On the Road / V.

[terrance fitzgerald]

I'll skip GR and IM, since the books not in your lap and jump to Jack Kerouac's On the Road. This novel had a huge influence on the novel V. 
   
  All of P's American Quest novels are on the road books. 
   
  Benny Profane is a parody of the picaro. 
  Slothrop's adventure may be seen as combining the Benny Profane narrative in V.--parody of picaresque and the narrative of Herbert Stencil in V.---a parody of Romance quest.
   
  In any event, OtR, and V., and VL, GR, M&D, CL49, they all fall into this tradition, looking for ....a holy grail ... conspiracy then next job, bed, girl, drink ....    first home, then a brain, then a heart, then courage, then the wizard, then the witch's broom, then the ruby slippers, then  .... a J O B. 
   
  Harlem (although P invents a strange sort of Spanish Harlem in V., Fina & the Kids on the Subway, the homosexual gangs and the Holy Mary Oedipus Jailbait ... ) is a little too close to Long Island for P to deal with (Watts, once he's on the road, is a subject he can un-Baedecker:  keep his peeling sun burned tourists mask on while pretending to warn the world about what Bigger is gonna do if we white folk don't start paying attention to the late late late show) so P decides to put Benny (allusion to OtR, Benny and the jets hallucinations ...Benny is also his Jewish name Job/schlemiel/schlimazel,  Proane his Italian Catholic name) in and around the Village Crew, and a girl will pull his yo-yo string on up town. At the end of ch-3 of OtR we find 
  "I wanted to go West and here I've been all day and into the night going up and down, north and south, like something that can't get started. The bop and jazz of OtR is there in V. too. The entire novel takes the language and the images of religion and makes new prophets and saints of those who can be cool and talk (the WORD of cool).    



 		
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