The Spontaneous Poetics of Jack Kerouac: A Study of the Fiction

by Regina Weinreich

Regina Weinreich explores Kerouacâ s place in American literature by establishing the tot­al design of his work. She con­tends that he thought of his works as “one vast bookâ (a “Divine Comedy of Buddhaâ ) he called the Legend of Duluoz. Weinreich finds that Kerouacâ s linguistic experimen­tation leads to a poetic unity rather than the linear unity com­monly associated with legends. She discusses the na­ture of his “spontaneous bop prosody,â relating it to the work of Thomas Wolfe and Henry Miller. In addition to explaining Kerouacâ s method, Weinreich seeks to define the unity of his works, from The Town and the City, On the Road, and Visions of Cody to Desolation Angels and Vanity of Duluoz, which she argues brings the legend full circle. Weinreich feels the auto­biographical nature of Kerouacâ s oeuvre links him to other twentieth-century American writers, following a distinctly Whitmanesque tradition.

Genres: Poetry, Literary Criticism

180 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

Reviews

[Mat · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was under the mistaken impression that Spontaneous Poetics of Jack Kerouac would be a book of literary analysis on Jack Kerouac's poetry, such as Mexico City Blues. I was wrong. This is an analysis of his prose and when I think about it, Kerouac's prose is very poetic so the title does actually make sense.
Regina Weinreich delivers a stunningly thorough and laudable cross-sectional literary analysis of Kerouac's radical prose style. She traces the lineage of Kerouac's successive development and enhancement of his spontaneous bop prosody, sometimes also referred to as 'wildform', starting with his first experimental writing in On the Road through to Desolation Angels where she argues, and I largely agree, Kerouac manages to perfect the form he was going after. She also highlights some specific examples in Kerouac's texts which illustrate how Jack applied his Essentials of Spontaneous Prose.
I have two gripes with this book however. First of all, and this is only a minor one, the language is at times a bit too academic and although I understand that in any form of literary criticism this may be largely unavoidable I couldn't help but feel that Weinrich could have explained certains sections a little bit more in layman's terms. Secondly, she does not seem to draw on a very large pool of previous studies for her research. For example, in some chapters, she draws only on two major references - Naked Angels by Tytell and Ann Charters' seminal biography on the man, Kerouac. This is also partly due to the fact that it was written in 1987 since when not only have many more biographies emerged but also many of Kerouac's other lesser-known works such as Some of the Dharma have finally seen the light of day.
She does some interesting analysis of the Christian and Hindu iconography in Tristessa and I really dug her analysis of The Subterraneans and how Kerouac generates drama and tension through constant contrasting highs and lows.
I also learned a few interesting new terms such as synaesthesia which means for example the hearing of a sound induces the visualization of a certain colour - basically when you use words associated with one modality of sense in another and Kerouac, and Burroughs too for that matter, pulls this off quite masterfully.

I just realized that there are very few similar works out there on Kerouac which actually cut and analyze his radical prose method to this level of scrutiny. If you want a better understanding of Kerouac's literary and aesthetic goals as a writer, then is the book for you.