Nowhere Road
Reflections on the Legend of Duluoz by Jack Kerouac
There are books that impact you for the sole reason of the timing of their reading in our lives. These books relate to the situation we find ourselves in, or for a yearning or insatiable desire that is left wanting, or an explanation, a story that we can relate to, stories that make us feel a little less alone in a world that has increasingly become lonely and separated. In this time of pandemic, especially in a country that has floundered in its response to the pandemic where things are the same now as it has been for the past year, I found solace and excitement through the Legend of Duluoz books written by Jack Kerouac.
It doesn’t really matter where you begin, you could tackle the books chronologically, by time of publication, or in whatever order you find the books since most of them are not readily available in major bookstores. What I wanted to do, when I began reading On the Road, was to read what Jack wanted as a final project. That is, to lay it all out in the way that it happened with all the right names, one long and gigantic book that illustrated the tales of disillusioned, restless youth in stark contrast to the affluent moral society of postwar America.
It comes without saying that I am not American, the road novel is not really a popular genre in the Philippines and finding a road novel set in the Philippines is about as hard as trying to live in one. What I read in the novel were imaginings of representations that I had seen in popular media. Jack’s descriptions of Mexico City, San Francisco, New York, and all the places that he visited during his lifetime were imaginings of representations. I could imagine imagining being there, but I could never know since I could not be there at the time or place. The past is a foreign country, what more of the past of a foreign country?
Regardless, their lives excited me. The prose was like a runaway train that you knew could only end in a wreck with how fast everything moved for Jack and his friends. But it was exhilarating even when you knew that it did end in a wreck for Jack and most of his buddies. The Legend of Duluoz is the road novel. It is the road novel that all other road novels will be compared to. For a few moments I wanted to be part of the thrill, the fastness, the jazz, the recklessness. That is essentially what draws you in with the Legend of Duluoz, the promise of thrill, hedonism, and youth in rebellion. Anyone who reads this at the perfect moment in their lives wants to live it, will fantasize about it, and will want to try to make it happen. It is exciting, the prose is as vibrant as the characters that populate it. The plot, when there is one, flows with the characters, it shifts and changes course with the whims of those who lived in it. In a way, it is a stylized 1:1 representation of the wild lives the Beats led in those early postwar decades. Jack is the saint of youth in rebellion, of freedom, of the need to just go.
But then you reread it. You want to relive the excitement, the thrill, to experience the Legend once again only to find that the story tastes different. Jack, Neal, and Allen are cruel to the people who care most about them, abusive to the women in their lives, and wholly irresponsible for the mess they leave in the places they visit. As much as the Legend offers an escape for those who read it, it should also be understood as stories of young people trying to escape Something. The mess that Jack left in nearly all of his travels and novels is omnipresent. Whether you’re reading the boyish exploits in Doctor Sax or Maggie Cassidy, or the legendary road trip of On the Road, or even in the depressing and bleak Big Sur, there is an emptiness that Jack could not satiate — Something that refused to be settled even in the face of all the drugs, women, and Road.
All this makes me wonder about the Road itself. The Road, I would argue, is as much a staple in Jack’s novels as Jack himself. The Road is escape, the Road is what leads to the beautiful Out There, the paradise that is Not Here.
What the Road novel or movie shows us is that in the course of travelling, in the course of going Out There, there is something to be discovered. What is usually discovered is some kind of fundamental truth about humanity, observations about society, or a lesson to be found within ones self. Other than this, it is a shout and a scream to radical individualism, to the absolute freedom that one can find should one simply leave. Jack made a remark about how easy it was to leave when you finally did, what he failed to mention was what he was leaving. Jack was never truly free and he never escaped. What one finds in the Legend of Duluoz is not the formula to a carefree life, but the way to escape the responsibility we have to those that we mark. Jack and his buddies were alone, not free, and tethered wherever they went to the need to get rid of Something. There was nothing to be learned other than the emptiness they must have felt within themselves. An emptiness, they learned, that could not be filled with all the drugs, alcohol, and travel that they took on.
The Legend lent me so much restless anxiety. I was so tired of looking outside my window wondering when travel would be allowed again. When travel restrictions were lifted, I found that travel was no longer free. There was no journey, just the destination. Buses were point-to-point, masks and face shields required in melting tropical weather, but a necessity nonetheless. The books were symbols once again, an exaggeration of what must have been mundane travel hyped up with drugs, sex, and alcohol. I knew that the Road would not feel free for a long time and I find myself coming to a point in my life where it is no longer becoming alluring. The Legend of Duluoz is a set of books that one reads at a certain point in their life and will look back on fondly afterwards.
But who knows? Maybe I’m just getting old, maybe there is something Out There that Jack didn’t see. Or maybe I might find something that Jack didn’t. Or find something else that Jack didn’t see for the simple reason that I am not Jack. The Road is ever there, beckoning to be traveled, leading to a point in the horizon that never comes.
If you liked what you read, consider buying me a coffee! It would help a lot to keep these posts coming.
