Kerouac on the Steve Allen Show

One of my all-time favorite writers, Jack Kerouac, on the Steve Allen Show in 1959:



Kerouac was such a great influence to me because I read him during my own years of wandering aimlessly about, looking for some sort of revelation. My experience wasn't the excited utterance of On the Road — Kerouac criss-crossed the country as a vagabond several times before pounding the whole experience out on his typewriter in three weeks, single-spaced with no paragraphs, filling a one hundred twenty-foot scroll of papers taped together. No, it wasn't anything like that. But the spirit was there, and apparently it was always there I came to find out. It was there when I used to skip school at thirteen and hop the Metro bus from the suburbs of Colerain to downtown Cincinnati, hanging out in Over-the-Rhine and Washington Park, finding myself immersed in the hum and Tao of the ordinary people made extraordinary through powerful, real experiences. I didn't know it then, until I read Kerouac, but I was Beat a few generations late.

Somewhere along the line I knew there'd be girls, visions, everything;
somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me.

-Jack Kerouac, On the Road

A more expanded example:

How to distinguish humans from machines

Allow me to borrow from the now immortal Vonnegut, as he explains in the novel Breakfast of Champions (1973) the motivation behind abstract expressionism. He's talking about a painting by the fictional artist Rabo Karabekian, entitled The Temptation of Saint Anthony. The painting was twenty feet wide and sixteen feet high. It was simple: a field of "Hawaiian Avocado" with a single vertical stripe of dayglo orange reflecting tape.



As the story goes, the painting was sold to an arts center for a whopping price tag of $50,000. The towns people were outraged. They were pissed that the chairman of the center paid so much for such a simple piece of art.

Karabekian was in a cocktail lounge and made some remark that a waitress found offensive. She replied: "Well, we don't think much of your painting. I've seen better pictures done by a five-year-old."

And here is Karabekian's brilliant response, from the book:

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"I have read the editorial against my painting in your wonderful newspaper. I have read every word of the hate mail you have been thoughtful enough to send to New York."

This embarrassed people some.

"The painting did not exist until I made it," Karabekian went on. "Now that it does exist, nothing would make me happier than to have it reproduced again and again, and vastly improved upon, by all the five-year-olds in town. I would love for your children to find pleasantly and playfully what it took me many angry years to find.

"I now give you my word of honor," he went on, "that the picture your city owns shows everything about life which truly matters, with nothing left out. It is a picture of the awareness of every animal. It is the immaterial core of every animal -- the 'I am' to which all messages are sent. It is all that is alive in any of us -- in a mouse, in a deer, in a cocktail waitress. It is unwavering and pure, no matter what preposterous adventure may befall us. A sacred picture of Saint Anthony alone is one vertical, unwavering band of light. If a cockroach were near him, or a cocktail waitress, the picture would show two such bands of light. Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is dead machinery.

"I have just heard from this cocktail waitress here, this vertical band of light, a story about her husband and an idiot who was about to be executed at Shepherdstown. Very well -- let a five-year-old paint a sacred interpretation of that encounter. Let a five-year-old strip away the idiocy, the bars, the waiting electric chair, the uniform of the guard, the gun of the guard, the bones and the meat of the guard. What is that perfect picture which any five-year-old can paint? Two unwavering bands of light."

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-Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast Of Champions

20 x 16 foot canvas with avocado paint and a strip of dayglo orange tape: $50,000
Illustrating the awareness in individuals that distinguish them from machines: Priceless

No damn cat, and no damn cradle

Tiny little personal mourning: they're dropping like flies. Kurt Vonnegut lived a full life (1922-2007) and lived his life his way, right up until the end. It's a life to be celebrated so I don't mourn for that. To quote Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five, "So it goes."

Vonnegut was the holy father of a great karass, engaged in a sacred wampeter, avoiding granfalloons wherever they may be. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you're truly missing out. Read the books.

I'll miss Vonnegut to be sure, but missing doesn't exactly equate to mourning. To mourn there must be a loss, and we've gained so much through his books, how can there ever be a loss? Thank you Saint Vonnegut.

The true loss is that they've all died off. Maybe a rogue prophet or two remain from the great literary movements of the 60s and 70s, but over the last decade... I don't even want to list them all for fear I'd leave someone out. I only started paying attention after Ken Kesey (2001) and Hunter S. Thompson (2005) anyway. It's a collective loss that isn't pinned on one individual, but I honestly feel something actually ended when Kurt Vonnegut passed away. I don't know if the loss can be defined exactly, but it's very real. Maybe it's enough to simply say that an epoch passed April 11, 2007.

So it goes.

"No wonder kids grow up crazy," the midget says. "A cat's cradle is nothing but a bunch of X's between somebody's hands, and little kids look and look and look at all those X's..."

"And?"

"No damn cat, and no damn cradle."

- Cat's Cradle (1963)

At some point we could have said — no

So the last two posts were leading up to this one so I can talk about a movie I really like: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. I know, I know. Ask me what time it is and I go off on a sidebar of how to build a clock. I've been accused of that before and all I can say is sorry. To quote the movie: "Words. Words. They're all we have to go on."

Now the movie is based on the 1967 play by Tom Stoppard but I'm going to recommend the movie version (1990). The reason is because they're almost exactly the same and in the movie you've got Tim Roth and Gary Oldman as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and Richard Dreyfuss as The Player. Awesome cast. It's also more likely that you can find the movie at Netflix than you'll find the play at your local theater.

The story is the inverse of Hamlet. It takes the two most underdeveloped characters in literature and breathes life into them, shining the spotlight on their existence while placing the other characters and events of Hamlet in the background. It not only inverts the story, but also disconnects from it; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have their own story where Hamlet himself plays a minor role. Whenever the two stories overlap, the duo remains in character, acting and saying the lines from Hamlet that they are supposed to say. When the two stories break apart, they are left wondering why they said those things, viewing Hamlet's circumstances as completely absurd.

For example, when Claudius summons the two to question Hamlet as to his strange behavior, they understand what they are supposed to do, but fail to understand why, considering the whole thing to be obvious. They debate on how to approach the subject with Hamlet:

Ros: It makes you think.
Guil: Don't think I haven't thought of it.
Ros: And with her husband's brother.
Guil: They were so close.
Ros: She went to him —
Guil: — Too close —
Ros: — for comfort.
Guil: It looks bad.
Ros: It adds up.
Guil: Incest to adultery.
Ros: Would you go so far?
Guil: Never.
Ros: To sum up: your father, whom you love, dies, you are his heir, you come back to find that hardly was the corpse cold before his young brother popped onto his throne and into his sheets, thereby offending both legal and natural practice. Now why exactly are you behaving in this extraordinary manner?
Guil: I can't imagine! (Pause.) But all that is well known, common property. Yet he sent for us. And we did come.

They get what they're supposed to do, and when they're supposed to do it they perform exactly as it is written. They just don't understand why they're doing any of it. They don't exactly, but sort of, realize that they are characters in a story that is predetermined.

Here's part of the blurb from Wikipedia:

The two characters, brought into being within the puzzling universe of the play, by an act of the playwright's creation, and those they encounter, often confuse their names, as they have interchangeable yet periodically unique identities. They are portrayed as two clowns or fools in a world that is beyond their understanding; they cannot identify any reliable feature or the significance in words or events. Their own memories are not reliable or complete and they misunderstand each other as they stumble through philosophical arguments while not realizing the implications to themselves. They often state deep philosophical truths during their nonsensical ramblings, however they depart from these ideas as quickly as they come to them. At times Guildenstern appears to be more enlightened than Rosencrantz; at times both of them appear to be equally confounded by the events occurring around them.

The question that is really posed here is what does happen to our beloved characters when we're not looking, when they're off-stage. Are they aware? Do they know that whatever ambitions they have were already decided and written long ago? Do they conspire against this? Do they plot against the plot? Or do they simply cease to be when the curtain draws?

When does Jack Bauer use the bathroom?

A greater question beyond the literary is whether our plots were written long ago. Is choice just an illusion? Am I a footnote in your story, or you in mine?

Guildenstern: "There must have been a moment, at the very beginning, where we could have said — no. But somehow we missed it."

What I left out in the above is how hilarious the movie is and how clever the dialogue. My favorite scene:

Guil: What a fine persecution — to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened. . . . (Pause.) We've had no practice.
Ros: We could play at questions.
Guil: What good would that do?
Ros: Practice!
Guil: Statement! One-love!
Ros: Cheating!
Guil: How?
Ros: I hadn't started yet!
Guil: Statement. Two-love.
Ros: Are you counting that?
Guil: What?
Ros: Are you counting that?
Guil: Foul! No repetitions. Three-love. First game to —
Ros: I'm not going to play if you're going to be like that.
Guil: Whose serve?
Ros: Hah?
Guil: Foul! No grunts. Love-one.
Ros: Who's go?
Guil: Why?
Ros: Why not?
Guil: What for?
Ros: Foul! No synonyms. One-all.
Guil: What in God's name is going on?
Ros: Foul! No rhetoric! Two-one.
Guil: What does it all add up to?
Ros: Can't you guess?
Guil: Were you addressing me?
Ros: Is there anyone else?
Guil: Who?
Ros: How would I know?
Guil: Why do you ask?
Ros: Are you serious?
Guil: Was that rhetoric?
Ros: No.
Guil: Statement! Two-all. Game point.
Ros: What's the matter with you today?
Guil: When?
Ros: What?
Guil: Are you deaf?
Ros: Am I dead?
Guil: Yes or no?
Ros: Is there a choice?
Guil: Is there a God?
Ros: Foul! No non-sequiters, three-two, one game all.
Guil (seriously): What's your name?
Ros: What's yours?
Guil: I asked you first.
Ros: Statement. One-love.
Guil: What's your name when you're at home?
Ros: What's yours?
Guil: When I'm at home?
Ros: Is it different at home?
Guil: What home?
Ros: Haven't you got one?
Guil: Why do you ask?
Ros: What are you driving at?
Guil (with emphasis): What's your name?!
Ros: Repetition. Two-love. Match point to me.
Guil (siezing him violently): WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?
Ros: Rhetoric! Game and match!

As the indifferent children of the earth

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are two of the most underdeveloped characters in literature. This is surprising because they come from Shakespeare's Hamlet, one of the world's most widely recognized literary works. In Hamlet, the two are little more than plot devices, schoolmates of Prince Hamlet summoned by King Claudius to spy on him and discover why he is behaving so strangely.

For those unfamiliar with the story, Claudius was Hamlet's uncle, who married Gertrude (Hamlet's mother) soon after the King (Hamlet's father and Claudius's brother) died under mysterious circumstances. It is revealed that Claudius was the one who killed Hamlet's father so he could get with Gertrude. In those days, marriage to the brother of one's deceased husband was considered incest by the Church. Not to mention, all of this was revealed to Hamlet by the King's own ghost. No wonder Hamlet was a little upset. Talk about drama.

Back to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Claudius and Gertrude summon the old school chums to figure out what's up with Hamlet. They do some talking, blah, blah, plot skip and later they are ordered to escort Hamlet from the kingdom and to his execution. Hamlet discovers the plot and escapes it by engineering the death of the duo instead. Bluntly we hear later from an ambassador;

"That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead."

Almost no character development of the two throughout the story. In fact, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are referred to interchangeably with no distinction of who's who. They're also, always, the two/one, much like Lenny and Carl from the Simpsons. It's always Lenny and Carl, and it's always Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, inseparable.

Let me back track to where Hamlet first sees Rosencrantz and Guildenstern because it shows what seems to be a deliberate downplay of the characters — almost as if Shakespeare is saying: Don't care about these two. They're just here for plot.

When they first meet, Hamlet asks how they're doing, to which one replies (it doesn't matter which as they are interchangeable):

"As the indifferent children of the earth."

The other says:

"Happy, in that we are not over-happy;
On fortune's cap we are not the very button."

Hamlet: "Nor the soles of her shoe?"

Rosencrantz or Guildenstern: "Neither, my lord."

When asked how they're doing they reply, eh, so-so. We're happy that we're not too happy. We're indifferent. Not the top of the cap nor the sole of the shoes. Shakespeare is pretty much saying, let me skip over these guys and get to the good part.

Speaking of which, the next part I'd be remiss as a guy if I left it out, though it really has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. If it's not the cap, nor the shoes, it's...

"Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favours?" asks Hamlet.

"'Faith, her privates we," says Rosencrantz or Guildenstern.

Faith, her privates we. Nice.

Back to the point. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are minor characters in one of the most recognized stories ever. You can't tell one from the other, and because they were never actually developed as characters, you can't even describe them beyond "schoolmate".

So why am I mentioning them? Good question. I'll come back to that later.

The colours red, blue and green are real. The colour yellow is a mystical experience shared by everybody. Discuss.

- Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Tom Stoppard