Kerouac & Poe
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Kerouac and Poe:
Brothers in American Culture
Brian Aldrich
The mission of PoeForward is to promote the cultural impact of the life and work of Edgar Allan Poe, the antebellum writer-poet-critic-editor who laid the foundation for all American Literature, though performance and media. PoeForward presents free public performances, presenting Poe related materials and themes usually in a theatrical style combining performance art and reader's theatre. PoeForward's website (PoeForward.com) presents interactive tours of each of the performances, complete with photographs and texts. In the future, the PoeForward website will function as a virtual museum, presenting changing artistic and academic exhibits. We hope to have our grand opening sometime later this year. Most importantly, PoeForward serves as a scholarly resource and a historical archive by documenting for posterity those artists and scholars who have been influenced by Poe's contributions to American culture.
Tonight, we are going to do something different. We are here to honor the life, work and birthday of an American writer who transcended the foundations laid down by Poe's literary work and criticism.
Born and raised in Lowell, Massachusetts, Catholic, French-Canadian, Franco-American, aspiring writer Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac ravenously read the works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville, the great Trinity of early American writers. As a young writer, Kerouac found his first literary soulmate to be Thomas Wolfe. In fact, his first published novel "The Town and the City" is a conventionally written work in a style and manner almost identical to Wolfe's "Look Homeward Angel" and "You Can't Go Home Again."
Now, did you know that Poe, the great "southern" writer we all know, was also born in New England? Yes. In fact, his first published book of poetry "Tamerlane and other Poems" was published anonymously with only the inscription "By a Bostonian" printed on the title page. His impoverished, itinerant, Irish-American actor parents gave birth to him while traveling the theatrical circuit in early America. It was following the desertion of his father and the premature death of his mother that he was taken in by a wealthy Richmond, Virginia family and raised in the culture of the post-revolutionary, antebellum era American south. But like Kerouac, young Poe had to come to NYC to find his future. Kerouac came to attend Columbia and found a new world beyond his furthest Lowell dreams. Poe came to Manhattan for financial survival and found himself trapped in what he would later call "the magazine prison house." Both men, New Englanders by birth, both found their literary maturity in the great northern city of New York.Now, at first it appears that Poe, the classically educated, anal retentive structuralist, and Kerouac, the spontaneous free verse holy spirit, are diametrically opposed to one another. But we know that without a firm foundation there cannot be true experimentation.
If Poe had not learned the lessons of the Greek and Roman classics, he would not have been able to be inspired by the work of Milton, Tennyson, Keats, Byron, Shelley, and Coleridge to define and create whole new genres of literature. If Kerouac had not learned the lessons of Poe, Whitman, and Wolfe, he would not have been able to be inspired by the work of Cassidy, Gingsberg, and Burroughs and he would not have created the postwar, blues age, eisenhower era, rebellious, "beat" literary form we treasure him for today.
Let's consider a few more things Poe and Kerouac had in common.
First, they were both travelers. Certainly, Kerouac is the more famous traveler and the more traveled of the two, having repeatedly traversed the continent, by thumb, by car, by bus, by train, and made "road going" the subject of his stories and the chief metaphor for his ongoing spiritual odyssey. But Poe, who probably never went any further west than Philadelphia, was something of a "road goer" himself. Instead of traveling west and east like Kerouac, he traveled north and south, by carriage, by coach, by steamboat, by clipper, by the first trains in America, from Boston to Richmond to Baltimore to NYC to Philadelphia to Providence and, yes, even to Lowell to see his beloved, but married Annie. Most think of Poe as the writer of creepy tales and moody poetry, but besides creating the mystery genre and dabbling in science fiction, Poe wrote some tales of journey. His only novel, "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym" is the story of a shipboard adventure, which rivals "Moby Dick" for its scope and "Robinson Crusoe" for its psychological horror. His prize winning short story "MS. Found in a Bottle" tells a similar tale of ocean adventure. "The Journal of Julius Rodman" details the fictional record of "the first white man that ever crossed the western wilderness" ala Lewis and Clarke. Even Poe's comedy, "The Balloon Hoax" defrauds us with the fake news of the first transatlantic journey by hot air balloon. In fact, it was while on a stopover in Baltimore - while traveling up to NYC to retrieve his aunt Muddy to return to Richmond for his impending wedding to his childhood sweetheart Elmira - that Poe became ill and died. Ironically, Kerouac died living reclusively with his mother Memere in the St. Petersburg, Florida home he bought her with his "On the Road" money.
(Let the record note that both Poe and Kerouac had serious issues with the "mother" symbol in their lives. Orphaned Poe continued throughout his life to attempt to replace his mother with his aunt Muddy, his wife Virginia, and with several other romantic relationships. Kerouac, like many a confused Catholic boy, found his mother Memere to be the source of his greatest encouragement and, later in life, to be his only remaining trustworthy friend.)
Both Poe and Kerouac had severe problems with their success and celebrity. Poe struggled for years and it wasn't until the publication of "The Raven" in 1845 that he became a public celebrity and started to make some money for the first time to ease his impoverished lifestyle. Kerouac suffered menial labor for years until "On the Road" was finally published in 1957 and his life exploded with fame and opportunity for self-destruction. Poe, equally self-destructive, made enemies of the NYC bluestockings, the same group of elite literary women who adored his romanticism, and started a series of legal battles accusing Longfellow, the most beloved American poet of his own time, of plagiarism. Poe, boggled by his own success, literally shot himself in the foot and ruined his own career. Kerouac, supposedly the free spirit and "father of the beat generation", became freaked out by all the phony attention and hypocritical acclaim showered upon him by the capitalist media and the newly rebellious american youth. Confused and disillusioned, he pushed those closest to him away and found security in a politically conservative, bloated, hermit-like, momma's boy existence.
Poe and Kerouac both died prematurely, Poe at 40 and Kerouac at 47, and both died the death of drunkards. Although we do not know all the details of Poe's last days, he was found ill from drink in a Baltimore tavern and brought to a charity hospital to die of "delirium tremens", the D.T.'s as the hallucinatory death of drunks is sometimes referred to. Kerouac, living with his mother and his 3rd wife Stella, ate a can of tuna fish accompanied by a couple of 16-ounce beers while watching "The Galloping Gourmet" on television. He suddenly felt sick and rushed to the toilet to vomit blood, the result of a hemorrhaging esophagus - another drunkard's death.
But finally, both Poe and Kerouac obsessively studied those who came before them and experimented with literary forms, creating new models of expression which are uniquely American, conceived in liberty, birthed in controversy, and forged by freedom's grace.
So, Happy Birthday to Jack Kerouac and let's hear what Ti Jean has to say to us tonight.
Brian Aldrich
March 12, 2002