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Kerouac compared all his prose works with the Proustian epic
“In Search of Lost Time”. Like Proust, Kerouac combined his
novels “On the Road”, “Dharma Bums”, “Doctor Sax”, “Maggie
Cassidy”, “Tristessa”, “Desolation Angels”, “Visions of Cody”,
and “Big Sur” into a prose cycle.
In most of the novels, Kerouac used the “spontaneous” method
he had invented. The author writes down all the thoughts in
the order in which they occur to him. At the same time, no text
processing is allowed, which is considered decoration. This
method, according to the author, contributes to achieving
maximum psychological truthfulness, reducing the distance
between life and art. The “spontaneous” method is similar to
Kerouac and Proust. But if the French writer was absorbed in
reminiscing about the past, the American novelist is eager to
give a true account of the present.
The hero in the works of Kerouac appears in the guise of
a tramp, running away from society, violating the laws of this
society. The vagrancy of Kerouac’s characters is a kind of
chivalrous novel in the American style – “pilgrimage to the Holy
Grail”, in fact – a journey to the depths of one’s own “self”. For
Kerouac, loneliness is the main feeling that leads a person away
from the real world. It is from the depths of your loneliness that
you can, as Kerouac believed, evaluate the world around you.
In the works of Kerouac, almost nothing happens, although the
characters are in constant motion. The hero-narrator, on whose
behalf the narrative is conducted, is a person who is always very
close to the author. But almost always there is the presence of the
second hero, over whom the narrator conducts his observation.
The narrator in the novel “On the Road” is a young aspiring
writer named Sal Paradise. He is surrounded by people who reject
everything, but offer nothing in return. The key moment of
Saul’s life is a meeting with a car thief, a tramp Dean Moriarty.
Moriarty’s credo is to live with inspiration, with ecstasy, without
thinking about the future. A new life begins for Saul. He wakes
up from his depression and embarks on an aimless journey across
America.
Thanks to Saul’s observations, the reader has the opportunity
to see the whole country: the nature of the wild West, the life
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of cowboys, farmers, and ordinary people. The main motif and
symbol on which the narrative is strung is the road. It is on the
road that the desire to live “like everyone else” comes to him. He
meets a Mexican girl, works at a cotton picker, but his return
to New York is inevitable. The second part of the work tells
about the joint journey of Dean and Saul. America appears here
in a slightly different quality: as “a land of lonely exiles and
eccentric lovers”.
The image of Dean Moriarty also emerges from a different
angle. Behind the external bravado and irrepressible desire
to live there is manifestation of boundless egoism, complete
inability and unwillingness to reckon with friends and relatives.
Moryarty’s inner world turns out to be ugly and broken.
Promiscuous relationships with women begin to look painful,
clownish. The cheerful individualist hero is gradually being
debunked. It becomes clear that the heroes of Kerouac are driven
along the roads not by a thirst for life, but by a fear of emptiness,
a fear of death.
Dean Moriarty in Kerouac’s work becomes the archetype of
an American. He appears in other works – “Visions of the Cody”,
“Big Sur”. In Kerouac’s later works, the character becomes more
positive: Dean lives in a normal family, ready to help old friends.
The novel “Desolation Angels” (1965) describes the life of
the beatniks during the heyday of this movement. Being on the
top of the mountain in complete solitude, the author – narrator
is waiting for an epiphany, a revelation. This is the epiphany of
biblical truths. It is here that he begins to understand that all
living things want to live, that it is impossible to kill anyone. He
learns to see the best in people.
The novel “The Naked and the Dead” (1948) by Norman
Mailer (1923–2007) created a sensation in American literary
life. This work clearly traces the influence of Hemingway and
Dos Passos, as well as the earlier literary traditions that come
from Melville’s “Moby Dick”. The action is transferred by the
author to pre-war America. The writer depicts the everyday
life of America on the eve of World War II. The novel contains
many detailed descriptions of the army, which becomes a model
of the future social structure of the country. For time travel, the
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author uses various cinematic techniques, including a kind of
“time machine”.
What is the relationship between art and life in the world of
cinema? Mailer looks for an answer to this question in the novel
“Deer Park” (1955). The book provides a fairly objective picture
of the moral anemia of “middle” America during the period of
McCarthyism.
The writer resorts to thick satirical colours in the image of
Hollywood celebrities. For the first time, elements of Mailer’s
concept of the “hipster” begin to emerge (hipster – the one who
is in the doldrums, a morally depressed person). This laid the
foundation for the ideology of the “hippie” – the hero of the
existential nature of man, burning all the bridges of civilization
behind him.
These ideas are embodied in the image of the freelance artist
Marion Fey, who is also a pimp. He does this craft as an amateur,
but he does it according to his clear worldview in order to explore
new emotional horizons.
A landmark work for the generation of the 1960s, the era when
the beatniks grew up in the “hippies”, is the novel “The American
Dream” (1965). The main character, Stephen Rojack, is
a war hero, a classmate of President John F. Kennedy. He made
a brilliant career, becoming a well-known psychologist and
a popular presenter on television. But something is wrong with
Stephen’s fate. Behind the surface brilliance of a career, personal
drama is becoming more and more clear. Stephen is convinced
that life has failed. Married life does not bring joy, because his
wife passionately loves not him, but money and property.
The main motive of the “American Dream” is the spiritual
pilgrimage of the hero, the desire to make an odyssey to the most
secluded corners of the subconscious, but the hero’s entry into
the reserved world of instincts leads to the disintegration of the
personality.
In recent years Mailer’s novels “Harlot’s Ghost” (1991),
“Oswald’s Tale: An American Mystery” (1995), the book
“Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man” (1995) have been published.
In 1998 one of Mailer’s last works was published in Russia –
the novel “The Gospel According to the Son” (1997).
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The problem of total loneliness of the Western intellectual
is the main theme of the work of the 1978 Nobel Prize winner,
writer Saul Bellow (born 1914). He wrote the novels “The
Adventures of Augie March” (1953), “Dangling Man” (1973),
“Mr. Sammler’s Planet” (1973), “Humboldt’s Gift” (1976).
The main character of the novel “Herzog” (1964) is
a university professor of philosophy. The author introduces
Duke Moses at the time when he is experiencing an intellectual
and personal crisis. The hero is engaged in intense introspection,
but from time to time he finds himself replacing serious work of
thought with chewing “intellectual canned food”. The present –
the time of the novel – is disturbed by the intrusion of the past.
Moses is surrounded by women who cannot give him spiritual
satisfaction. The intellectual predilections of Moses’s ex-wife
Madeleine are extremely superficial and eclectic. But, in the end,
it all turns into reading detective novels. The mistress of Moses
Ramona is rather the embodiment of the sensual principle. The
hero rushes in space, from city to city, but finds no peace.
With no solid ground under his feet, Moses seeks contact
with the outside world. One of the strange forms of such
contacts are letters to various recipients – the living and the
dead: S. Kierkegaard, D. Eisenhower, B. Spinoza, F. Nietzsche,
relatives, loved ones, God. The letters remain unsent.
Bellow’s character appears to readers as a martyr and knight
of the modern spirit. As a result of his spiritual pilgrimage,
he comes to renounce rationalistic construction. Hezog
“resurrects” and begins to enjoy life: to feel the warmth of the
sun, to distinguish colours, to love. The rejection of illusions, the
absence of arrogant claims to everyday life – this is the final life
phase of Hezog.
In the 1970s, a deepening of the philosophical foundations
of Bellow’s prose takes place. In the novel “Humboldt’s Gift”
(1975), the writer turns to the genre of parables. The writer sets
up a kind of literary experiment, as if splitting his personality
between two heroes, writers, poets – Charlie Citrin and von
Humboldt Flyer. Citrine follows in his work in the footsteps of
his mentor Humboldt and partly surpasses him. Charlie behaves
as an attentive and thoughtful observer of the mores of his time.
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But his “serious conversations”, which constitute the core of
Citrin’s activity, have long since laid a blind borderline between
him and real life. The kaleidoscopic nature of his maxims is
obscured by the main problem of the hero – the lack of emotional
and spiritual balance. By the time the story begins, Citrine is in
a writer’s block from which he sees no way out.
The motif the artist’s disillusionment in “Humboldt’s Gift”
becomes unifying in the fate of both heroes. The posthumous
fate of Citrine’s teacher is oblivion. Humboldt dies in obscurity
because America doesn’t need art.
Humboldt’s death reflects the capitulation of the creative
intelligentsia to society. The fate of “Humboldt’s gift” is
coloured with bitter irony. In the hours of crisis Citrine receives
an inheritance from his late friend in the form of two screenplays.
They miraculously bring Charlie money, the affection of friends,
self-confidence. Transformed into a businessman, Bellow’s
character undergoes a complete rebirth. The Charlie Citrine’s fall
takes place. There is a doubt if the author exposes the position
of the hero, who failed to resist the vulgarity, to such a strict
condemnation.
The hero’s reconciliation with the surrounding world, which
is perceived as a world of evil, takes place in Bellow’s later
work – the novel “The Dean’s December” (1982). A hero named
Sorde stands up for a black student who is wrongly accused of
murdering two white guys. But the process is lost and Sorde is
forced to leave. He doesn’t feel well either in Bucharest or on his
return to the West. A great artistic and philosophical burden is
borne by the finale of the novel: Sorde goes to the mountains,
towards the sun. Such a path indicates the moral recovery of the
hero and means an unconditional acceptance of the real world,
the rejection of rebellious resistance.
The representative of the «southern school» in American
literature William Styron (1925–2006) in one of his first novels
“Lie Down in Darkness” (1951) brought a lot of new motifs to
the disclosure of the topic of the dark legacy of slavery. In this
work there is a strong influence of the traditions of R.P. Warren,
S. Fitzgerald, echoes of the prose of J. Conrad, T. Wolfe,
allusions Hemingway. Most importantly the novel is a tribute
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to W. Faulkner, who was, in Styron’s own words, “both the god
and the devil of all southern writers who followed him”. The
story focuses on the disintegration of the Loftis family, the
southerners. Existing in a sick society Loftiss cannot find peace
and heal. Existence for them is a continuous nightmare, in
which the complete alienation of people from each other reigns.
Life passes by the heroes, not making them happy. Everyone is
burdened with a sense of guilt, betrayal towards each other.
The story in the novel “Set this House on Fire” (1960) begins
with a detective plot: reports of murders that occurred one day
in the small Italian town of Sambuco. A young Italian peasant
woman, Francesca, is found raped and murdered, and the same
night a rich man, Mason Flag, commits suicide. The description
of the incidents in Sambuco is conducted from several points
of view, and the development of the plot passes rather into the
psychological aspect.
The first part is a story from the person of an “outsider”,
a chance witness Peter Liverett. The second part is the main
character Cass Kinsolving’s memories from a distance of three
years. He is an impoverished artist, who helps the author unravel
the events. At the same time, the inner world of Kinsolving
is undergoing an evolution. For him the situation that has
developed in Sambuco becomes a turning point for purification,
a moment of returning to life and creativity.
The positive character of the novel Cass is in search of the
truth. Thanks to the introduction of this image into the narrative,
the author expresses his ideas about the “American dream” and
American ideals. Cass’s romance was shattered by his encounter
with reality – the simple life of Italian peasants. But disappointment
is a moment of sobering up as well as a return to reality.
“The Confessions of Nat Turner” (1967) tells the story of the
1831 slave revolt in Virginia. The story is told on behalf of the
leader of the rebels who were defeated. “Confessions…”, written
by a real historical person, became the basis for reincarnation
in a person of another time and another race. Turner preaches
among his fellow men the idea of human pride and the will to
win. Turner’s illusory worldview is based on the belief that he
is a prophet who, according to the will of God, has the right to
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judge and punish. But as a matter of fact only a tiny fraction of
the thousands of black slaves joined the rebels.
The tragedy of the hero’s mental conflict is that he tries to
comprehend the idea of slavery in a speculative way. He feels that
his highest destiny is to play two roles: the spiritual shepherd
of his people and at the same time the role of a general. The
hero himself falls into the network of conclusions built by him.
Attempts to defend his own humanity by denying it in others
become harmful for him. Before his death, the hero is visited by
a revelation: the path to freedom passes through love for people.
It is the main goal in life. A person cannot be saved alone, but
only in unity with all of humanity.
In the novel “Sophie’s Choice” (1979), W. Styron tries to show
how the categories of absolute evil spread from the “southern
Gothic” to the whole world. The novel “Sophie’s Choice” became
a program work in US universities.
The main character of “Sophie’s Choice” Stingo comes to
New York and enters the service of a publishing house to fulfill
his dream – to become a writer. He meets the inhabitants of the
furnished rooms in which he lives – the Polish beauty Sophie and
her friend Nathan. The reader understands that Sophie spent
almost two years in Nazi concentration camps, having lost her
family during the war. Through the image of the Auschwitz
commandant Rudolf Hess and Sophie the author reproduces the
conflict between the executioner and the victim.
Sophie succumbs to the influence of evil, and this makes
her, as a mother, to send her own children to death. Sophie’s
choice is not only that she must decide for herself which of her
two children is to be sent to the gas oven: a ten-year-old son or
a seven-year-old daughter. The willingness to surrender to
violence and fear, to give up the fight – this is the alternative to
the heroine in a broader meaning. This is what ultimately leads to
her personality’s destruction.
After the war, Sophie falls into the hands of the schizophrenic
Nathan. She becomes not only a victim of Nathan’s sophisticated
carnival games, but also a willing participant in them. Together
with Nathan, they commit suicide by poisoning themselves with
cyanide.
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Styron’s main achievement in this work is a comprehensive,
deliberately contrasting elaboration of the theme of suffering
that purifies the conscience and exalts the soul. It is this theme
that forms the central nervous system of the work.
In the American literature of the last decades Charles
Bukowski (1920–1994) occupies a special place, belonging to
the writers from the category of «enfant terrible». The life of
the urban bottom, which he describes in his works, often using
profanity, is shocking, but the author uses the widest range of
literary traditions.
Bukowski lived in Los Angeles for about fifty years. It is this
city that he describes in most of his works. Bukowski published
his first short story at the age of twenty-three, and over the
course of his life he published more than 45 books of prose and
poetry. In part, Bukowski’s ideological and aesthetic position
is close to the nonconformism of the Beatnik period. His work
in many respects is close to the works of Kerouac, Burroughs,
Welsh and other “rebels” of the 1960s.
Bukowski’s art world is partly ambivalent, becoming
a metaphor for the transatlantic artistic consciousness. Like
Ernest Hemingway and Henry Miller, Bukowski was better
known and appreciated in Europe than at home in America. Many
of Bukowski’s works are autobiographical., For example, the
novel “Bread and Ham” (1982) is a kind of confession. Bukowski
revealed in it his feelings about his inferiority caused by a painful
reaction to a disfigured face.
Fame came to Bukowski along with cinematic success. The film
adaptation of a literary work for America has always been a sign
indicating well-being and success of a writer. In 1981 Marco
Ferreri’s film based on Bukowski’s novel “Tales of Ordinary
Madness” won the main prize at the San Sebastian Film Festival.
In 1987, the film “Barfly” was released, set in Hollywood and
based on his autobiographical script.
The stories that formed the basis of both scenarios – about
the lower classes of American society, poor fallen drunkards,
bar patrons who so seductively correlated with the image of the
writer himself. Bukowski’s character is a declassified person
by the outward signs of life: an alcoholic, a loafer, more often
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unemployed. The world in which he exists has a limited number
of dimensions. The hero’s habitat is bars, furnished rooms. The
time rhythm of the hero’s life is also peculiar: midnight drinks,
endless conversations, sleep during the day. This is the life of
a person who has fallen out of the social environment.
Published in 1997 by the Russian publishing house “Glagol”,
the collection of short stories “The Story of Ordinary Madness”
describes extreme situations associated with human libido.
The story “Animal Crackers in My Soup” depicts the hero’s
stay in a certain house, where the hostess settled a variety
of animals – from a snake to a tiger. At night, looking at the
strange light from the living room, the guest can observe almost
sacrificial copulation of Carol, the heroine of the story, with her
animals. Bukowski knows how to convey, with all the naturalism
of these scenes, sympathy for the love longing, tenderness, and
passion that two animals – a woman and a beast – experience at
these moments.
The story “Loneliness” from the collection “South of No
North” tells about a young woman who fell for the ad of a middleaged man who was looking for dating. Without unnecessary
embellishments, the author, resorting to a virtuoso game of
the dialogic form of text construction, tells about the terrible
tragedy of the heroine’s loneliness. Edna goes along with Joe
Lighthill’s deliberate attempt at violence because she’s counting
on a miracle. Just once again, she wants to make sure that she
will be subjected to violence and abuse. Hence the absolute
calm and even a certain mechanistic nature of her actions when
Edna goes to the shower, trying to get rid of the dirty kisses of
a maniac.
With regard to love, the author’s position here is quite clear:
sexuality and the emotional feeling of falling in love, in his
opinion, are somewhat different things. Therefore, the author
always leaves an open opportunity for love for his hero.
Bukowski’s novel “Hollywood” is dedicated to the film
director Barbet Schroeder, who urged the author to write it for
a long time. The hero of the novel Henry Chinaski, a man soaked
through with gin, in many ways resembles the author himself.
In the novel, he writes the script “A Sad Drunkard with a Tender
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Soul” – without pathos, but full of self-irony. The narrative
is perceived as a single confessional impulse, aimed at selfdisclosure of the trapped chaotic delirium, which is passed off as
art.
Simultaneously with the work of J. Kerouac, N. Mailer,
S. Bellow, and other major American prose writers the AfroAmerican literature was developing. The most prominent
representative of the “new wave” in Black literature, James
Baldwin (1924–1987), called on his compatriots to move away
from stereotypes in the depiction of a person with a dark skin
color and show his personality in all its spiritual richness and
inconsistency. Baldwin’s position was shared by other Black
writers, and their entire movement became known as the “New
Wave”. The writers focused on the moral aspect of an AfricanAmerican’s personality, rather than on what was shaped by the
racist state.
Baldwin’s main work, familiar to the Russian reader, is the
novel “Go Tell It on the Mountain” (1953). The novel sharply
contrasts the “outer world” – the world of white people – and the
inner world of each of the black characters in their relationship
to the white world. The reader is confronted with the bitter
narrative of a fourteen-year-old teenager, John Grimes, about
his childhood and adolescence in New York’s Harlem. A stepson
in a large family, Grimes seeks the love and understanding of
his loved ones. Restlessness, alienation from the usual family
environment – these are the main moments of the crisis of
adolescence, which the hero experiences. The breakdown of
consciousness is deepened by his uneasy relationship with his
stepfather, a Harlem preacher. A preacher is a person in whom
the blindness of faith is combined with a violent temperament.
The demand from relatives of unquestioning faith, the inability
and unwillingness to forgive for the lack of this faith motivates
all the actions of Gabriel Grimes.
Little John wants a different life. But life outside of Harlem
is forbidden to him: there are whites there who, for some reason
he doesn’t understand, don’t accept him. The hero is drawn to
solitude, and his favorite place becomes a high hill in Central
Park in New York. From there it is clear that people do not fear
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