how Kerouac's spontaneous prose ends

It started with his buddy Neal Cassady telling him in letters that writing should be read as “a continuous chain of undisciplined thought.”

With his production of the original On the Road manuscript typed on a 121-foot continuous roll of paper Jack Kerouac gave rise to the technique of “spontaneous prose.”

Call me naive, but I’ve always wondered, if a chain of spontaneous thought, when does it stop? When, why, and how does it end? When is it finished?

The October 11, 1968, the Boston Globe carried a fascinating, yet sad, piece written by Gregory Mcdonald. The title was “Off the Road … the Celtic Twilight of Jack Kerouac.”

I say sad because the Mcdonald interview took place when Jack was in the deep dark depths of alcoholism. The evidence is clear in the transcript of the interview which began in Kerouac’s home and ended with the two on a drinking tour of all the Lowell, Massachusetts bars, Jack careening along his hometown streets. He died twelve months later, age 47.

But with Kerouac, no matter how gray the clouds, even in the throes of an alcoholic daze, if you looked closely, sometimes very, very closely, there was always a glimpse of blue sky. In such moments, he somehow rose to the occasion, if only briefly, to provide an insight, a single sane moment, a glimpse into his true sober psyche.

This was one of those moments.

Mcdonald: “Jack, how come you’ve never been able to finish anything—a year of college, a football season—and yet you’ve been able to finish so many books?”

“I don’t finish. I just write it continuously. Sooner or later, you reach the point in a book where you feel everybody’s bored and you bring it around somehow and end it. That’s deep form.”

That’s the answer, a slice of blue sky, pure Kerouac.