David Brooks on Sal Paradise

I have to admit I'm a little surprised to see David Brooks writing about Jack Kerouac's On the Road.

I'm less surprised by what he has to say:

In the Times review that launched the book, Gilbert Millstein raved that “On the Road” was a frenzied search for affirmation, a book that rejected the ennui, pessimism and cynicism of the Lost Generation. The heroes of the book savored everything, enjoyed everything, took pleasure in everything.

...

“On the Road” turned 50 last month, and over the past few weeks a line of critics have taken another look at the book, and this time their descriptions of it, whether they like it or not, are very different.

“Above all else, the story is about loss,” George Mouratidis, one of the editors of a new edition, told The Age in Melbourne.

“It’s a book about death and the search for something meaningful to hold on to — the famous search for ‘IT,’ a truth larger than the self, which, of course, is never found,” wrote Meghan O’Rourke in Slate.

Fair enough, though I suspect that the folks who are reviewing the book now are not oblivious to the frantic energy that pervades its pages. Instead, I suspect, they are trying to add something new to the discussion about Kerouac.

Then Brook says this:

If Sal Paradise were alive today, he’d be a product of the new rules. He’d be a grad student with an interest in power yoga, on the road to the M.L.A. convention with a documentary about a politically engaged Manitoban dance troop that he hopes will win a MacArthur grant. He’d be driving a Prius, going a conscientious 55, wearing a seat belt and calling Mom from the Comfort Inns.

The only thing we know for sure is that this ethos won’t last. Someday some hypermanic kid will produce a moronically maxed-out adventure odyssey that will spark the overdue rebellion among all the over-pressured SAT grinds, and us grumpy midlife critics will get to witness a new Kerouac, and the greatest pent-up young-life crisis in the history of the world.

Somehow, Brooks manages to shift into another vague complaint about modern culture.

I agree with Brooks, though, at least a little bit. And it pains me to say that, because I don't like most of his writing. But I do think he's got a point, though maybe not the point he was intending to make.

I think Brooks paints the modern Kerouac as what he see as a liberal/yuppie type - but I don't think the analogy to Kerouac holds, since Kerouac wasn't even a stereotypical 60's radical. He certainly wasn't a stereotypical 50's conservative, either, but I don't think one can conflate the Beat movement with the 60's counterculture movement in the way that Brooks is implying here. In fact, I wouldn't call Kerouac a "liberal" in the sense that he held as a priority anti-racism or anti-sexism. (C'mon, have you read On the Road? It's pretty male-centered.) I would call Kerouac a Beat, or a free thinker, or something, but not a liberal,and certainly not in the sense Brooks is implying with his caricature.

If there is a reason that Kerouac cannot exist today - because that's what Brooks is arguing - then it's certainly not some liberal hippie bullcrap. Instead, I think it's the totalizing nature of capitalism. A Jack Kerouac today would have immense trouble existing in any meaningful way outside the grasp of modern commercialism - a commercialism fueled by capitalism. The head space that Kerouac took advantage of, the cracks he threw himself into at full speed - those are much harder to come by today. It's much harder to disengage with the master narratives and really develop one's own at this point.

There very well might be a Kerouac sitting in a hovel in New York right now, typing furiously away. She might have already written a "moronically maxed-out adventure odyssey," but I have my doubts that anything like that will get a grip on anything like mainstream society. No, I think that sort of writing, and adventure, happens at the margins, in places that Brooks - and I, really - don't tread.



UPDATE: There is also this passage from Brooks that I forgot to make fun of:

But reading through the anniversary commemorations, you feel the gravitational pull of the great Boomer Narcissus. All cultural artifacts have to be interpreted through whatever experiences the Baby Boomer generation is going through at that moment.

I guess Brooks' voice is universal then. I'm sure he's never changed his mind about something based on new information or a new perspective on life.

David Brooks, the universal moral constant.

Unearned privilege sure does funny things to people.