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Readings From "On the Road" and "Visions of Cody"
Jack Kerouac with Steve Allen
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Well, a lot of people have asked me, why did I write that book, or
Any book? All the stories I wrote were true, 'cause I believed in
What I saw. I was traveling west one time, at the junction of the
State line of Colorado, its arid western one, and the state line of
Poor Utah, I saw in the clouds huge and massed above the fiery golden
Desert of evenfall, a great image of God with forefinger pointed
Straight at me, through halos and rolls and gold folds that were like
The existence of a gleaming spear in his right hand, which sayeth, "
Come on, boy, go thou across the ground. Go moan for man. Go moan. Go
Groan. Go groan alone. Go roll your bones, alone. Go thou and be
Little beneath my sight. Go thou and be minute
As seed in the pod. Go thou, go thou, die hence
And of this world report you well and truly."
Anyway, I wrote the book because we're all gonna die. In the
Loneliness of my life, my father dead, my brother dead, my mother
Far away, my sister and my wife far away, nothing here but my own
Tragic hands that once were guarded by a world of sweet attention
That now are left to guide and disappear their own way into the
Common dark of all our death, sleeping in me raw bed alone and
Stupid, with just this one pride and consolation, my heart broke in
The general despair, and opened up inwards to the Lord, I made a
Supplication in this dream. So, in the last page of On the Road
I describe how the hero, Dean Moriarty, has come to see me all
The way from the West Coast just for a day or two. We'd just
Been back and forth across the country several times in cars
And now our adventures are over. We're still great friends
But we have to go into later phases of our lives. So there he
Goes, Dean Moriarty, ragged, in a moth-eaten overcoat he brought
Specially for the freezing temperatures of the East, walking
Off alone, and last I saw of him, he rounded the corner of Seventh
Avenue, eyes on the street ahead, and bent to it again. Gone
So, in America, when the sun goes down, and I sit on the old broken-
Down river pier, watching the long, long skies over New Jersey, and
Sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge
Over to the West Coast, and all that road going, and all the people
Dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa, I know by now the
Children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry
And tonight, the stars will be out, and don't you know that God is
Pooh Bear? The evening star must be drooping and shedding her
Sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of
Complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all the rivers, cups
The peaks, and folds the final shore in. Nobody, nobody knows what's
Going to happen to anybody, besides the forlorn rags of growing old
I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of old Dean Moriarty, the
Father we never found. I think of Dean
Moriarty. I think of Dean Moriarty
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