The Subterraneans

infobox Book |
name = The Subterraneans
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption = "The Subterraneans". Grove Press, 1989 edition.
author = Jack Kerouac
illustrator =
cover_artist =
country = United States
language = English
series =
genre = Novella
publisher = Grove Press
release_date = 1958
media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages = Approx. 111 pp
isbn = ISBN 0-8021-3186-7
preceded_by = On the Road (1957)
followed_by = The Dharma Bums (1958)

"The Subterraneans" is a 1958 novella by Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac. It is a semi-fictional account of his short romance with an African American woman named Alene Lee in New York in 1953. In the novel she is renamed "Mardou Fox," and described as a carefree spirit who frequents the jazz clubs and bars of the budding Beat scene of San Francisco. Other well-known personalities and friends from the author's life also appear thinly disguised in the novel. The character Frank Carmody is based on William Burroughs, Adam Moorad on Allen Ginsberg, and Larry O'Hara on Lawrence Ferlinghetti, owner of the famous City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco's North Beach. Even Gore Vidal appears as successful novelist Arial Lavalina. Kerouac's alter ego is named Leo Percepied, and his long-time friend Neal Cassady is mentioned only in passing as Leroy.

=Character Key Sandison, Daivd. "Jeck Kerouac: An Illustrated Biography." Chicago: Chicago Review Press. 1999] =

Criticism and literary significance

The novel has been criticized for its portrayal of American minority groups, especially African Americans, in a superficial light, often portraying them in a humble and primitive manner without showing insight into their culture or social position at the time. The position of jazz and jazz culture is central to the novel, tying together the themes of Kerouac's writing here as elsewhere, and expressed in the "spontaneous prose" style in he which composed most of his works. The following quotation from Chapter 1 illustrates the spontaneous prose style of "The Subterraneans:"

FRANK CARMODY

:Making a new start, starting from fresh in the rain, 'Why should anyone want to hurt my little heart, my feet, my little hands, my skin that I'm wrapt in because God wants me warm and Inside, my toes--why did God make all this so decayable and dieable and harmable and wants to make me realize and scream--why the wild ground and bodies bare and breaks--I quaked when the giver creamed, when my father screamed, my mother dreamed---I started small and ballooned up and now I'm big and a naked child again and only to cry and fear. - Ah - Protect yourself, angel of no harm, you who've never and could never harm and crack another innocent in its shell and thin veiled pain - wrap a robe around you, honeylamb - protect yourself from harm and wait, till Daddy comes again, and Mama throws you warm inside her valley of the moon, loom at the loom of patient time, be happy in the mornings.'

The best example of the spontaneous style in Kerouac's work is, perhaps, found in his novel "Visions of Cody", a 400-page plus free-form treatise on Neal Cassady.

Film version

A 1960 [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054351/ film adaptation] changed the African American character Mardou Fox, Kerouac's love interest, to a young French girl (played by Leslie Caron) to better fit both social and Hollywood palates. While it has been derided and vehemently criticized by Allen Ginsberg among others for its two-dimensional characters, it illustrates the way the film industry attempted to exploit the emerging popularity of this culture as it grew in San Francisco and Greenwich Village, New York. A Greenwich Village beatnik bar setting had been used to good effect in Richard Quine's 1958 film "Bell, Book and Candle", but in Ranald McDougall's adaptation of Kerouac's novel, scripted by Robert Thom, the characters never come to life. Comedian Arte Johnson, for example, plays the Gore Vidal character, here named Arial Lavalerra.

"The Subterraneans" was one of the final MGM films produced by the legendary Arthur Freed, and features a score by Andre Previn and brief appearances by jazz greats Carmen McRae singing "Coffee Time", Gerry Mulligan as a street priest, and Art Pepper. The period music is arguably the film's only saving grace.

References

*1958. "The Subterraneans", ISBN 0-8021-3186-7