The Subterraneans

The Subterraneans is a 1958 novel by Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac. It is a semi-fictionalized account of his short romance with an African American woman in the jazz clubs and bars of the budding Beat scene of San Francisco. There are appearances from other well known personalities and friends from his other novels, such as William Burroughs (Frank Carmody in the novel), Alan Ginsberg (Adam Moorad), and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, owner of the famous City Lights bookstore in San Francisco's North Beach.

Critism and Literary Signficance

The novel has been criticized for its portrayal of American minority groups, especially his portrayal of African Americans and others as in a superficial light, often dramatizing their humble and primitive energy without strong insight into their culture or social positions. The position of jazz and jazz culture is central to the novel, as it ties together many of the themes of Kerouac's other writings, such as the "spontaneous prose" style of composing his works. The following quote from chapter 1 captures well the spontaneous prose style of The Subterraneans

" 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 his close friend Neal Cassady.

Film Version

A highly derided version of the novel was made into a film in 1960, with a plot that substituted an African American Mardou Fox, Kerouac's love interest, for a young French girl to better fit both social and Hollywood palates. While it has been vehemently criticized by Alan Ginsberg among many others, it is a useful tool to view the way that the film industry attempted to capitalize on the emerging popularity of this culture as it grew in the San Francisco and Greenwich Village, New York.