Jack Kerouac and the American Spectacle

Table Of Contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Notes for the Reader
• Introduction
• CHAPTER 1 The Road to Authenticity: Kerouac, Liminality and the Spectacle of Post-war America
• Between Dharma and Debord: The Limits of Rebellion
• Neither Here nor There: Liminal Identity and the Beats’ Search for Meaning
• Kerouac and the Implosion of the Beats
• Conclusion
• PART I Kerouac and the Making of Post-war Selfhood
• CHAPTER 2 Synthetic Worlds, Ancestral Minds: Hyper-Stimulation and Alienation in Kerouac
• Out of Sync: Alienation and the Mismatch Hypothesis
• Homo Magis Realis and the Rise of Networked Creatures
• Misfired Alarms: Artificial Hazards in Big Sur
• Beasts in the Leaves
• Enemies in the Crowd
• Conclusion
• CHAPTER 3 Kerouac and the Other: Race, Mysticism and the Crisis of White Identity
• Cultural Appropriation or Mystical Idealisation? Kerouac’s Portrayals of Mexicans and African Americans
• Kerouac’s Anarcho-Primitivism: The Politics of the Other
• The Sabinal Interlude: Love, Labour, and the Earth
• The Real in The Other
• Narrating the Sacred: Mediation and the Making of the Other in Tristessa
• Conclusion
• CHAPTER 4 The New Americanness: Scripts, Selves and the Beat Ethos
• ‘The Vanishing American Hobo’ and the Spectacle of Deterrence
• Other Ways of Being: Kerouac’s Resistance to Ready-Made Lives
• Unlearning the Script, Rewiring the Mind: Narrative Tools for Schema Disruption
• Late Nights and Lost Lives: Disrupting the American Work Ethic in Lonesome Traveler
• Madwomen at the Window: Toppling the Technocratic Mindset
• The Family Encounter: Hitchhiking through the Wreckage of the American Dream
• Out of Step with Ourselves: Evolutionary Breakdown in the Spectacle
• Inventing the Beatnik: Alternative Identities in ‘New York Scenes’
• The Beatnik and Carefree Childhood
• The Beatnik and Contemplation
• Conclusion
• PART II In the Shadow of the Real: Transcendence and Its Discontents
• CHAPTER 5 Fragments of the Real: The Body, the Vision and the Vanishing God
• Sacred Flesh, Profane Soul: The Feminine and the Logic of Dichotomy
• The Sublime Wounds of Tristessa: Desire, Divinity, and Defilement
• The Melancholy of the Male Ego: Mardou and the Art of Suffering
• A Ritual of Extremes: The Grotesque and the Divine on Stage
• Fractures in the Fabric of Reality
• Tristessa’s Kitchen and The Threshold of the Real
• Heralds of the Real: Apparitions and the Trikāya of the Legend
• Before Birth, After Death: Memory and the Silence of the Real
• The Weight of Nothingness: Nihilism, Guilt, and the Void Within
• God Is Dead, and Yet He Lingers: The Collapse of Moral Worlds
• Of Mice and Saints: Violence, Guilt, and the Moral Paradox
• Conclusion
• CHAPTER 6 Towards the Real: Transcendence, Timelessness and the Void
• On Authenticity and the Weight of Freedom
• The Saint and the Thief: Gerard, Dean, and the Search for a Godless Grace
• No Path, No Discipline: Kerouac and the Responsibility of the Real
• Unlearning the Sacred
• The Wisdom of Doing Nothing: Emancipation through Stillness
• Faith That Clings: Authenticity and the Shadow of Belief
• On Timelessness: Death, Being, and the Cosmic Real
• To Do the Timeless Doing: On Kerouac’s Beat Temporalities
• But Who Wants to Die? Kerouac and the Longing for Pure Death
• The Infinite Nothingness: Quantum Mysticism in the Legend
• Conclusion
• CHAPTER 7 Between Mysticism and Madness: Language, Gnosis and the Limits of Knowing
• On Mystical Knowing: Intuition, Gnosis, and the Limits of Reason
• What the Mind Already Knows: Mysticism and the Return to Intuition
• The World Without Judgement: Visions of the Ungraspable Real
• The Messenger’s Dilemma: Transmitting the Ineffable
• To Write What Cannot Be Said: Sacred Knowledge and the Burden of the Word
• A is not A, therefore it is A: Mystical Logic and the Collapse of Boundaries
• Words from the Edge of the Real
• The Language Between Worlds: Noumena, Nonsense, and Narrative Legitimacy
• Joycean Poetics and Noumenal Speech in ‘Sea’
• Breaking the Frame: Metaleptic Journeys into the Real
• Beyond the Narrative Curtain: Metalepsis as a Portal to the Real
• No Need to Tell a Story: Kerouac and the Metaphysics of the Told
• Speaking Through the Impossible: The Realist Aporia and Narrative Disruption in The Subterraneans
• Conclusion
• PART III The Intersubjective Real
• CHAPTER 8 The Self in Dialogue: Narratives of Intimacy and Interpretive Desire
• Kerouac and the Relational Ground of the Self
• Kerouac’s Poetics of Male Intimacy: The Aesthetics and Limits of Brotherhood
• The Holy Goof: Jack’s Idealisation of Dean
• The Mystery of What I Want: The Quest for Intensity in the Mundane
• The Transactional Logic of Dean’s Affections
• The Confessional Mode: Race, Desire, and Distributed Perception
• The Confessional Encounter: Toward a Shared Reality
• Studying the Body, Confronting the Self
• Jealousy and the Intersubjective Structure of Dreams
• Unclear Signals, Unreadable Minds: Interpreting Intention in the Legend
• From Mind-Reading to Meaning-Making: Theory of Mind and the Cognitive Turn in Intersubjectivity
• The Lazarus Glance: Silent Exchanges and Inward Projection
• Unreadable Minds: The Collapse of Recognition at the Pivotal Point
• Outcast Among Outcasts: Overinterpretation and the Fantasy of Difference
• Conclusion
• CHAPTER 9 Forms of Presence: Improvisation, Empathy and Orality in the Legend
• Improvisation and the Real
• The Jewel Centre of Interest: Jazz Writing and the Anti-Representational Mode
• The Dialogic Horizon of Improvisation: Pathways of Intuition and Connection in Kerouac’s Spontaneous Prose
• He Knows Time: Jazz, Performance, and the Pulse of Presence
• When Form Speaks: Breaking the Prejudiced Show of Things
• Second Chances for Empathy: Sketching the Missed Encounter
• Orality and the Real
• Echoes of the Natural: Orality and the Lost Real
• The Rhythms of Orality: Reclaiming the Real through Living Speech
• Conclusion
• Final Reflections: Kerouac, the Spectacle and the Real
• Bibliography
• Index

Talal Hochard

Jack Kerouac and the American Spectacle

Resistance and Authenticity in Primitivism,
Transcendence, and Communion

Berlin · Bruxelles · Chennai · Lausanne · New York · Oxford

Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available online at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hochard, Talal, 1987- author

Title: Jack Kerouac and the American spectacle: resistance and authenticity in primitivism, transcendence, and communion / Talal Hochard.

Description: Lausanne; New York: Peter Lang, 2026. | Series: American culture, 1615567X; 19 | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2025034176 (print) | LCCN 2025034177 (ebook) | ISBN 9783631934142 hardcover | ISBN 9783631934159 pdf | ISBN 9783631934166 epub

Subjects: LCSH: Kerouac, Jack, 1922-1969--Criticism and interpretation | Authenticity (Philosophy) in literature | National characteristics, American, in literature | LCGFT: Literary criticism

Classification: LCC PS3521.E735 Z674 2026 (print) | LCC PS3521.E735 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54--dc23/eng/20250723

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2025034176

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2025034177

The publication of this manuscript would not have been possible without the financial support of the Doctoral School of New Humanities (Fernand Braudel) at Université de Lorraine and the Pléiade Research Center at Université Sorbonne Paris Nord.

Cover image:

Desolation Peak Lookout with a View. Photo by Brian K. Wheeler, U.S. Forest Service. Photo in the public domain.

ISSN 1615-567X

ISBN 978-3-631-93414-2 (Print)

ISBN 978-3-631-93415-9 (ePDF)

ISBN 978-3-631-93416-6 (ePUB)

DOI   10.3726/b23274

© 2026 Peter Lang Group AG, Lausanne (Switzerland)

Published by Peter Lang GmbH, Berlin (Germany)

info@peterlang.com

All rights reserved.

All parts of this publication are protected by copyright.

Any utilization outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution.

This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems.

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For my mother

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

List of Abbreviations

Notes for the Reader

Introduction

Chapter 1
The Road to Authenticity: Kerouac, Liminality and the Spectacle of Post-war America

Part I
Kerouac and the Making of Post-war Selfhood

Chapter 2
Synthetic Worlds, Ancestral Minds: Hyper-Stimulation and Alienation in Kerouac

Chapter 3
Kerouac and the Other: Race, Mysticism and the Crisis of White Identity

Chapter 4
The New Americanness: Scripts, Selves and the Beat Ethos

Part II
In the Shadow of the Real: Transcendence and Its Discontents

Chapter 5
Fragments of the Real: The Body, the Vision and the Vanishing God

Chapter 6
Towards the Real: Transcendence, Timelessness and the Void

Chapter 7
Between Mysticism and Madness: Language, Gnosis and the Limits of Knowing

Part III
The Intersubjective Real

Chapter 8
The Self in Dialogue: Narratives of Intimacy and Interpretive Desire

Chapter 9
Forms of Presence: Improvisation, Empathy and Orality in the Legend

Final Reflections: Kerouac, the Spectacle and the Real

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Tomáš Pospíšil (Masaryk University) and John S. Bak (Université de Lorraine) for their invaluable academic guidance. Their insights not only shaped the direction of my research but also contributed profoundly to my intellectual growth over the years.

I am also grateful to Masaryk University and Université de Lorraine for granting me access to essential resources, which greatly facilitated my research.

My sincere thanks go to Peter Lang for their support in bringing this work to print. I am especially grateful to Michael Rücker for facilitating communication throughout the process and to the editors of the American Culture series for their valuable support.

I owe a special debt of gratitude to my undergraduate professor, Muhammad Badawi, who first instilled in me a deep love of literature – an influence that has shaped the course of my academic and personal journey.

I am also profoundly thankful to my sister, Carolina, whose unwavering support sustained me through the most challenging moments of the writing process.

A significant portion of this study was conducted ‘on the road’ in a variety of settings, and I wish to acknowledge the many countries, cities, trains, libraries, cafés, and kitchens that, in their own way, offered both inspiration and space for its completion.

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the solitary angel, Jack Kerouac, whose tormented yet beatific soul has left an indelible mark on my own.

List of Abbreviations

BS Big Sur (1962)

BOD Book of Dreams (1961)

DA Desolation Angels (1965)

LT Lonesome Traveler (1960)

OTR On the Road (1957)

TDB The Dharma Bums (1958)

TS The Subterraneans (1958)

TR Tristessa (1960)

VOD Vanity of Duluoz: An Adventurous Education, 1935–1946 (1968)

VOC Visions of Cody (1960)

VOG Visions of Gerard (1958)

Notes for the Reader

To enhance readability, I have consistently referred to Kerouac’s narrator as ‘Jack Duluoz’, the name used in the majority of his novels. This decision was made despite the existence of other names associated with the same character in different works, such as ‘Sal Paradise’ in On the Road, ‘Ray Smith’ in The Dharma Bums, and ‘Leo Percepied’ in The Subterraneans.

Additionally, all quotations from primary sources retain Kerouac’s original stylistic choices, including grammatical irregularities, punctuation, and unconventional syntax. These elements are preserved intentionally, as they are essential to the literary effect he sought to achieve in his writing.

Introduction

Jack Kerouac wrote during a period of profound social, cultural, and political upheaval – an ‘interregnum’ in which, as Antonio Gramsci observed, ‘the old is dying and the new cannot be born.’¹ His Duluoz Legend immerses readers in the existential dislocation of this liminal state, a condition he vividly describes as ‘outblownness, cutoff-ness, snipped, blownoutness, putoutness, turned-off-ness, nothing-happens-ness, gone-ness, gone-out-ness’ (TDB, 387). This striking sequence of neologisms encapsulates the crisis of authenticity – a crisis deeply intertwined with capitalism – while also underscoring Kerouac’s recognition of language’s limitations in expressing such profound alienation.

The Duluoz Legend comprises an interconnected series of novels that embody the anxiety-ridden aesthetic of the Beat Generation, advocating for an alternative mode of existence in a world increasingly inhospitable to authenticity. By transgressing both physical and metaphysical boundaries, this mode offers direct engagement with the Real while simultaneously reflecting on the societal upheavals of the late 1940s and 1950s. This was a period shaped by a complex interplay of factors unique to the American context at the onset of postmodernism and the Information Age.

Throughout these novels, Kerouac charts the gradual disillusionment of a writer-idealist with America – a nation that, in his view, has turned against hitchhikers and hobos, abandoning the natural world in favour of ‘spectacle’. His disillusionment is powerfully articulated in Lonesome Traveler:

Ah America, so big, so sad, so black, you’re like the leafs of a dry summer that go crinkly ere August found its end, you’re hopeless, everyone you look on you, there’s nothing but the dry drear hopelessness, the knowledge of impending death, the suffering of present life, lights of Christmas wont save you or anybody, any more you could put Christmas lights on a dead bush in August, at night, and make it look like something, what is this Christmas you profess, in this void? (LT, 641–42)

Jack Duluoz, Kerouac’s narrator and alter ego, portrays America as a nation in sociocultural disarray, generating cognitive dissonance, absurdity, chronic anxiety, and alienation from authentic desire. His struggles symbolise not only personal fragmentation but also the erosion of deeply held beliefs in historical progress – convictions once anchored in Western philosophical and religious traditions. As these ideological structures collapse, Kerouac’s vision of an authentic America retreats into the recesses of both his individual memory and the collective memory he shares with his ancestors and literary influences.

Melvin Seeman’s theory of alienation provides a compelling framework for understanding the emotions that permeate Kerouac’s work. Seeman distils the work of thinkers such as Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Adorno, and C. Wright Mills into five categories of alienation: powerlessness, meaninglessness, normlessness, isolation, and self-estrangement, with cultural estrangement later added in response to the upheavals of 1968.² Mike Healy explains these categories as follows:

• Powerlessness: The belief that an individual’s actions cannot influence desired outcomes.
• Meaninglessness: A lack of clarity about the significance of events or beliefs.
• Normlessness: The breakdown of social norms regulating individual behaviour, often leading to extreme individualism.
• Isolation: A rejection of societal values, creating a sense of separateness and a desire for alternative priorities.
• Self-estrangement: A loss of intrinsic fulfilment in one’s work or actions.
• Cultural estrangement: A sense of detachment from dominant social values and practices.³

Kerouac embodies these forms of alienation, leading him to take radical steps, including distancing himself from mainstream white America – a decision that provoked significant backlash. His associations with African Americans and Mexicans, for instance, were criticised as cultural appropriation or slum tourism. At the same time, Kerouac resisted the emerging left-wing intellectual movement that infiltrated his subculture, viewing many of its adherents as either insincere in their pursuit of truth or narrowly confined within a fashionable Marxist framework that distorted their understanding of reality. Among these self-proclaimed revolutionaries – whom he referred to as ‘subterraneans’ – he found a striking lack of genuine intellectual curiosity, reinforcing his scepticism toward both the establishment and its supposed challengers.

Steven Wilson, one of the few scholars to examine authenticity in Kerouac’s works, observes that Kerouac’s narrator consciously rejects comfort and security as artificial desires, prioritising ‘the intense moment over tradition, intuition over reason shaped by education’,⁴ and embracing the ‘outsider status’⁵ that fosters a sense of genuineness. Furthermore, Wilson notes that in both The Subterraneans and On the Road, the narrator willingly endures the inherent suffering of the writer’s life, viewing it as a means to produce a work capable of opening readers’ eyes to the realities of life in America while offering a path toward deeper understanding.⁶

The link between authenticity and Kerouac’s self-imposed role as a messenger is made explicit in Satori in Paris:

I want to tell them that we dont all want to become ants contributing to the social body, but individualists each one counting one by one, but no, try to tell that to the in-an-outers rushing in and out the humming world night as the world turns on one axis.⁷

A similar theme emerges in Big Sur, where, following a meditative moment in the woods, the narrator envisions himself as a ‘special solitary angel sent down as a messenger from Heaven to tell everybody or show everybody by example that their peeking society was actually the Satanic Society and they were all on the wrong track’ (117).