I found the following in one of Louise's books, and had to copy the entire thing into my notebook. Not that I especially like Jack Kerouac, but I had a brilliant idea... Someday, when I'm teaching, this will be one of the first assignments that I give: I'll have the students read this, pick one, and write an essay about what it means to them.
The main problem with high school English classes is that they systematically destroy the joy and creativity of reading and writing. Students are taught "the rules" first: structure and organization, grammar, mechanics, spelling, and so forth, and are actively discouraged from expressing anything that involves passion. About half an hour ago, I had a tutoring session with a girl my own age, who appeared to be having trouble finding a thesis in her work. She'd written this paper about her own writing process, and it was all like, "first I think about the topic, then I brainstorm on paper, then I start the essay, then I revise it..." It was boring as shit, to be honest. But there were these moments where she seemed so FUNNY, so alive... I KNOW she's a pleasant person, happy and interesting and witty. You can feel how high school has destroyed her. With regard to language, and to teaching, I consider it my mission to give people back their sense of delight, and to hell with "rules." So, my first assignment for my first high school class is this:
Read "Belief & Technique For Modern Prose" by Jack Kerouac. Choose one of the items, and write a prose piece expressing what it means to you.
What'd'ya think? Am I gonna be kicked out of teaching the minute I start?
1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Write from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Don’t think of word when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual american form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You’re a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Direction of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven
Some news...
I'm going to go see Tom Robbins next month...
I guess that doesn't mean much to some of you. Probably most of you haven't even read any of his books. Hell, some of you probably only know him from his quote about the war that I posted in my last entry. (Which, by the way, is not a great example of why I love the man...) Well, regardless, it means a lot to ME...
Angela was the first to introduce me to Mr. Robbins. She brought home "Still Life With Woodpecker" one day, and tried to explain it to me... "It's a love story," she said, "about a pack of Camel cigarettes."
"Like, the cigarettes are in love?" (I was twelve...)
"No. You'll have to read it some day."
She brought home the rest of his books, too, and would sit, every afternoon, at the kitchen table, guffawing to herself in the sunlight through the sliding glass door.
When I was 19, my mom's friend and landlady announced that she had a bunch of books she wanted to get rid of, and, if we'd like, we were welcome to go through them. So we rummaged through box after box of romance novels, and, out of nowhere, this battered copy of "Still Life With Woodpecker" fell at my feet.
...And I swear, my entire life changed that day. I sat in the yard, reading and guffawing, reading and guffawing... For Mr. Robbins doesn't follow Mr. Kerouac's "list of essentials." I don't guess that Mr. Robbins would ever do something as stupid as making a LIST about how to write, how to FEEL, how to write and feel at the same time... You have to admit, it is pretty stupid. Useful, but stupid. Mr. Robbins believes simply that the world is sensual -- sexual, even -- and it should be experienced and described as such. Not like, say, Henry Miller thought the world was sexual. Mr. Miller thought that the world was created so that he could have a lot of sex, and he should write about that. That isn't what I mean. Mr. Robbins writes about blackberries and beer and babboons and Bedouins, and when you finish a chapter, you feel like you've blown your wad someplace very pleasant, so you sit there and grin, sort of lazily.
Frankly, the man is my hero.
Around here, he's sort of... what? A local celebrity that nobody gives much of a shit about, I would say. The Northwest doesn't revere people, ever. Once, I was sent a CD of an Olympia band from a dude living in England; the band was popular enough to have reached around the globe. But around here, nobody gives much of a fuck about them. This is the way people regard Mr. Robbins. He sort of blends in. And anyway, how can you be overly impressed with a guy who practically lives in your backyard?
Anyway, one of the things on my "List of Things To Do Before I Die," is to buy Tom Robbins a beer. It might look sort of stupid to bring a beer to a guy in a bookstore, but what the hell... He's doing a book tour in May, with a stop in Seattle. Maybe I just will bring him a beer...
I gotta go; Jake's waiting for me outside.....
~Helena*