taking place in the neighborhood Kerouac used to hang out in, people lined up on the Avenue of Americas for a chance to see it. As my good friend Elizabeth and I waited in line, an older man offered us $50 for our movie tickets. Considering we were so excited we were taking photos to commemorate the event, we probably weren’t the best people to try to scalp from. Needless to say, I watched the film, and, for whatever it’s worth, I can now give you my review of On the Road, which opens in New York and LA on December 21 and the rest of the country in January.
Let me start with a caveat: I am perhaps a bit too close to the subject matter to review On the Road objectively. After all, I am writing a book about the true story of On the Road. I have also heard and read reviews by a few other Beat scholars and fans and watched many Youtube clips from the film. I came in with lots of preconceived notions, and I watched the film more as a critic than as your average moviegoer. That said, I did not go into it as a literary snob wanting it to fail. I came into it wanting to see Kerouac’s work done justice.
***
On the Road is wonderfully nuanced. And to me, it’s the nuances in the acting, directing, and screenwriting that make On the Road a worthwhile adaptation of the novel. Everyone involved in the film understood that Kerouac’s novel is not just about some crazy kids driving at high speeds across the country, getting high, and getting laid. They understood that depicting this wild behavior — the film does not censor anything — was necessary not for shock value but because it underscores the complexity of the characters. In particular, the film does justice to the theme of the loss of fathers. Burning Furiously Beautiful, the book I’m coauthoring, delves into the personal life stories of the real-life people the characters are based on, giving further insight into their behavior and lifestyle. Understanding the characters’ back story elucidates their desires and actions, and the film adaptation neither glorifies nor critiques the characters. It gives them space to reveal themselves to the viewer.
Interestingly, the character that fell flat to me was the character of Sal Paradise, based on Jack Kerouac and played by Sam Riley. The actor, screenwriter, and director did a great job showing him to be an observer, which was true to Kerouac’s nature. However, the film itself was not seen through Sal’s eyes. He seemed like just another character. The landscape, the jazz shows, the parties were depicted through a neutral perspective. Not only did this make it difficult to understand Sal’s motivations and character — this is most evident in the scene with Terry (“the Mexican girl”), which isn’t developed enough for us to understand why it’s included — it meant we lost his voice. While critics over the years have focused on the road trip antics, for me, the strength of the novel was its insanely beautiful poetry. The film adaptation was more about the story and less about the literature.
Overall, though, the dialogue for the characters and the acting was phenomenal. Viggo Mortensen needs to star in a biopic on William S. Burroughs. Amy Adams took on the persona of Jane. Kristen Stewart brought a depth to Marylou that Kerouac himself didn’t. Kirsten Dunst showed great emotion in her scenes. Tom Sturridge played Carlo Marx with intensity but also surprising humor; his dialogue was quintessential Ginsberg: dramatic and over the top. Elisabeth Moss’ Galatea was a nice contrast to the other characters, while Danny Morgan’s Ed was a bit too goofy; these two characters are the reason the characters end up at Old Bull Lee and Janes’s place, but if it weren’t for that they could’ve been edited out for the film. Garrett Hedlund was charismatic. He lit up the screen.
My most pressing criticism of the film is that it felt a bit too much like a period piece for my personal preference. I was impressed that the film was historically accurate, and yet I found myself distracted by those details. For example, when the focus was on the exterior of the Hudson, it made the story feel removed instead of vibrant; yet the shots within the car or from the viewpoint of the passenger were beautiful. Likewise, there were times when the wallpaper in a room jumped out at me more than it probably should have. I’m by no means suggesting the story should have been modernized, but the setting and props should not overpower the story. There were also scenes like the one at the jazz club which felt staged, almost cartoonish. I would’ve liked something a bit more raw, a bit grittier or impressionist.
In contrast, the New Year’s Eve party was sheer brilliance. Here were fast cuts and disorienting angles. Here were sweat and thrashing limbs. Here was jazz you wanted to dance to. Here was the energy that made you want to shout go, go, go! There were also beautiful quiet moments laced throughout the film. Poetic landscape. Honest heart-to-hearts. Subtle glances. Almost any time the characters were on the road, the dialogue, the filmography, and the acting were spot on.
The film adaptation of On the Road may enlighten some people’s perception of Jack Kerouac.
I’ve been connected with so many people these days who are interested in the different writers associated with the Beat Generation. Katie, who is researching Joan Burroughs, turned me on to Interview Magazine‘s feature on Garrett Hedlund, who plays the Dean Moriarty character in the film adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.
What initially caught my eye was photographer Robbie Fimmano‘s moody portraits of Hedlund. The black-and-white photographs are stunning. I wish I could post them here, but I don’t want to impose on his or the magazine’s copyright, so instead you can check out the online gallery here. He’s looking a bit like Johnny Depp in some of the photographs.
Actor Jeff Bridges, who apparently played his father in Tron (I say apparently because do you really think I watched Tron?), interviewed Hedlund for the magazine, and it starts off kind of cute and silly because they’re calling each other “Dad” and “Son.” Hedlund is from Minnesota and is Swedish, just like my mother, and he talks a little bit about coming from Minnesota in the interview. He also reveals that even though he played Dean Moriarty, the character based on Neal Cassady, in On the Road, he relates more to Sal Paradise. You can read the full interview here.
The film is finally opening in the States on December 21.
I am so excited to have been tagged by Maria Karamitsos for the The Next Big Thing Blog Hop. Even though I’m not a mother, I love reading Maria’s blog From the Mommy Files, which is full of humor and light. She has the gift of storytelling. Her blog entries read like snippets of a novel-like memoir, with dialogue, reflection, and a strong voice, despite the fact that much of her writing is focused on what could be a very technical topic: molar pregnancy. Take for instance, her post “The Influence of the Lost Child,” in which she talks to her two adorable little girls—”BooBoo BeDoux” and “Bebs LaRoux”—about the baby she miscarried. It’s a difficult and heartbreaking subject, yet she injects humor in it through the personalities of her daughters (“it’s tough to be 3, after all!”) as well as tenderness and faith. I’m really excited about the book she’s writing called Positive About Negative: Adventures in Molar Pregnancy. Maria also tagged some other Greek authors for the Blog Hop, and it’s great discovering all these writers.
I’m tempted therefore to write about my memoir about being Greek American, but since my book on Jack Kerouac is coming out first my answers to the Blog Hop questions are about that book.
What is the working title of your book? Burning Furiously Beautiful: The True Story of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road
Where did the idea come from for the book? Paul Maher Jr. had written a book entitled Jack Kerouac’s American Journey: The Real-Life Odyssey of “On the Road” for the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Kerouac’s seminal work. I had read this book one summer and some months later began reading Paul’s blog. We began talking and decided to revise and expand his book because we knew that a film adaptation of On the Road was coming out and we wanted to provide a resource for those interested in finding out more about this famous novel. It was important to us that the book had a strong narrative, contextual information, and new research because we wanted both the teenager turned on from the film and the literary scholar who’s read every book by Kerouac to enjoy it and find value in it.
What genre does your book fall under? It’s literary criticism and biography.
Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? Isn’t that the million dollar question? There’s been a lot of talk over the years about who should play Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty in the film adaptation of On the Road. Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, Colin Farrell, Marlon Brando, you name it, they’ve been associated with it. I almost never go to the movies and don’t really know the young actors of today well enough to say who would be age appropriate to cast. Joseph Gordon-Levitt? Zac Efron? These actors are too old to play the roles now but if I were casting the film back when I first read On the Road as a teenager, this is who I’d pick:
Sal Paradise — Johnny Depp and Ethan Hawke would be excellent choices for Sal Paradise, particularly because they both have a deep appreciation for literature. Depp is a known Kerouac fan and just started his own publishing imprint, and Hawke is a published author.
Dean Moriarty — Woody Harrelson would make a great Dean Moriarty. He can play both earnest and wild so well! Matthew McConaughey would be great as Dean too.
Carlo Marx — I loved James Franco’s portrayal of Allen Ginsberg in Howl, but if I had to select someone else I might go with AdamGoldberg.
Old Bull Lee — The choice of Viggo Mortensen as Old Bull Lee for the Walter Salles film is brilliant, but again if I had to choose someone else maybe I’d with Ewan McGregor.
Marylou — Drew Barrymore would be so much fun to watch as Marylou. Do you remember her in Mad Loveand Boys on the Side? Almost Famous hadn’t been made yet when I was a teenager but Kate Hudson (think Penny Lane) would be my runner-up pick.
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? Burning Furiously Beautiful tells the true story of Jack Kerouac travels on the road and how it took him years, not weeks, to write On the Road.
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? We decided to self-publish Burning Furiously Beautiful.
How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? The first draft, so to speak, had already been written and published as Jack Kerouac’s American Journey.
What other books would you compare this story to within your genre? There have been so many biographies of Kerouac written over the years, and each offers its own perspective. Burning Furiously Beautiful uses Kerouac’s journals and letters, as well as archival material from other people who knew Kerouac during the time he was on the road and writing On the Road, to tell a the specific story of the making of a novel that continues to generate interest today.
Who or What inspired you to write this book? Obviously, Paul Maher Jr. inspired Burning Furiously Beautiful as it was his original idea. I, however, had been researching and writing about Kerouac since I was an undergrad many years prior to this and brought my own knowledge and skills to the project. I was very much inspired by the fact that the film adaptation is soon to be released here in the States. There’s a whole new generation coming to Kerouac’s literature, which is immensely exciting to me. Reading Kerouac when I was in high school opened up so many possibilities for me as a reader and writer. I hope that the film will pique people’s interest so that they’ll go back and read Kerouac’s books for themselves—not just On the Road but his other great works as well—and that they’ll watch Pull My Daisy, the film that Kerouac himself spontaneously narrated. Burning Furiously Beautiful is important because it contextualizes On the Road and provides a fascinating look at Kerouac’s life and writing process. This is critical because there’s so much myth surrounding Kerouac and the 1950s. I became engrossed in odd little details like the fact that the Kerouac’s didn’t have a phone and took their calls at the store below their apartment in Queens. It’s so different than today when it seems like every middle schooler has a cell phone. If Cassady could’ve just called Kerouac up on his iphone, he might not have written the infamous Joan Anderson letter that spurred on Kerouac’s writing style.
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?Burning Furiously Beautiful is a great book for an aspiring writer, regardless of whether or not you like Kerouac’s writing style. It’s a portrait of a young writer and details how his writing voice developed (his first book has a much different style), what his writing routine was, the editing process (yes, there was one!), what his relationship with other writers and editors was like (imagine lots of parties), and the many false starts he had in writing his book. We even talk about book signings, contracts, and press interviews. Sometimes I’ve felt frustrated with various writing projects of mine, but realizing that Kerouac, who purported to have written On the Road in only three weeks, went through some of the same struggles and took years to find success makes me realize that it’s all part of the writing process.
A friend of mine told me he was reading On the Road and couldn’t figure out what the point of the novel was. He was only partway through and wanted to know if the characters ever grow.
I thought it was such a fascinating question!
As I’ve posted before, I do believe that the narrator, Sal Paradise, grows. He is exceedingly complicated. He’s zigzagging across America, refusing to conform to society. And yet he keeps stating that’s what he so desperately wants. He wants the house and the wife. Likewise, he’s Sal Paradise—oh what a name!—is out cavorting with a car thief, and yet he’s constantly thinking about God and heaven and the holy.
I guess I can kind of relate to Sal Paradise a bit, and maybe that’s why I feel like the whole notion of whether his character grows is a complicated one. I so often feel torn between two things that don’t seem to fit together.
I don’t know if it’s an American thing or a contemporary reader thing, or both, but it seems like we have this notion that characters have to change, grow, evolve. We want them to become people by the end of the story. …I guess that’s because we want that for our own lives. We like inspirational stories—be they self-help books or Hollywood movies. We think if this lowly character can overcome this-or-that, maybe we can too.
But how often does life play out like an inspirational book or movie? Isn’t it more often the case that life is pretty mundane? That we continually struggle with the same issues over and over again? Aren’t we always searching for meaning? Significance? Trying to understand ourselves better?
I suppose if I’m honest, I do want to like the characters I read about, and I do want them to grow. But I don’t think they have to. I think part of what I love about On the Road has more to do with the language. I’m not a huge fan of Kerouac’s poetry—though I do enjoy a few of his haikus—but I love the poetry imbued in On the Road. I love reading his novel because of how sensual, visual it is. I feel like I’m looking out the car window with him. I don’t really care whether he’s in California or Mexico, whether he’s picking cotton or hitchhiking. It’s all just so beautiful.
Plus, then you’ll have ample time to develop your scorn towards it.
Why the scorn, Flavorwire?
As, I wrote in the comments field:
In the 10+ years since I first read “On the Road” when I was a teenager, I have not developed any scorn for it. In fact, as I’ve delved further into Kerouac’s life and work, I’ve come to see just how brilliant his writing is, especially considering English was not his first language. He had to learn the colloquialisms that he’s so often criticized for using. When “On the Road” was published in 1957, it was groundbreaking to use the type of slang Kerouac used and to improvise the way he did.
The comments section isn’t all that kind to the novel, either. One commenter called it “one-dimensional.”
Really? I can certainly understand a reader not liking the voice or even the story. Everyone’s entitled to their own opinions. There are plenty of people in the comments section admitting they don’t like Jane Austen or Nathaniel Hawthorne. It’s okay not to enjoy something. Not everyone has the same taste. That’s what makes us unique. But—you knew there was going to be a but—there’s a difference between personal taste and fact. The fact of the matter is that On the Road is multi-dimensional.
On the Road is about so much more than the literal exploration of a road trip. Perhaps Dean Moriarty is a bit one-dimensional in the sense that he acts impulsively, living for his own happiness, and never really grows out of that. The narrator, Sal Paradise, is on a spiritual quest of sorts, though. He hits the road, trying to leave behind the East of his youth to find himself in the West. He befriends Dean, even though he knows he’s conning him. He’s constantly caught between what he thinks he wants and what he really wants. He’s searching for meaning and beauty and love and friendship. He’s a complicated character, not entirely sure of what he wants.
Also on the list were a couple of Greek authors! Namely, Homer and Jeffrey Eugenides.
You probably have a pretty good idea by now of what Burning Furiously Beautiful: The True Story of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road is about, but here’s the official synopsis:
Fueled by coffee and pea soup, Jack Kerouac speed-typed On the Road in just three weeks in April 1951. He’d been traveling America for the past ten years and now, at last, the furious energy of his experiences flowed through his fingertips in a mad rush, pealing forth on a makeshift scroll that he laboriously taped together. The On the Road scroll has since become literary legend, and now Burning Furiously Beautiful sets the record straight, uncovering, among other things, the true story behind one of America’s greatest novels.
With unprecedented access to Kerouac’s journals and letters, Burning Furiously Beautiful explores the real lives of the key characters of the novel—Sal Paradise, Dean Moriarty, Carlo Marx, Old Bull Hubbard, Camille, Marylou, and others. Ride along on the real-life adventures through 1940s America that inspired On the Road. By tracing the evolution of Kerouac’s literary development and revealing his startlingly original writing style, this book explains how it took years—not weeks—to ultimately write the seemingly sporadic 1957 novel, On the Road. This revised and expanded edition of Jack Kerouac’s American Journey (2007) takes a closer look at the rise of Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation.
Paul Maher Jr. is the author of the critically acclaimed biography Kerouac: His Life and Work and Empty Phantoms: Interviews and Encounters with Jack Kerouac.
Stephanie Nikolopoulos is an editor and writer based in New York City.
Maher and Nikolopoulos are currently co-authoring Visions of Kerouac for Rowman & Littlefield (2014).
RT @MichaelHyatt: You don’t have to see the end from the beginning. All you have to see is the next step. 2 years ago
RT @PSLiterary: “You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you ge… 2 years ago
RT @GarySnyderQuote: I am intrigued by the sense that culture itself has a wild edge. As Claude Levi-Strauss remarked years ago, the arts a… 2 years ago
Stephanie Nikolopoulos 