Lonesome traveler
In which Jack Kerouac makes me rethink “seeing the world”
I read Jack Kerouac’s Lonesome Traveler this summer, mostly on trains. On the crowded S Bahn from my apartment to the lab; on an almost empty U Bahn in the pouring rain; on the way back from Vienna. It all sounds very poetic, and it was. Surrounded as I was by the daily commuters, shuttling back and forth in a predictable pattern, reading Kerouac’s prose was like being hit with waves of cold, sharp, fresh, indescribably nostalgic winds.
Lonesome Traveler is exactly what it sounds like: a collection of stories about Kerouac’s life traveling, moving from place to place without much of a plan but apparently an 80 lb backpack(!). Sure, some portion of the book’s appeal stems from the wanderlust-inducing adventures he has had: spending a summer alone on a mountain in Washington; wandering through Tangier, Morocco; working as a railroad man in California; sailing on a freighter through the Panama Canal. But what I found most compelling about Lonesome Traveler — and the lonesome traveler himself — is that there’s this great electricity and vitality to his writing, this dynamic energy that makes you believe he really was out there, seizing the day and living his own life on his own terms. And somehow, he kind of makes you feel like you know him; you’re out there with him, moving from place to place, with maybe just a couple dollars to your name but rich in life. (This can be a particularly powerful feeling to experience, especially when you’re riding between the same two stations day in and day out, a safe distance away from Kerouac’s poverty and the danger and loneliness of it all.)
So while I’m not here to review his writing, frustrating and brilliant as it is, I can’t pretend I’m not one of the thousands of people who have read Kerouac and been somewhat mesmerized by him; by his writing, yes, but by his life, too, both of which, as a result of entirely autobiographical writing, can never really be separated from one another. We can’t know whether his life really was as he describes — freewheeling, brazen, authentic, real — but I’ve realized that doesn’t matter so much to me. The point is, I found something in Lonesome Traveler and in Kerouac — whose life and work was fueled by movement, by hitchhiking and catching trains and being On the Road — that made me start to think more deeply about what exactly it meant to travel, to “see the world,” as we are so often told to do when we are young.
Over the next few articles I write, I’d like to share my thoughts and findings about “traveling.” These ideas are always changing, slightly clichéd, and sometimes maybe a little pedantic (this might be evident from one article to the next) but their one virtue is that they are generally developed after a good deal of thought.
What are your thoughts? Do you have a question or an opinion on traveling or Kerouac you would like to share with me? I would love to hear from you (vaddala7@mit.edu). If you are willing, your thoughts might even serve as the topic for my next article.