#246 God- Jack Kerouac
For this New Year I begin with some Jack Kerouac. Who
better? It’s filled with hope, adventure, and expectation. We start with a
blank page: “This page is long blank and full of truth. When I am through with
it, it shall probably be long, full, and empty with words.”
A young writer talks with God, it’s not a prayer as much as
a conversation. He ruminates on life,
survival, and his will to write original words. Not unlike many who have tried,
he struggles with his voice, and sometimes must sell his talents for the
mundane needs of life.
“Tonight, I wrote a short story for a fellow on this floor.
I toiled with it for an hour and a half. I had to make it exciting, fill it
with colorful and authentic descriptions, and pound it out into the
conventional whole. That is, wholeness of what is called the common short
story. Beginning, middle, end. It has to introduce, enlarge, burst, and die
down. So I plunged into it and finished it. It would net me one dollar.”
This was fun to read and think about the art of short story
telling, and very house of mirrors. I’m now writing about a writer writing
about short story writing.
Notable Passage: “You can’ be an artist unless you’re a
member of humanity. Hermits make awful poets, I think. You can’t ruminate
peacefully by a little stream in the woods unless you’ve been liberated from
the turmoil of civilization. Peace is a relative thing. And it always turns out
to be short lived."
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