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Rating: "The Last Word. On the Road. In the Jazz."
I stumbled upon a small publishing house, Il Maestrale, located no more than 100 km from my home and I thought it catered to local artists, at most writers dealing with our land: I was right, but not entirely.
The published volumes are paperbacks, many are fiction, some essays, but in the great confusion, I'd cut off the hands of some "readers", I find myself facing something inexplicable: what's Jack Kerouac doing here among them? Quick calculation: "Vanity of Dulouz" is from 1968 and "Pic," published posthumously, is from 1972.
There must be a mistake: well no, dear readers of Jack, these sequestered, as defined by their translator, are unpublished Kerouac's typescripts and articles in Italy in the early '80s, when they came into the hands of Alberto Masala, who then curated their translation for publication, almost twenty years later.
They are travel stories in an America that cannot become his home; hundreds of kilometers traveled in the company of a great photographer, as usual on the road; articles on the beginnings of jazz, with descriptions so poetic, or perhaps insecure, that they leave you in doubt about the true author; they are special encounters, the old Hobo, who with "his suffering that seemed kneaded into flesh, face, and neck", changed him and put him back on the road once more.
Jack Kerouac cannot be defined as a writer, at least not in the common sense: he doesn't tell a story, he transcribes it; he doesn't invent characters, he meets them; he doesn't describe a landscape, he passes through it; he doesn't love women, he loves love; he searches for happiness, but rarely talks about it; he is like a sponge, absorbing everything around him, and returns it to us without inventions, exactly as he perceived it.
He will say in "The Essentials of Spontaneous Prose": "First satisfy yourself, and then the reader will not lack telepathic shock and meaningful correspondence because in your and his mind, the same psychological laws operate."
I don't think it's so hard to believe, the greatness of a Kerouac is not measured by the number of works, or by the critics' compliance, but it's what he makes the reader perceive that makes him special: he simply makes you feel part of the story, you could tell it too, you could write it more or less in the same way, sometimes perhaps even better.
In this collection, a piece by Paolo Fresu couldn't be missing, who has made jazz his life: a small cameo, at the close of the articles.
It so happened that the book found me, never mind: the plot doesn't exist, therefore my work was greatly facilitated; the interest of Kerouac's devotees might turn into an incredible own goal, but I'll take the risk; the interest of the curious, that... could be a real problem, but not mine.
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