getting inside Jack Kerouac’s head
Simon Morris
2008
“A few years ago I was lecturing to a class at Princeton. After the class, a small group of students came up to me to tell me about a workshop that they were taking with one of the most well-known fiction writers in America. They were complaining about her lack of imagination. For example, she had them pick their favorite writer and come in next week with an “original” work in the style of that author. I asked one of the students which author they chose. She answered Jack Kerouac. She then added that the assignment felt meaningless to her because the night before she tried to “get into Kerouac’s head” and scribbled a piece in “his style” to fulfill the assignment. It occurred to me that for this student to actually write in the style of Kerouac, she would have been better off taking a road trip across the country in a ‘48 Buick with the convertible roof down, gulping Benzedrine by the fistful, washing ‘em down with bourbon, all the while typing furiously away on a manual typewriter, going 85 miles per hour down a ribbon of desert highway. And even then, it would’ve been a completely different experience, not to mention a very different piece of writing, than Kerouac’s.
Instead, my mind drifted to those aspiring painters who fill up the Metropolitan Museum of Art every day, spending hours learning by copying the Old Masters. If it’s good enough for them, why isn’t it good enough for us? I would think that should this student have retyped a chunk — or if she was ambitious, the entirety — of On The Road. Wouldn’t she have really understood Kerouac’s style in a profound way that was bound to stick with her? I think she really would have learned something had she retyped Kerouac. But no. She had to bring in an “original” piece of writing.”
– Kenneth Goldsmith
About Me
- information as material
- Simon Morris is a conceptual writer. His work appears in the form of exhibitions, publications, installations, actions and texts which all revolve around the form of the book. His investigations involve working in collaboration with many other people from art, creative technology, literature and psychoanalysis. His role as an artist is to create a theoretical space that others feel comfortable working in and to erase his own ego in order to stimulate desire in others. He works to create a space of transference where linking and connecting can take place, a shared space of encounter. Morris proposes a collaborative model as the most productive way of working. His work is often inspired by the work of others – his engagement is poetic rather than logical. It may involve a purposeful misreading of the source material or even re-writing. The methodologies he utilises include destruction, rupture, erasure, nonsense, concealment and the irrational which allow him to create a fluid space of non-meaning. By working with non-meaning, the spectator is put to work in the construction of meaning.
3 comments:
You're crazy!
Hunter Thompson did it with Hemingway
and a stack of other big guys.
I mean the typing.
Why not?
You get a better idea of a writer's style during one of his periods with this idea.
And not just periods!
Try it sometime for a few chapters of prose or smaller book of poetry.
Surprising how many commas some people used in their early works.
I like it.
getting inside Jack Kerouac's head
Simon Morris
2008
"A few years ago I was lecturing to a class at Princeton. After the class, a small group of students came up to me to tell me about a workshop that they were taking with one of the most well-known fiction writers in America. They were complaining about her lack of imagination. For example, she had them pick their favorite writer and come in next week with an "original" work in the style of that author. I asked one of the students which author they chose. She answered Jack Kerouac. She then added that the assignment felt meaningless to her because the night before she tried to "get into Kerouac's head" and scribbled a piece in "his style" to fulfill the assignment. It occurred to me that for this student to actually write in the style of Kerouac, she would have been better off taking a road trip across the country in a '48 Buick with the convertible roof down, gulping Benzedrine by the fistful, washing 'em down with bourbon, all the while typing furiously away on a manual typewriter, going 85 miles per hour down a ribbon of desert highway. And even then, it would've been a completely different experience, not to mention a very different piece of writing, than Kerouac's.
Instead, my mind drifted to those aspiring painters who fill up the Metropolitan Museum of Art every day, spending hours learning by copying the Old Masters. If it's good enough for them, why isn't it good enough for us? I would think that should this student have retyped a chunk- or if she was ambitious, the entirety - of On the Road. Wouldn't she have really understood Kerouac's style in a profound way that was bound to stick with her? I think she really would have learned something had she retyped Kerouac. But no. She had to bring in an "original" piece of writing."
-Kenneth Goldsmith
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