Okay We Drop a Rock on His Head Then We Make a Secret Pact to Never Speak of This Again

Lost Work By Jack Kerouac Finally Published 07:38

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The author Jack Kerouac is best known for his 1957 novel "On The Road," but he wrote many other books and one of them has been lost to history until now.

"The Haunted Life" has just been published for the start time (excerpt below). It's a coming of age story set in Galloway, a fictionalized version of Kerouac'south hometown of Lowell, Mass., in 1940 earlier the U.S. entered World War Ii.

Kerouac started writing "The Haunted Life" in 1944, a turbulent yr for him. He was charged in connection with a murder and had gotten married substantially in substitution for bail coin and was later cleared. America was at war. Two of his best friends from his hometown Lowell had been killed in combat.

He intended to write a multi-book story well-nigh World War II through the optics of Peter Martin's family — Peter is the main character in "The Haunted Life." Simply Kerouac lost the manuscript after he had completed but a few dozen pages.

The manuscript resurfaced a few years ago. Information technology sold at auction and has now been published along some of Kerouac's other writing and letter of the alphabet from his father Leo.

Todd Tietchen, an banana professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, is the editor of "The Haunted Life: and Other Writings."

Ultimately, Jack Kerouac's life was a sad one. He died in Florida in 1969 afterwards years of booze abuse. He's buried in Edson Cemetery in Lowell. His family thought enough of him to take the appreciating French nickname "Ti Jean" carved into the gravestone.

Little John. He died at 47.

Book Extract: 'The Haunted Life'

By Jack Kerouac

Affiliate 4

There is something about the American home in the suburbs that cures all apprehensions well-nigh life. The next afternoon found Peter Martin sitting on his porch with a drinking glass of lemonade, listening to the Red Sox–Detroit game over the portable radio.

Aunt Marie's light-green Venetian blinds shut out the four o'clock sunday on the right and the Quigley elm provided a speckled green shade on the left. Kewpie the true cat gazed disinterestedly at the quiet street from his station in forepart of the screen door. A wing buzzed at Peter's ear and when he fanned information technology away, causing the hammock to creak at the exertion, Kewpie turned two placid green eyes and stared directly through him, wondering.

Peter liked to listen to ballgames. In the pauses during the announcer's lack of something to say, ane could hear the catcalls from the stands and benches, the distant pep-talk of catchers, and someone occasionally whistling. It was a vast and drowsy audio.

"Ii and one . . . " the announcer would say. Seconds later, almost as an bathetic afterthought, he would enlarge: "Two assurance and 1 strike . . . " A long silence follows. Someone, maybe the shortstop, babbles his singsong encouragement to the pitcher. This chant returns again and once again, without variation. One tin can hear the close tinkle of ice cubes as the announcer helps himself to a glass of cold water. Far off, perhaps from the lord's day bleachers, a vox cries out a long war-whoop. And so someone whistles . . .

"Here information technology comes," says the announcer. In that location is a sudden repose.

Thup! into the catcher's hand.

"Strike two, chosen strike, two and 2."

And again, the vast sleepy comingling of sounds in the hot afternoon sun. The shortstop's weird dirge returns, an aeroplane is heard from far off, and the showtime base of operations motorbus suddenly hoots to distract the enemy pitcher.

"Bridges is set . . . here's the pitch."

Tack! The silence is punctuated with this sound and an enthusiastic mass cry is raised. The announcer's vocalism is almost drowned: " . . . There's a long one . . . out to the left field contend . . .way over . . . " There is confusion. Activity has broken out in the hot sun, swift and roughshod, dead in earnest. " . . . Cronin is rounding beginning . . . there's the throw in . . . it'south going to be close, very—" The crowd furnishes the emotion of the action going on at 2d base of operations, the announcer is too rapt to convey what he sees. "He . . . is . . . Safety! Condom at 2d, a double . . . " The crowd's long subsiding cheer, which will eventually slide into a sigh and a rummaging of seats regained, begins, every bit the announcer gathers his wits. "A ii-bagger for Skipper Joe Cronin, a long chugalug off the left field fence . . . "

X seconds later, the placidity returns and the monotonous procedure is resumed, the procedure which, during 14 hundred innings or so in a baseball game season, must be carried out slowly, advisedly, and perhaps lethargically in 1 hundred and fifty afternoons of hot sun, infield dust, and white-blinding shirt-sleeved crowds. And throughout the country, broadcast over millions of radio sets, in burn departments (where firemen loll in chairs abreast their fire engines, glittering red and rampant in repose, in the long concrete coolness of the garages); in poolrooms where the billiard balls click and the fans whir; in beery, absurd, contumely-gleaming saloons, where men sit ranged at the bars in complete silence; and on porches in the suburbs, the great and sleepy sound of the baseball game is brought to Americans, the distant whistling, the repeated chant, and the thup of the brawl in the catcher's mitt.

Peter liked to listen to ballgames, especially when it was too hot to read or take a walk or become to a pic. He could concentrate on the drama of the game without too much paying of attention, for the thread of the activeness could ever be picked up, after a long soporific sequence, at the instant of the crowd'due south sudden roar. In the interims, ane had time to relax and steal a fancy or two.

Information technology was during one of these drowsy pauses, every bit Peter finished his lemonade, that Dick Sheffield mounted the forepart steps and stopped. The sun caught his harbinger-colored hair and made frizzy wisps of gilded.

Peter looked upward as Dick was hit a pose intended to convey his antipathy.

"The supine pariah," he said, opening the screen door.

"Dick. Come in. What are you doing?"

Dick sat down on the footstool; he never made himself too comfortable, he was ever ready to resume his energies.

"How's the desk job?" chided Peter.

"All right, all right, only it won't be long. I'1000 on to something really hot this time." Dick paused to readjust his position. "The Southward Sea islands, m'boy. How can yous waste material your time listening to a ballgame?—y'all can get the results in the papers . . . "

Peter had lighted a cigarette.

"What are you talking about? . . . the South Sea islands!" Peter said. "Another of your mad plans? Am I coming along on this voyage?"

Dick was half-resentful. "Certainly you lot are. You just get out it to Uncle Dick . . . follow me and you'll have the greatest adventure of your life. It'southward simple. Nosotros'll be in this war before you lot can say Jack Robinson. Okay. So y'all and I enlist in the Army, and when the war comes, smash! nosotros're in the middle of everything.  Retrieve that picture nigh soldiering in the Philippines, The Real Glory?—well, Pete, that's the ticket for us. My brother knows a guy enlisted in the Army last Autumn—where is he now? In the tropics, the Philippines m'male child, Manila . . . "

"Sounds swell!" said Peter. "Unless, of course, everything goes haywire, like final Summer when nosotros were supposed to hitch-hike to New Orleans and . . . "

"Different matter, m'boy! Nosotros didn't collect the cash corporeality we had in mind. Economic determinism . . . so we didn't go to Nola. But this is the Army . . . don't price a cent to join the Army.  And—" he raised his hand to silence Peter, who had opened his mouth to speak—"don't bring up other instances!"

"That play we were going to put on in Fordboro . . . "

"I know, money once again. We didn't accept enough coin to put it on, so what? We wrote the script didn't we? Put out the radio or get some music or something. Any cookies in the business firm?"

"Yeah," grinned Peter.

"Fetch me some. I know Aunt Marie isn't habitation, I saw her on the Square xx minutes ago."

They walked into the absurd hallway.

"So," said Peter, "yous took the first bus up hither to get some cookies."

"Partly right. I also accept the afternoon off. Strike at the silk mill. And, by the manner, those cookies of hers are skilful. Did she put a lot of chocolate in them like I told her?" They were in the brightly curtained kitchen.

"Hell, yes," said Peter, opening the breadbox. He took out a dish of cookies wrapped in cellophane paper. "Milk?"

"Water ice cold milk? . . . you express my sentiments."

Dick saturday on the cool, shiny linoleum and began to swallow.

"I wish," he said, "my female parent made some of these. Look—" waving a cookie—"this new program of mine is tops. Nosotros desire to travel, correct? We want chance, we're ill of this hole in the wall, correct? And then we bring together the Regular army."

Peter was continuing by the cupboard drinking milk. He grinned irrepressibly at Dick.

"Who wants to stay in Galloway all his life?" continued Dick. "Didn't we promise each other nosotros'd become effectually the earth old? Did nosotros try to go to sea . . . when was it?"

"Five years agone this summertime—"

"Okay, and we were too immature, they didn't want to ship us out. Unions and all that. Did we try to go to sea v years ago because we wanted to suck our thumbs? No, nosotros wanted the existent life. Well, here we are, going on to twenty, notwithstanding at domicile, even so in Galloway, the furthest we've gone south is New Haven, the furthest north a hike to the lower White Mountains, the furthest east is Boston, and the furthest west—Vermont! What a couple of slobs we turned out to be! Here I am wasting my time in a silk mill function, with my feet on the desk all mean solar day long—and you lot! Making a Joe Higher out of yourself then you tin sell insurance after y'all graduate . . . "

Peter shouted, laughing, "Insurance! Man, that's no ambition of mine."

"Information technology all amounts to the same, yous'll come across." Dick got up to become some more cookies and then regained his seat on the flooring. "We're flops, both of us. I'yard ashamed. Nosotros used to say we'd get to Hollywood someday, write, act, anything they want . . . why hell, do yous think these people will want us now, nosotros've seen zippo, have been nowhere, have not lived and loved Polynesian maids, nothing!"

"Okay Goethe, don't lose your temper."

"Not Goethe, m'boy. Sheffield. Now listen, you and I become to Boston via the thumb next week and see about enlisting in the United States Army, huh?"

Peter shrugged, regaining a seriousness he never could reach while Dick was launched on i of his long monologues.

"I dunno, Dickie."

Dick got upwardly and washed his empty glass in the white sink.

"I'd be game to do annihilation for the summer, you lot know that," went on Peter in a considering, preoccupied tone. "The summertime represents a time-off period from what you might telephone call my career . . . huh! I dunno . . . Later on that, I must return to the scholarship duties, track, studies, and everything else. I do hate that place! I mean, college itself . . . "

"Of grade yous exercise," provided Dick, replacing the cookies in the breadbox. "Higher is no place for a guy similar you and me. You surrender all your greatest talents there."

"To what?"

"Why, hell, to that organisation of concessions called society."

"Y'all've been reading John Dewey."

Dick moved off down the hall: "Information technology'south fact. What the hell adept is life if you don't live it to the bone? Jack London was a dandy liver, Halliburton, fifty-fifty Herodotus . . . there was a man! To hell with college! Did I ever advise y'all to go to college?"

Peter grinned.

"No," said Dick. "you let circumstances elevate you forth. Be like Village . . . baffle circumstances."

They sat on the hammock.

"My father would split a blood vessel," Peter said, "if I left college. He's banking all his hopes on me later on Wesley took off. He wants me to get places."

Dick opened his oral cavity in contempt.

"Go places!" he echoed. "And is it you going places? Non you . . . Wesley! I was reading Lawrence of Arabia this morning in my office. Why, hell—"

"Yous're a hopeless romantic," bankrupt in Peter.

"So?" Dick asked, pausing for effect. "The romantics accept more on the brawl than the others. Those who laugh at the romantics are but jealous banking company clerks and unsuccessful writers who go critics. A romantic is a realist who digs in and lives and so that he can learn more near everything. Who really knows more than about realism than the romantic? Will they inquire you that question at Boston Higher, heh?"

"Pertinence, wisdom, Dick, and centrolineal virtues."

"Sure! I'm your uncle, just stick close on and yous'll learn all near it. yous haven't learned a affair since you went to college. I was going to telephone you lot the other night and tell you."

Diane Martin came upwardly the street with a high school classmate. Peter watched them, 2 girls carrying books, walking beneath the richly leaved trees in attitudes of complete insouciance, oblivious to everything but Galloway and its school-world, dates and dances and a new outfit for Easter.

"The Philippines, Pete," Dick was saying. "Just the ticket, and I got information technology directly from my blood brother. He's in California and he knows what'due south brewing . . . the Japanese are hot for war. It's a natural chance for united states."

Peter shook his head slowly, a gesture he used whenever he was made conscious of the mysterious contradictions in life. His sister Diane, and her earth; and Dick, who had always thirsted for the fantastic and dangerous. A girl whose main concerns were so incomprehensible to Peter, and yet and then easy to ascertain, that he sometimes thought all women were substantially similar Diane and that he would always know and recognize, yet never understand, the ways of women. And here, Dick sat thinking about things, and hungering after things, that Diane would never understand and—because of that—would never have every bit office of the design of life, while Dick could just ignore her and her earth in the fury of his imagination and artistic free energy, and if made cognizant of hers, the smalltown girl'southward world, could just scoff and acquit on with his concerns.

Diane and her companion mounted the porch steps and swung open up the screen door. Dick looked up briefly and chosen a greeting typical of his well-rounded nuance.

"The ladies have arrived . . . hiya Diane!"

"Hi, Richard," said Diane gravely, ignoring his gallantry while the other girl giggled and turned her head away. "How's Annie?"

"Groovy," Dick smiled.

And with that, Diane went into the firm followed past her bashful classmate.

"All yous accept to practice is brand upward your mind," Dick was now saying.

"I know how information technology is. your determination concerns more than than mine did. With you lot, information technology'southward 'shall I exit college and join the Ground forces?' With me, it's only 'shall I join the Army?' By the way, I'll be over Lord's day night for that odd game of chess. y'all owe me two bucks and a half!"

Peter nodded, watching Dick.

"If the strike lasts all week, I'll be over some nighttime and we'll go swimming at the Beck, possibly Garabed the mad poet will come, huh?"

"He volition; he'south always wandering around nearby."

"Well," said Dick. "Every bit they say in the cowboy pictures when the villain leaves the honest rancher's firm, retrieve it over!" He laughed and got upward, swinging the hammock back and forth to rock Peter. "I'k a bad influence. Look out for me. Retrieve the time I egged you lot on to continue that chicken coop roof during the flood and nosotros nigh didn't get off when it started floating downwards the rapids?"

"Do I!"

Dick went to the door and stepped out onto the porch.

"I'll walk you down to the omnibus," Peter said. "And as for yous existence a bad influence, who was it started yous on an alcoholic career? I was the first one to get you drunk . . . remember that quart of Calvert'due south?"

Dick grimaced. "Not for me. I proceed myself in shape for the hereafter . . . "

They walked downwards N Street toward the coach stop. The sun had past at present lost its afternoon fury; heavy clustered leaves overhead seemed to sigh with gentle relief, hung in greenish profusion waiting for an ebbing of the heat and sunfire.

Dick and Peter stood at the motorbus stop. Dick had produced his thick wallet and was examining a slice of paper.

"I accept a prospect here, Pete, that might come in handy—should we make up one's mind to hold off the Army for a month or two. It's a good paying job . . . "

"What kind of work?"

"The all-time! Laboring in the sunday. That French contractor from Riverside has the contract. Building a wire debate effectually the Portsmouth Navy grand in New Hampshire—just nigh Kittery, Maine. I could get the quondam Buick in shape and drive up every morning—at least forty bucks a week. How would you like that? Good for yous, m'boy, get hard as nails and brown to a well-baked."

"Sounds good."

"Here comes the charabanc. Well, Pete, I'll drop over maybe this week again. Think everything out."

"You know," Pete said, "your family unit should never have moved away from North Street. Upwardly there in West Galloway the only thing they do is get to church. We never see each other anymore—think when I'd call you every night after supper? Those were the days . . . "

Dick put his hand to his rima oris and called their underground cry, a unmarried yodel. The omnibus pulled up and yawned open its doors and Dick dashed in. He paid his fare and hastened to the back of the motorcoach, where he stuck his caput out of the window and yodeled again, waving goodbye. The bus growled cityward.

Excerpted from the book THE HAUNTED LIFE by Jack Kerouac. Copyright © 2014 by John Sampas, the Estate of Stella Kerouac. Reprinted with permission of Da Capo Press.

• More Hither & Now book excerpts

Guest

• Todd Tietchen, assistant professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. He edited "The Haunted Life and Other Writings" by Jack Kerouac.

burtonfroddly.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2014/03/12/haunted-life-kerouac

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