On the Road_ The Original Scroll - Jack Kerouac [46]
As a series of deflections, Kerouac’s prose narratives anticipate reader-oriented theories that establish the reader, not the text, as the site of meaning. However, contemporary theory cannot prove that meaning definitely occurs inside the reader, either, so a text’s meaning is often considered an effect of the interaction between text and reader. Instead of functioning as works with meanings trapped inside hermetically sealed structures, Kerouac’s narratives involve the reader in the process of discovering meaning by encountering unfamiliar structures.
Jorge Luis Borges wrote that a novel is an “axis of innumerable relationships,” and the narrative developments in technique and plot in both the scroll manuscript and On the Road support this claim. As this new American prose narrative undermines conventions, the scroll manuscript and On the Road are subjects for the varied lenses of contemporary American literary analysis. A comprehensive survey of possible readings would fill volumes, if not shelves. However, a brief example of the ways deconstruction, a theoretical discourse that grew out of structuralism and that shares methods with many other poststructuralist schools (such as feminist theory and minority discourse, to name but a few), illuminates the scroll can demonstrate the range of possible readings that were marginalized by previous discourses.
At its most simple, deconstruction seeks to destabilize seemingly natural or inherent hierarchies or oppositions in a literary text. A deconstructive reading identifies oppositions within written discourse not to discredit the argument or prove logical invalidity, but to reinscribe the meaning of the opposition by disrupting what was formerly considered “given” knowledge. Deconstruction is an especially useful tool when analyzing the scroll manuscript or On the Road for both texts contain apparently contradictory claims that have been seen as inconsistent writing instead of opportunities for analysis.
When Sal first arrives at Old Bull Lee’s home in On the Road, for example, his inability to perceive the fire Jane Lee sees is often read as an example of his naïveté or unreliability. By examining the passage in the scroll manuscript, which is reproduced nearly verbatim in the novel, the reader encounters a series of shifting oppositions that simultaneously undermine and support one another. When Kerouac says, “‘I don’t see anything,’” Joan replies, “‘Same old Kerouac.’” Joan’s condemnation of Kerouac for his inability to observe suggests that he is incapable of seeing empirical reality, that he does not comprehend the material world before him. However, Joan relies upon her sense of hearing to perceive the scene, saying, “I heard sirens that way,” thereby undermining her critique of Kerouac’s visual perception. Moreover, Joan herself is hallucinating—Kerouac continues, “She was still looking for her fire; in those days she ate three tubes of benzedrine paper a day.” By using the possessive “her,” Kerouac suggests that perception of the fire is possible only to Joan, that it in some way “belongs” to her. By coordinating that clause with the next which affirms her drug use, Kerouac suggests a correlation between “her fire” and her Benzedrine consumption, implying that her “fire” is a figment of her Benzedrine-fueled imagination. Therefore, in this scene, the initial critique of perception is reversed and unadulterated, rational perception is privileged over altered, irrational perception. However, this binary opposition is soon reversed, and the text argues that perception is not only rational but also intuitive.
When Kerouac attends the horse races in