On the Road_ The Original Scroll - Jack Kerouac [33]
Kerouac’s unique relationship to language was partly the result of his upbringing. As he wrote to a reviewer, “The reason I handle English words so easily is because it is not my own language. I refashion it to fit French images.” This duality specific to the first-generation American—being an English-speaking citizen but not having an inherited linguistic facility to generate an incidental attitude toward language—comes through in the visceral force and unexpected tenor of Kerouac’s writing. He seemed to approach words from outside of their expected meanings, as if they were found objects to be appropriated and made new. The writing style used in On the Road, which Kerouac eventually developed into “spontaneous prose,” was heavily influenced by the jazz of the period, “in the sense of a, say, tenor man drawing a breath, and blowing a phrase on his saxophone, till he runs out of breath, and when he does, his sentence, his statement’s been made…that’s how I therefore separate my sentences, as breath separations of the mind.” In 1950, he writes in his journal, “I wish to evoke that indescribable sad music of the night in America—for reasons which are never deeper than the music. Bop only begins to express that American music. It is the actual inner sound of a country.” If reading On the Road is hearing this sound of America leaking out of a window in the distance, experiencing the scroll is like finally stumbling onto the back door of the performance.
In the scroll manuscript, Kerouac writes, “My mother was all in accord with my trip to the west, she said it would do me good, I’d been working so hard all winter and staying in too much; she even didn’t say too much when I told her I’d have to hitch hike some, ordinarily it frightened her, she thought this would do me good.” In the published version, this becomes, “My aunt was all in accord with my trip to the West; she said it would do me good, I’d been working so hard all winter and staying in too much; she even didn’t complain when I told her I’d have to hitchhike some.” “She even didn’t say too much” more closely evokes spoken language than “she even didn’t complain,” while “ordinarily it frightened her” is the kind of afterthought one inserts while telling a story. The rhythmic immediacy in the vernacular of the first version recalls the improvisational syncopations of jazz. Jack’s restlessness comes through in his repetitiveness, a technique that is prevalent throughout the scroll. Additionally, he uses only one semicolon and so the clauses lack the degree of syntactical hierarchy and causality apparent in the second version. Each sentiment is as important as the next, which parallels the search for “kicks” enacted in the novel. The subtle changes in punctuation not only alter the cadence of the section, but also dilute the effect of the meaning.
From scroll to 1957 edition, dashes and ellipses often become commas. Commas often become semicolons and colons. The flow is interrupted. Following a dash from one point to the next without stopping to construct an architecture of expected logic in a sentence more closely mimes the feeling of actually being on the road with Neal, as does sideslipping through descriptions without clear subordinate clauses. “I jumped around only in my chino pants over the thick soft rug” becomes, in the published version, “I jumped around over the thick soft rug, wearing only my chino pants.” The vigorous equality of all experience in the present moment is curtailed in the second version. Reading the scroll, one understands what Kerouac means when he lists as one of the “essentials” in his “Belief & Technique for Modern Prose,” “Submissive to everything, open, listening.” At the same time, the scroll is a kind of jive,