Kerouac:

by e_dog

Posted to WritersAndGenres on 2004-02-13 17:33:00

“i’m writing this book because we’re all going to die”
Visions of Cody
(quote from from memory, may be changed a few words thereby)

this seems to be a rather despairing yet at-the-same-time nostalgic kind of attitude.

but what good is it to have a book if you’re dead?

how does it link up with the Kerouac vision of the Duluoz legend as a set of books to have lying on the shelf for reminiscinces of past while in old age? there he seems to be writing because we are all going to forget.

maybe then once “we” die (and thus our memory is obliterated) there will be the books for others to have, thus preserving us in posterity of the literate culture, a kind of contribution to cultural memory but one focused on a special group. so is this narcissism or something more?

the impulse to write seems to get beyond, or to point beyond, the author’s own death. thus it cannot be solipsistic. yet why should an autobiographer assume that others, in future generation, will care about himself and his friends?

write what you know. it all comes down to the liveliness of consciousness.