Paul Maher Jr. - Empty Phantoms - Interviews and Encounters with Jack Kerouac (Expanded & Revised)

D espite his photogenic appear ance, Jack Kerouac did not pos sess that ease of social grace that interviewers love. Nor on taped interviews did he fare so well. His manner, though impas- sioned, was awkward, straining both Kerouacs sensibilities and at times the interviewers patience. Kerouac committed the social faux pas of simply being too honest. Whether he was telling the world that he was waiting for God to show his face or expressing his casual attitude toward drugs or that he thought the violently accel- erating war on Vietnam was being fought just to get jeeps in the country, his views expressed an earnest volition that never failed to amuse (though seldom enlightened) his contemporary audience.

Such was the tenor of his perceived cluelessness that Kerouac was publicly insulted on live television, when he was parodied by Jack Paar. Kerouac had attended a Tonight Show taping with his host, comedian Steve Allen. Allen suddenly yelled, And now, pre- senting Jack Kerouac! According to Kerouac, he was rushed onstage before millions of viewers. When Paars writer, Jack Dou- glass, asked Kerouac on camera, What is the Beat Generation? Jack simply responded, Nothin. Kerouac then casually reached for Douglasss lighter to light his cigarette. Douglass quipped, Oh, I use morphine myself. Kerouac responded, not realizing that he was being toyed with condescendingly, Havent you tried H[eroin] yet? The next night, Kerouac was spoofed as a fumbling goof, lighting numerous cigarettes whil st spouting nothin nonsensi cally. Later, Kerouac was again brutally satirized as Jack Cracker- jack on television.

One month earlier, Kerouac had been harshly insulted in the New York Times by J. Donald Adams in his Speaking of Books column: Reading Mr. Kerouacs On the Road or The Subter raneans, I am reminded of nothing so much as an insistent and gar- rulous barroom drunk, drooling into your ear. That Kerouac often behaved publicly in this manner made many critics and scholars take him less seriously than they did other writers, much to his dis- dain. In a sense, Kerouac did himself in by being himself.

Kerouacs growing fear of making a fool of himself paralyzed his will. For this reason, he shied away from the numerous opportu nities that On the Road s fame broug ht him. Despite this, he enter tained several film adaptation offers (even though he regretted that the offers were less than what he and his agent thought he deserved). It gave him a heightened se nse of self-importance and lit erary celebrity. He even took the desperate step of writing a letter to actor Marlon Brando, suggesting that he co - star in a film version of On the Road with him. Unsurprisingly, Brando never responded to Kerouac directly, except to denounce the beat movement publicly . The one film adaptation Kerouac did accept an offer on was for his novel The Subterraneans . Its result was a disgrace; the black love interest was changed to a white woman and it was rewritten with somewhat of a more uplifting, happy ending. This defeated the lead characters emotionally charged conflict with his love Mardou Fox. Kerouac never again courted Hollywood with such unbridled optimism.

Compared with the sheer body of written work created in Ker ouacs lifetime, his interviews are few. In July 1958, Kerouac wrote to friend and poet Philip Whalen that he had temporarily begun to turn down interviews. The anxiety they induced in him often made him physically ill (as occurred during his 1959 television appear- ance with Steve Allen). Around the summer of 1958, Kerouac had also turned down an offer to appear in a film in which he would have been superimposed over a Benny Goodman recording session. Even John Wingate, host of Nightbeat , asked him back to be inter viewed, not because he was interested in Kerouacs literature but for the thrill of seeing him ad libbin g with a stripteaser. Acknowl edging his ill-advised tendency to speak his mind honestly (I would say anything that was on my mind, any moment, Kerouac told nov- elist John Clellon Holmes on July 21, 1958), Kerouac realized that there was an intrinsic value in simply staying quiet.