Flaxflower - 01/19/2014
Looking for Kerouac
by Mercedes Webb-Pullman
This is a story that takes you across America in series of flashbacks, ruminations and remnants of real events reminiscent of the heyday of the counter-culture moments in 1960s American literature.
by Mercedes Webb-Pullman
This is a story that takes you across America in series of flashbacks, ruminations and remnants of real events reminiscent of the heyday of the counter-culture moments in 1960s American literature.
Author Mercedes Webb-Pullman delivers a delicious on the road account of her travels across America in the footsteps of Jack Kerouac. The sounds, sights, tastes; you really experience the story in what feels like real time.
Using the road and rail route taken by Kerouac, Webb-Pullman crosses the worn highways of America, encountering unique individuals who embody the diversity of being outsiders. These characters are desperate, disparate, transient and are as a result, compelling.
The sub plot reveals that she has partially travelled this route before with Kevin, her now ex-husband. Kevin philandered and drugged his way through their honeymoon, 30 years earlier and within this narrative, Webb-Pullman is able to redress the events suffered on that trip but on her own terms.
There is humour and it is
unexpected. The author recalls taking 100 aspirin after a seismic letdown as a
16 year old. Her parents - clashing - stymie her date with her boyfriend Noel.
At the hospital the author makes herself sick, after which the attending GP
madly searches the thrown-up contents to ascertain the amount of pills taken,
confusing pills for sweetcorn eaten earlier. It positions the author as somehow
normal in an environment of abnormal, something Webb-Pullman is outstanding at
describing.
Webb-Pullman is not afraid to explore the difficulties of Kerouac's sexuality, drug taking and for herself studies an explosive time in American writing. She is unafraid as a writer.
This is the nature of stream-of-consciousness writing. It places this story within the genres of travel, memoir and biographic writing.
Review by Katherine Stewart
Katherine is an Auckland writer who blogs, reviews and studies art history
Katherine is an Auckland writer who blogs, reviews and studies art history
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