On the Road_ The Original Scroll - Jack Kerouac [47]
In the scroll manuscript, Kerouac establishes another argument dependent upon both sides of its presumptive opposition when he foregrounds the protagonists’ attempt to overcome the constrictions of time. Cassady’s techniques for operating outside of time, however, rely upon his strict adherence to it. In representing Cassady’s timetables and ubiquitous schedules, Kerouac illustrates what Michel Foucault calls the “exhaustive use” of time, a technique that subjugates the actor to time while promising emancipation from it. The exhaustive use of time requires its meticulous subdivision, promising a “theoretically ever-growing use of time” by “extracting, from time, ever more available moments,” effectively stopping it. Throughout the novel Cassady arranges appointments with precise beginning and ending times, compelling his friends and lovers to subjugate themselves to his timetable while attempting to subdivide his own time in order to make more time available, to use effectively all the time he has.
Although Allen Ginsberg frames Cassady’s frantic scheduling in Denver as a device to hide his infidelity from both Louanne and Carolyn, Cassady’s regimentation is a technique by which he attempts to do “everything at the same time.” Kerouac’s arrival in Denver adds another variable to Cassady’s timetable, and in order for Cassady to make room for Kerouac in his own schedule, Cassady subdivides time further. Within minutes of seeing Kerouac, Cassady tells Carolyn:
“It is now” (looking at his watch) “exactly one-fourteen---I shall be back at exactly THREE fourteen, for our hour of reverie together…so now in this exact minute I must dress, put on my pants, go back to life…that is to outside life, streets and whatnot, as we agreed, it is now one-FIFTEEN and time’s running, running.”
As his timetables suggest, Cassady’s freedom from time is dependent upon his strict submission to it. Thus, by deconstructing the protagonists’ flight from time and examining their techniques, time’s inescapability and pervasiveness are revealed, thereby turning Neal’s gift of his wristwatch to the Mexican girl on the roadside—presumably an act that signifies Cassady’s defeat of time—into an act of colonization and subjugation by time.
Despite its relevance to issues raised by contemporary literary theory, the publication of the scroll manuscript reveals an immanent danger in the text. As it alters the discourse surrounding On the Road, ostensibly to set the record straight about the novel as a “serious” text and Kerouac as a “serious” author, the scroll manuscript’s presumed closer fidelity to Kerouac’s own lived experiences may reinforce many assumptions that when articulated have made On the Road a famous novel, not a literary one, and Kerouac an infamous author, not a serious one. The possibility of such a seemingly opposite outcome does not, however, render the publication of the scroll manuscript a critical error in judgment.
The publication of the scroll manuscript creates a necessary paradox that problematizes the very notion of meaning in a text and undermines a reader’s ability to confidently differentiate between fact and fiction. As the scroll manuscript is interpreted, correctly