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hor must remain subject to the government of his own past. His repeated attempts to perfect the form contradict the effort itself, of course- and this is Kerouac's paradox. The more he writes, the more he develops, and the more evident the writer's evolution, the more it relates to a chronological dynamic. In the same way that labouring spontaneity foregrounds the labour, and consequently the author's hand, aspiring to defeat timeliness through constructing a series of books over years only betrays his inescapable mortality, tying him inextricably to the outside world in spite of himself.

The writing brings to mind the words of art critic, Michael Fried, whose anxiety around the visually present world is everywhere present in his work,

“…a means of evoking an experience of journeying corporeally through space as opposed to merely viewing a world present to eyesight but fundamentally out of reach.”

It is clear that Kerouac's work is a melancholic writing of history i the most literal sense: his books create chimeras of invisible historical figures, and in so doing evoke their absence- an absence which inevitably feeds his unfalsifiable claims, and, unfortunately for Kerouac, the claims of unfalsifiability made against him.

2. The Beat and the Origin

'The life of every Beat Writer is characterized by a prolonged psychic crisis that is finally resolved by means of a sudden vision or insight'

James T. Jones, in his book Jack Kerouac's Dulouz Legend: The Mythic Form of an Autobiographical Fiction, argues forcefully for an Oedipal analysis of Kerouac's work. Grouping the Kerouac texts in the Freudian context, particularly the Oedipus myth, Jones reflects on ways in which Kerouac's depiction of family relationships - and by extension, relationships in his personal life and as 'fictionalized' in his prose - may be explained through Freud. His look extends to the enduring relationship between Kerouac and his mother, the residual rivalry with his father, sibling rivalry with his older deceased brother Gerard, and eventually a succession of male colleagues. Big Sur's alcohol-induced nervous breakdown is perceived as being induced by or symptomatic of his catastrophic attachment to his mother and obsession with the psychic tensions induced by the Oedipal family struggle.

As Jones writes, 'Jack Dulouz , suffering from the effects of chronic alcoholism and sensing an impending nervous breakdown, seeks refuge at the oceanside cabin...unfortunately, like the grove of the Eumenides in Oedipus at Colonus, it is full of reminders of both the cause of his misery and the fate that awaits him,'

The oedipal signifier works in two directions, then, standing outside of time. The “Origin” supplied by the grove recalls the past and anticipates the future. A visit to the canyon in which the breakdown took place, its rumbling surf and endless brook which babbles with vital noise, and the yawning canyon recall Kerouac's hometown of Lowell. We are reminded of the grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes, and the bridge across the Merrimack River there. Since Kerouac was introduced to it by his brother Gerard, the site, with its awesome mystical po本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。