Dispelling the Myth of Jack.

Cunnell knows Jack.  Fast This Time: Jack Kerouac and the Writing of On the Road by Howard Cunnell does a damn sweet job of explaining the process of how Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road.  He then shows the process of how it was published.  He dispels the myth that Road was a raw, first draft, scrolled out in a three weeks benny binge.  He shows that it  took years (from 1947 to its publication 1957) of experimentation, conversations, note pads, journals,  letters, and miles and miles of road. Did you know Jack struggled with voice and style?  Road was not an instantaneous blurt.  Its publication was not immediate. Jack drafted, redrafted, cut, versioned, and re-versioned.  Did you know that in 1953 Malcolm Cowley— an influential literary man at Viking who help Hemingway and Faulkner in the 20s but who wasn’t much of a fan of Jack work—took interest in Road only after Ginsberg wrote him a letter asking him to take a look at it? No shit.  So, even though it had already rejected the book once, with Cowley’s’ prompting, Ginsberg’s nudging, and Jack’s reworking and removing of sections—some of which were seen as too obscene or libelous—, Viking published it in 1957.  This essay shows Jack as a person, as a writer and not some iconic, pie in the apple sky, beatnik king. Cunnell dispels the myth and makes Jack Kerouac real.  Nice.